In the past few days, you may have heard statements such as “The US government gave up the rights to the Internet on October 1st”. Well, that is a bit of an exaggeration but there is a real story behind it. We will be brief today and make it simple.
- There is a non-profit organization called ICANN. If you own a domain name, you would have received occasional notices from them to update your ownership information for your domain name(s).
- ICANN stands for Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Its primary function is to manage domain names around the world.
- Until October 1st, 2016, the U.S. government (specifically the Federal National Telecommunications and Information Administration) had control over ICANN and oversaw its activities, its protocols, and more.
- This control of the U.S.A. over ICANN was established in a contractual agreement almost two decades ago and expired on 10-01-2016.
- That means that now the U.S. government does not have any say in ICANN’s governing and that ICANN now solely answer to its stakeholders who are a mixed of experts, advisors, and industry entities from various countries.
This is very big news in the Internet community but will have no effect on your domain name ownership.