On Wednesday, the day ICANN's contract with the Department of Commerce was to expire, ICANN announced an "Affirmation of Commitments." It's a commitment for all the parties involved to have a continued relationship with the U.S. government and to conduct periodic reviews of the organization, its accountability, and its transparency.

In the past, those reviews were submitted to the U.S. government under the Joint Partner Agreement. Under the new relationship, reviews will be developed by an international committee chosen by the chairman of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee. The committee represents 100 nations around the world, the CEO of ICANN, and in some cases ICANN's chairman.

"So what it really means is, we're going global," said ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom. "All the reviews and all the work done will be submitted for public comment to the world. And the United States, just like every other country, will be a recipient of that information through the publication of result."

Private and Public Support

Viviane Reding of the European Union Commission for Information Society and Media asked ICANN in May not to renew its deal with the U.S. government.

"Internet users worldwide can now anticipate that ICANN's decision on domain names and addresses will be more independent and more accountable, taking into account everyone's interests," Reding said. "If effectively and transparently implemented, this reform can find broad acceptance among civil society, business and governments alike."

Private businesses and organizations, including VeriSign, Google and NetChoice, are also applauding the decision.

"VeriSign commends the Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers and the Department of Commerce the 10 years of work by both parties toward the evolution of governance around the domain-name addressing system," said VeriSign CEO Mark McLaughlin. "We are encouraged that the new proposed agreement by ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce will allow for more international participation in the policy creation at ICANN and expand ICANN's efforts as technical coordinator of the domain-name addressing system to ensure a robust and secure Internet."

"Google and its users depend every day on a vibrant and expanding Internet," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "We endorse this affirmation and applaud the maturing of ICANN's role in the provision of Internet stability."

Global Changes

In addition to moving to the affirmation agreement, ICANN has also decided to support different scripts and languages in domain names.

"The Internet is 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," Beckstrom said. "In the near future we will be rolling out Chinese, Russian and different languages."