From...

by Martyn Williams

TOKYO (IDG) -- Japan has asked the U.S. government to give the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) more room to make decisions, a Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications spokesman said in an interview Wednesday.

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It seems the U.S. government is too much involved with the new system and they influence it too much, so we asked them to let ICANN work more freely," Haruka Saito of the ministry's international affairs bureau said.

Saito said that the request was made during a meeting between Japanese and U.S. government on telecommunications issues on Monday and Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Details of the U.S. response to the request had not yet been received in Tokyo, he said.

Japan had wanted to raise the issue at a meeting held in Tokyo in November but the U.S. government failed to send anyone responsible for the issue, according to Saito. Japan is concerned that Network Solutions Inc.'s (NSI) continued role in domain name registration gives the U.S. too strong a voice in the process.

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ICANN is an international nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that has taken over administration of top-level Internet domain names, a task previously handled by NSI under a contract from the U.S. government. Although national governments have no say in the running of the organization, a government advisory committee allows for their voices to be heard. ICANN is under no obligation to follow advice from the committee.

In comments submitted to the U.S. government in November, the Japanese government said that despite the formation of ICANN, NSI "does not operate under the ICANN control regime, and maintains its de facto dominance."

Japan also criticized the requirement for new registrars to make licensing agreements with NSI because it could lead to NSI "abusing its dominant position in the absence of safeguards against discriminatory behavior."

"For the sake of introducing fair competition to global top-level domain registration and control services under the ICANN control regime, which was established by the private-sector initiative, the U.S. government should take necessary measures such as introduction of safeguards against NSI's abusing its dominant position," Japan said in its submission, a copy of which was obtained by IDG News Service.

Martyn Williams is Tokyo correspondent for the IDG News Service.