Will US courts regulate Internet naming?

[Commentary] The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) argues that it cannot be ordered to transfer a domain because the United States government, not ICANN, is really in charge.

The US government is proposing to allow its agreements with ICANN to lapse, however. At that point, ICANN would become autonomous and accountable only to its Board of Directors. ICANN would seemingly lose this line of defense, and thus invite the courts to hold it responsible for domain allocation.

This suggests that Department of Commerce oversight is holding off the unhappy possibility that every US District Court would be free to give orders to ICANN. Perhaps we should not be so quick to give up the current legal arrangements.

[Rabkin is a professional software engineer]