[WSIS CS-Plenary] US government-funded report on ICANN, DNS released

[Milton Mueller]

An expert report on Internet governance and the Domain Name System was
released Thursday by the National Research Council. 
 
The report, "Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and
Internet Navigation," is available at ths URL:

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/pub_dns.html 

The report was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the
National Science Foundation, and mandated by the U.S. Congress through
Public Law 105-305.

The full report makes recommendations regarding new TLDs (there is no
technical or operational risk to adding 20-90 TLDs annually, a regular
schedule for their addition should be instituted, auctions should be
considered), Internet governance and DNS (governments should stay out,
ICANN should receive stewardship after safeguards are instituted),
security (DNSSEC should be encouraged), WHOIS and privacy ("Whois data
management and access should be designed to allow for gradations in
access while maintaining some degree of free access to Whois
information.") and many other DNS-related topics. 

Disclosure: I was on the committee. But the report and conclusions had
to obtain consensus among a committee composed of a dozen or so other
experts, many of whom had strong disagreements. 

A good critical overview of the report can be found on ICANNWatch:
http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/31/0057215&mode=thread 



Dr. Milton Mueller
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://www.digital-convergence.org
http://www.internetgovernance.org