ICANN and the World

A new day has dawned for ICANN with a new agreement with the United States, and the US Department of Commerce called: AFFIRMATION OF COMMITMENTS BY THE UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND THE INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS.

Wow, that's a mouthful, but a well needed mouthful for a starved international community. Some of the reins have been loosened, and the international internet community has more of a voice in the governance of the internet. My favorite quote from the Affirmation of Commitments comes in at number 5: "5. DOC recognizes the importance of global Internet users being able to use the Internet in their local languages and character sets, and endorses the rapid introduction of internationalized country code top level domain names (ccTLDs), provided related security, stability and resiliency issues are first addressed."

This is a strong acknowledgement from the US DoC regarding the need to Internationalize the internet. The entire text is worth the read, and the video is also available for viewing here. It's worth a read and a look at the short interview of Rod Beckstrom - ICANN's Chief Executive Officer. He mentions the release of Russian and Chinese IDNs as well as the spread of the internet throughout the world and the need for access in many scripts and languages.

This is perhaps a historic day in the 11 or so year history of ICANN, but more importantly it is a day in which ICANN will be governed by the world (the internet community) and the launch of fully internationalized domain names is now inevitable.