Welcome to ICANN!
Thanks for visiting! If you’re new to ICANN, we built this page for you. It contains resources that can help you quickly understand who we are and what we do.
Welcome to ICANN‘s global community supporting the vision of “one world, one Internet.” We warmly encourage your participation.
What Does ICANN Do?
Policy Update – The Policy Department invites you to receive monthly updates on ICANN policy development activities through a free online subscription to the ICANN Policy Update. To subscribe, simply visit the ICANN Subscriptions page, enter your e-mail address, and then click on the ICANN Policy Update. Issues of the Policy Update are also posted here for your information and reference.
- Policy recommendations are formed and refined by the ICANNcommunity through its Supporting Organizations (SOs) and influenced by Advisory Committees (ACs) – all comprised of volunteers from countries and territories – in a “bottom-up,” open and transparent process.
- Each Supporting Organization has its own specific process to conduct policy development. For the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) this is process is outlined in Annex A of the ICANN Bylaws, for the Country Code Supporting Organization (ccNSO) it is contained in Annex B of the ICANN Bylaws, for the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) it is laid out in the Memorandum of Understanding.
- A sample of ICANN stakeholders includes companies that offer domain names to the public (registrars), companies that operate top-level domain registries (gTLD and ccTLD registries), Internet Service Providers, intellectual property interests, business users, non-commercial users (such as academics, non-governmental organizations, non-profits and consumer advocates), individual Internet users and governments.
- For details of policy processes, please visit the respective SO/AC websites:
Policy Updates
Each monthly issue of Policy Update provides the latest status of issues working their way through the bottom-up, consensus-based policy development process within ICANN. This newsletter accommodates ICANN newcomers and veterans by providing high-level explanations of a broad range of ICANN policy development activities, detailed updates on specific issues, and links to more information.
Complex policy matters require much study; and controversial issues stimulate much discussion within ICANN‘s multi-stakeholder community. The result: not every policy topic passes a significant milestone every month. Where there are new developments to report, Policy Update runs an article. If a matter is still progressing, but has not hit a newsworthy milestone since last month’s issue of Policy Update, we provide a link to the most recent past article. This approach makes it easy for you to scan new developments, while still providing background information with one-click convenience.
Policy Update increases your access to ICANN policy information, and you can get it delivered through a free online subscription. To receive Policy Update via e-mail every month, simply visit the ICANN Subscription page, enter your e-mail address, and then select ICANN Policy Update to subscribe.
We welcome questions or comments regarding ICANN Policy Update at policy-staff@icann.org
Thank you for your interest and participation in ICANN policy development.