The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the U.S. Department of Commerce sign a new ICANN affirmation of commitments agreement, which supports the ICANN model of international multi-stakeholder and bottom-up governance of the global Internet addressing system.

The goal of ICANN is to have one world, one Internet with everyone connected. Beckstrom said that this agreement will give international stakeholders a powerful voice in the activities of ICANN moving forward.
 
Under the agreement, the U.S. will remain committed to participation in ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). The agreement also mandates that ICANN’s accountability to the Internet community must be reviewed at least every three years by a committee made up of representatives of the community, which will include the U.S. assistant secretary of communications and information of the Department of Commerce.

The agreement commits ICANN to follow transparent budgeting processes and policy development. ICANN has also affirmed its commitments to maintain the capacity and ability to coordinate the Internet DNS at the overall level and to work for the maintenance of a single, interoperable and compatible internet.

"ICANN was created to help move the domain name system that holds all the names and all the addresses together on the internet globally," states ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom. "In addition to the Affirmation agreement, we're moving towards fully supporting different scripts and languages in domain names, and these two efforts will tie together very nicely. But the internet's becoming more global because today you have to type dot com or a dot extension that has English-like or Latin characters, what we call ASCII. In the near future--next year--we'll be rolling out Chinese, Russian, and different languages. So the Affirmation is our commitment to be global and to report to the global community and then, technologically, we're opening up other pieces of the internet, too. So the primary expansion now is around the world, of course. It's highly saturated in the United States and other advanced countries, and we're seeing tremendous uptake now across Asia and into Africa, Latin America, and all over the world."

In summary, ICANN states publically on its website that the Affirmation of Commitments assures that the ICANN model is best equipped to coordinate this vital resource and places reviews of ICANN's performance in the hands of the community. That provides a stable, secure platform into the future that can adapt to changes to the internet itself.

The real question is whether the internationalization of ICANN will make the organization more flexible and transparent. Or will it turn ICANN into a bureaucratic nightmare which in the new era of the internet can bring negative effects. Without a doubt, a fully functional and credible ICANN is critical to a stable Internet.

The EU welcomed ICANN's independence and its more transparent approach. The internet should be operated in the public interest of global internet users. The issue addressed is governance, but it is unsure whether handling the governance to varied governments would be such a good idea on the face of the new internet landscape and ever evolving technology advancement on the web. Adding a whole set of new bureaucratic mandates and accountability to multiple government stakeholders might be a risk that will stifle innovation and a step backwards from decentralization.

Despite ICANN's independence, the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Committee) is still the ultimate authority over new TLDs and what gets into the root zone. Even though ICANN gained its independence, the U.S Department of Commerce still controls Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) which coordinates and maintains the system of DNS root servers, IP addressing, and other Internet resources, which means that the U.S still has power because it controls DNS and can choose to block new TLDs from being included in the root system.

It is my belief that the introduction of IDNs and new TLDs will change the whole internet landscape and make it  true global entity that supports innovation in the space, entrepreneurship, more options to internet users and lastly increase competition in the namespace. Not all TLDs will be an overwhelming success but there will be a few that will most definitely add value to the internet user. Some extensions make sense and some don't and we can let the web sort out which ones are useful and which ones do not add value in the overall user experience. I believe it is exciting times for the internet and a move forward towards decentralization and for the internet to be truly global. Under the leadership of Rod Beckstrom, I hope that ICANN will offer transparency in their TLD application selection process and select the applicants that embrace innovation and bring back something of value to their specific communities, not just a domain name.