3.8 Financial support for ICANN

(JPNIC Secretariat)

JPNIC donated US$25,000 to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in July 1999.

ICANN is a non-profit corporation founded in the fall of 1998 as an organization to help coordinate management of domain names and IP addresses on a global level and assist in steady improvement of the Internet. Although ICANN is registered in the United States, it is operating under the policy of private sector initiative operation of the Internet, without direct support from the United States Government.

At present, ICANN is intensively discussing how democratically Internet resources should be managed. There is participation with ICANN from all around the world, reflecting the global characteristics of the Internet. JPNIC has sent its Trustees, members of Working Groups, and Secretariat to participate in ICANN. JPNIC agrees with the goal of ICANN, which is to provide stable operation of the Internet with private sector initiative, and wishes to work in line with this purpose in coordination with ICANN.

Currently, however, ICANN's financial situation is somewhat problematic. This predicament is due to the basic operating policy of ICANN, which has depended solely on voluntary private contributors since its foundation. Although the U.S. Government made an offer of financial assistance as a remedial measure for the crisis, ICANN declined this offer because of its private sector initiated operating policy.

With high regard for ICANN's decision, JPNIC has decided to offer financial assistance to ICANN, thereby allowing the current trend of private sector ititiated Internet operation to be maintained, and stability in the management of domain names, IP addresses, and route servers to be sustained. If ICANN ceased to exist, management of those resources would become unstable and would have a major impact on the entire Internet.

With this in mind, JPNIC provided financial assistance for the sustenance and healthy growth of ICANN. We would appreciate your understanding of this decision, and of our activities connected with financial assistance to ICANN. extended by all concerned about this assistance will be deeply appreciated.

ICANN will continue to solicit financial assistance to provide for its initial operating costs until a formal funding system has been established. Please see the following URL for information about financial assistance, destination of assistance, and ICANN contact information:

http://www.icann.org/contributions.htm

Details of fund transfer follow. In either case, the destination address is directly consigned to ICANN.

* For donation with check, please send it to:

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292 USA

or

* For wire transfer, please specify the following ICANN bank account:

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
c/o Bank of America Branch 09141 D Account 04900
Routing Indicator 121000358
4754 Admiralty Way, Marina del Rey CA 90292 USA
Telephone + 1-310-247-2080

* In case of bank transfer, please send notification of transfer to the following e-mail address:

contributions@icann.org

The following have been the results of recent ICANN activities. It is hoped that these achievements will be helpful in your decision to offer of assistance to ICANN.

• completion of ICANN organizational arrangements, such as the seating of the permanent members of the Board of Directors and recruiting of a permanent President and Chief Executive Officer.
• completion of contractual arrangements with registry-administrators
• continuing accreditation of registrars for the .com, .net and .org domains
• study, recommendations, public comment and implementation of policy decisions concerning domain names, trademarks and related provisions of the WIPO study
• study, recommendations, public comment and implementation of policy decisions concerning expansion of the Top Level Domain (TLD) name space
• study, recommendations, public comment and implementation of updated arrangements for Internet root servers.
• review and adoption, after public comment and possible revision, of recommendations received from ICANN Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees