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A number of European top-level domain registrars are refusing to pay ICANN, the non-profit organisation that administers policy for the Internet name and address system.
CENTR, the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries, is an association of organisations that control many of Europe's county specific domain name registries such as .ie in Ireland, .uk in Britain and .it in Italy.
Many of these registries are considering not paying the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) the donations it is requesting, saying the Internet oversight body has not done enough to guarantee the stability of the servers and databases that link domains. Essentially, the complaints stem from ICANNs unwillingness to sign contracts with the Internet's 13 root server operators to guarantee system reliability.
At the CENTR General Assembly, held last month, CENTR's 35 members, who include the Irish (.ie) registration body IEDR, pressed ICANN about the quality of service they can expect from the non-profit Californian corporation. At the meeting Dr. William Black, chairman of CENTR, said "There are many issues to be resolved and we currently appear to be far from a mutual understanding." Black, who is also Nominet's (.uk) managing director, says, "Our main concern is over what the role of ICANN is. We think that ICANN should be willing to offer some level of service assurance in what it does, they don't agree."
The Internet's 13 root servers essentially tell one domain how to reach another domain and unless these servers and the databases of IP addresses they contain are functioning properly, users would unable to move from one domain to another. Separate companies operate these servers, an if one were to fail the Net as a whole would continue to operate, but disruptions could be caused in certain areas.
For now there remains no guarantee from ICANN that the severs, which are also run by volunteers, will remain in operation without interruption and the US non-profit oversight body says it is not in the business of providing services agreements. ICANN also points out that the system has been in operation, without disruption for 15 years and that it can't force volunteer server operators to guarantee service without paying. Black says CENTR members would be willing to pay for service level agreements.
Black says that there is also demand for ICANN to keep track of who the 250 ccTLD (country code top level domain) registration managers are, but without any authority over what the local administrators do, ICANN seems reluctant to take on such as task.
"We are not going to sue them, there would not be much point in not-for-profit companies suing each other. But we do need some kind of more commercial agreement. If ICANN can not guarantee reliability of the system what good are they?" Black asked. "It seems ridiculous though; if our system went down we could be sued by the thousands of organisations we do business with. Why shouldn't they (ICANN) do the same."
Black explained that there were a number of other issues at stake as well. These include recognition the sovereign right of the local Internet community in each CENTR country to manage its own ccTLD, with no authority conceded to ICANN by any CENTR member on the management of any ccTLD. Also, most European administrators desire to participate in any policy formulation or restructuring activities by ICANN, while retaining local policy implementation.
This is not the first instance that CENTR members and ICANN have butted heads, In June of 2000 CENTR responded to invoices issued to ccTLD registries for the ICANN financial year 99/00. Its complaints in 2000 were contained in letter sent to the ICANN chief executive officer at the time, Mike Roberts.
Despite the complaints two years ago, CENTR members "donated" around USD600,000 to ICANN for the year ending 30 June 2000. Last year the UK and Germany made another, smaller donation of around USD100,000 apiece but for the current year, there is some question as two whether any donation will be made unless some of these issues are rectified.
"I don't want to seem to aggressive on this. We might pay them something in the long run out of a sense of responsibility. Many of the governments in Europe feel that way. But I just keep asking myself what are we paying them for?" Black said. "We have been patient on this thing for a long time. I hope there is some progress soon, but we are prepared to wait longer, the Internet will not shut down tomorrow."
The past 12 months have not been the best for ICANN which introduced seven new top-level domains (.museum, .biz, .info, .aero, .name, .coop and .pro). But these new suffixes, and the companies that administer them, have been caught up in a series of delays and setbacks including legal disputes over intellectual property rights and other technical issues.
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