Regulation of a domain system

2018: The USA wants to return themselves control over a domain system

The national U.S. Administration on telecommunications and information (NTIA) is ready to review the decision on failure from responsible management of the IANA functions (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, or "Administration of an address space the Internet"). A question of whether it is necessary to make it and if yes, that how and if not, then why, NTIA was lifted for discussion of all concerned parties which will last till July 2, the center of the national domain of the Internet with reference to Domain Incite reported on June 6, 2018 Coordination.

Over execution of the IANA functions the National U.S. Administration on telecommunications and information refused supervision in September, 2016. As the result, control over the DNS system passed to structures of Internet community under the auspices of ICANN that, in turn, caused a sharp unacceptance from conservative American politicians, Domain Incite writes. On their belief, failure of the USA from the controlling role could lead to the fact that freedom of speech and dissemination of information on the Internet will appear under the threat — at the suggestion of China, Iran or other countries as a result. However it did not occur.

Nevertheless, there was other event which, according to authors of Domain Incite, became for the USA more notable reason for discontent. Since the end of May, 2018 became effective the General regulations on data protection (GDPR) adopted by the European Union countries. It is known that requirements of regulations contradict requirements of Whois — the network protocol of the application layer which task is obtaining registration data on owners of domain names. According to GDPR, domain registrars and registries cannot publish data of registrants of domain names from EU countries in open access any more. Moreover, recent judgments say that registrars and registries have the right at all not to store these data.

It is obvious that access restriction to data of Whois seriously beats the interests of the USA as these data as necessary could be applied as law enforcement agencies, and at protection of the rights of owners of intellectual property, noted in Domain Incite. Protected trademarks and trademarks it will become more difficult to companies owners to fight against infringement of the rights in domain space, agreed in the Coordination center of the national domain of the Internet.

NTIA also supports preserving of Whois in full. Meanwhile, as review of the decision about failure from control over the IANA functions can help the USA to change current situation, remains not clear.^[1]

GDPR is not the policy of ICANN, but the law of the European Union. And even if tomorrow the USA will nationalize ICANN entirely and will enter the death penalty for failure from the publication of data Whois in full, it will not cancel GDPR in any way. It can only lead to a trade war or to failure of the American companies from business in Europe. The scenario is extreme, but quite in the spirit of Trump — the author of the Domain Incite resource Kevin Murphy said.[2]

See Also

• Domains

Notes