Speaking in Dublin on ICANN’s 54th meeting CEO of the corporation Fadi Chehade devoted a significant part of his speech to determine the spheres of ICANN’s interest in Internet government. Chehade highlighted that the global network functions on three levels. Infrastructure level is managed by telecom companies, operators of cable, satellite and wireless networks and Internet Exchange Points. A huge variety of organizations that have some kind of relation to web content operate on the economic and societal level – from government organizations and business to ordinary users. ICANN’s level is only the logical one – root services and domain names system.
Fadi Chehade told a story that demonstrated that ICANN’s role is misunderstood. He talked to the leader of one of the countries, and he demanded ICANN to shut down webpages that support terrorist activities. “We have no responsibility to render judgment about which sites are terrorists”, pointed out Chehade, “which sites are the good pharmacies, which sites are the bad pharmacies, which sites are committing crimes, which sites are infringing copyrights…”
At the same time Fadi Chehade claimed that ICANN is able to contribute to the fight against illegal content by stipulating in agreements with registrars and registries the conditions on which measures against such resources should be undertaken. He also expressed the opinion that a more active fight against illegal resources should be carried out by registrars and registries themselves. As an example he talked about the actions of the largest payment systems that on their own initiative refused to work with webpages that engage in criminal activity and distribute spam.
