China May Be Planning to Break ICANN’s Monopoly on Domain Management
China has announced that it is currently in the process of developing a new system of domain names based on Chinese characters.
The country has successfully developed Chinese versions of the three most popular domain types: “.cn”, “.com”, and “.net”. These domain versions were announced by the Ministry of Information Industry of China yesterday.
China’s success in developing these Chinese language domain names has raised suspicions about whether the country could become a center for breaking ICANN’s monopoly, potentially shaking the foundation of the global Domain Name System (DNS).
Moreover, this development has raised concerns regarding China’s tight control over the Internet, which may lead to the establishment of a barrier against the global World Wide Web.
“This means that Internet users will not have to browse the web through servers managed by ICANN, or in other words, by the U.S. government,” stated the People’s Daily Online in China.
ICANN has declined to comment on China’s plans despite the details being revealed by the Ministry of Information Industry of China.
“We want to clarify the current situation. It is still unclear whether China has created top-level domains or merely second-level domains because the report is not clear. The current situation is still ambiguous,” ICANN stated.
Experts are concerned that China could create its own domain management system based on its own servers, which could lead to fragmentation of the Internet.
“Fragmentation is a concern not only for ICANN but for all of us,” said Geir Rasmussen, CEO of Global Name Registry, an organization that manages the .name domain.
“Users may lose trust in the system if there are multiple versions of the same domain. If someone uses a .name domain on a different DNS server, how can you, the user, know exactly which root Internet server you are accessing? It’s like a phone number pointing to two different people,” Rasmussen explained.
Last year, several countries voiced their opposition to ICANN’s dominance over root Internet domain servers, as ICANN remains under U.S. government control.
The European Union and other countries have urged the U.S. government to share responsibility for managing DNS, including the decision to add or remove top-level domains, with the United Nations. The Bush administration rejected this request.
“There is currently a conflict with ICANN regarding who will manage the Internet. We wouldn’t be surprised if the Internet becomes fragmented, as some regions of the world do not feel connected to this dispute,” Rasmussen added.
HVD – (ZDNet / Technewsworld)
