VeriSign suit not about 'control of the internet' says ICANN chief

ICANN claims it is "business as usual" - and says that VeriSign's recent decision to sue the organisation over the banning of its controversial site redirect service is not a battle for control of the internet.

In an interview with silicon.com, Paul Twomey, president and CEO of ICANN, said the case will be a distraction but that the organisation will continue with "core" issues such as internationalised domain names.

"We're disappointed VeriSign has chosen conflict over consensus but we don't see it as some sort of battle for ICANN or the soul of the organisation," he said.

Twomey questioned the timing of VeriSign's announcements about legal action and pointed to the outcome of an ICANN board meeting in Rome at the weekend.

The main resolution gave the go-ahead for ICANN to press ahead with the process of finding a "successor operator" for the dot-net domain by June - ahead of the original contract with VeriSign, signed in 2001, expiring.

A second resolution confirmed the fears of registrars who last week filed a separate lawsuit against ICANN and VeriSign, accusing the two organisations of running a "fraudulent protection racket".

That suit comes on the back of plans proposed by VeriSign for it to offer accredited registrars the option of paying to be on a 'waiting list' for expired domain names they can resell as they become available, instead of being able to snap them up themselves.

At the ICANN meeting at the weekend, the board agreed to seek US government approval for VeriSign's service.

On another front ICANN had to fight off calls from some countries last year at the World Information Summit for an inter-government agency such as the UN to run the internet instead of ICANN.

Twomey said the definition of 'internet governance' would have to be resolved first and he, not surprisingly, welcomed the formation of a working group that will not report back its findings for another two years.

"The countries that most have the internet integrated into their economy don't want the governments involved," he said. "Some of the people calling for the UN to run the internet are the ones who have the least exposure to it."

But Twomey said that while these cases are important, ICANN is very much focusing on "business as usual".

At the top of that list is the issue of internationalised domain names – those in different character sets such as Chinese. Twomey said it is vital this issue does not result in the growth of different internets for different regions of the world.

"The biggest issue is the localisation of the internet while keeping a single interoperable internet. That is why internationalised domain names – in other character sets – are important. We don't want multiple internets," he said.