ICANN is the global regulatory body charged with coordinating the Domain Name System, the global address book of the internet that ensures that you can surf to the site you plugged into your browser and send email to any address. There are some good people at ICANN doing a very difficult job — what with spam, hackers and Sen Ted Stevens threatening to destroy the net.
That said, there is a very bad proposal before ICANN that would extend their mandate from the technical management of the Domain Name System into areas it clearly does not belong: morality and freedom of expression issues. The proposal would alter ICANN’s mandate over "global top level domains" like ".com", ".org" and ".net" to include considerations of "morality and public order." If this proposal were to pass, countries like China and Tunisia would be in a much stronger position not only to regulate whether their own citizens could access to "www.nunsandnazis.xxx" but whether the domain ".xxx" could even exist, solely on claims of "morality and public order." This is dangerous territory that ICANN proposes to enter.
There is a public comment period between now and August 30. Head to the Keep the Core Neutral website for more info and to send a message to ICANN that you don’t think they should be the morality cops of the internet!
You would think that they world have OKd it at teh beginning instead of allowing it to go so long without saying a thing and then bringing it back up when it was too late. meself dont understand it at all.
Goodbye