NEW DELHI, INDIA: Individual Internet users from Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands have direct input into the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a fact recognized today with the ceremonial signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between ICANN and the Internet user groups who participate in the Asia-Pacific Regional At-Large Organization (APRALO).
The APRALO conducted its first General Assembly as a part of ICANN's 31st International Public Meeting in New Delhi. They discussed issues that will affect Internet users throughout the region and the world. The Internet user groups who are a part of APRALO are incredibly diverse, and include users from India, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates.
"Today's ceremony recognizes the ICANN community's success in creating a formal, global structure to help ensure ideas and feedback from individual Internet users around the world is heard in our policy processes," said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN's President and CEO. "ICANN's work to introduce a process for applying for new top level domains – the part after the dot – especially those using the more than 100,000 characters from the languages of the world which do not use the Latin character set – will benefit from formal inputs through the Regional At-large Organizations worldwide. The Asia-Pacific RALO is a key contributor to this process."
There are now more than 100 user groups taking part in ICANN's five Regional At-large Organizations, or RALOs, from the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and Africa. APRALO was created on 30 March 2007 and has been informing the region's individual Internet users about ICANN activities and providing advice to ICANN on their behalf for nearly a year.
The RALOs have direct input to ICANN, especially through the international At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), which represents Internet users in ICANN and whose members are chosen largely by the RALOs.
"ICANN's ongoing coordination of the domain name system, and its policy work, has a large impact on the Internet and the more than one billion people around the world who use it – and the billions more who should be able to use it," said Cheryl Langdon-Orr, ALAC Chair. "By bringing together Internet users from across the globe, the RALOs are at the heart of ensuring that users have a say on what's happening at ICANN."
More information on the participation of individual Internet users in ICANN is available at http://alac.icann.org/
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About ICANN:
ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers like domain names (like .org, .museum and country codes like .uk) and the addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols that help computers reach each other over the Internet. Careful management of these resources is vital to the Internet's operation, so ICANN's global stakeholders meet regularly to develop policies that ensure the Internet's ongoing security and stability. ICANN is an internationally organized, public benefit non-profit company. For more information please visit: www.icann.org .
Media Contacts:
Jason Keenan
Media Adviser, ICANN
Ph: +1 310 382 4004
E: jason.keenan@icann.org
International: Andrew Robertson
Edelman (London)
Ph: +44 7921 588 770
E: andrew.robertson@edelman.com