ICANN is letting Russian domain names live on on the Internet untouched. According to the nonprofit organization, the removal would go against the basic principles of the Internet as an open, decentralized system.
Last Monday, a group of official representatives of Ukraine sent a petition to ICANN and the RIPE NCC. The petition dealt with Russian domain names, which the group said should be removed from the Internet. Furthermore, the petition further requested that the root servers in Moscow and St. Petersburg be shut down.
ICANN is not responding to this petition, informs. “As you know, the Internet is a decentralized system. No party has the ability to control or shut it down,” replied Göran Marby, CEO of ICANN.
In doing so, the CEO shares the opinion of RIPE NCC, the network coordination center for Europe and the Middle East. Indeed, on Tuesday, RIPE NCC already shared that it is not giving a hearing to the request, as that would compromise the neutrality of the organization.
ICANN
ICANN stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The organization’s responsibilities include assigning domain names and IP numbers.
“In our role as the technical coordinator of unique identifiers for the Internet, we take actions to ensure that the operation of the Internet is not subject to politics and we have no authority to impose sanctions. In essence, ICANN was built to make sure the Internet works, not to use its coordinating role to prevent it from working,” Marby writes.
The CEO of organization further reveals that the organization also cannot perform the requested actions at all.
Russian blockade
The board of CENTR, the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries, does not feel the need to remain impartial. The organization revoked membership in the coordination center Tuesday for TLD .RU/.РФ.
Quite a few other companies did decide at the request of governments or on their own to stop trading with Russia. Several knots were cut in that regard last week. Intel, AMD and TSMC, for example, are stopping chip sales to Russia. Apple no longer sells products in its stores, nor in its Russian web shop. Oracle and SAP are also ceasing all operations in Russia.