The domino effect

This fight over ICANN the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is all about a golden key - a name on the Net called a URL. It's all about the master design of a sophisticated key management system so that billions of single domain name identities can offer access to billions of sites without any problem.

It's this portion of the magic of the Internet that is now being challenged. It's also ICANN, the organization that from the start has made some very stringent and often very weird policies about such issues as the golden keys. Now its global authority is being challenged and such fights could divide the power of this controlling body and any adverse outcome will simply split the Internet.

Upcoming Clashes
Many countries around the world have questioned how domain name management policies have been handled by ICANN. That has now set the stage for these upcoming clashes.

The UN is the self-appointed referee. It seems a fair match. In the ring, on this side is solo ICANN, representing the founding fathers' point of view, that of the US. On the other side is a large group of nations, almost the rest of the world.

The emerging new players are questioning the evolution of the Internet and the originating founders' ideas are being cornered. In hindsight, the founders also made big global domain management policy blunders.

Unfortunately, the UN cannot solve the issue, although it can play a great catalyst role. The result might be a global body under the UN and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Choosing five original suffixes as a quick and a simple napkin solution was the biggest mistake. The Global Charter of Corporate Nomenclature and the Rules of Global Domain Name Management were never applied. It was a shortsighted academic plan based on a quick registration revenue generation scheme.

Change Almost Unavoidable
The fight is also about common sense based on post-millennium realities, as now the sheer volume of e-commerce is so big, complex, fast and cruel that this overly secretive ICANN with its mysterious charter of operation now is not able to hold this unstoppable break-up movement. Like revolutions in so many sectors of so many industries, this change is almost unavoidable.

Multilingualization?
For now, English is the big mama of the business language on the global scene, but on the spoken side, Chinese is the big papa. In a few years, as every second person in China gets a business portal, they will become dominating e-commerce players dwarfing the West.

China would need its own independent control of how it will play the access game, decide on local languages, suffixes and come up with its own registration and trademark dispute policies then rather wait for annual memos from ICANN.

Many countries have long wanted their own language for the Internet and their own internal systems, while the creation of foreign language suffixes has been a sore point with ICANN. True, there have been some very technical limitations. Internet is no longer an advance science project rather it's a global engine for the world's e-commerce, which incidentally is driven by brand name accesses and marketing rather than some electronic beauracracy .

Just like the telephony privatization process and the introduction of various splits, there would be dozens of different types of internets, each addressing its own marketing and communication goals. The duplication and multiplication would make usage extremely complex.

The Future of the Internet
There are some 247 countries with their assigned Top Level Domains (TLD), each with their own specific requirements and desired goals and an agenda. All it will take is one country to start the domino effect. China has already threatened.

First, there will be a mega shift in the access mechanism, the complete re-thinking of search engine methodologies and optimization. Second, there will be a 10-fold jump in the number of Web sites on different types of internets. Last, there will be a major overhaul of the current domain name system and suffixes, starting a series of races for new suffixes by various big countries.

The globalization of universal corporate image, name identities and cyber branding will become ultra-sophisticated, and consumers all over the world will interact far more with other languages and ethno cultural issues than just plain English. This will be an extraordinary time for the global branding on e-commerce. Website and domain name management with search engine optimization will get a brand new meaning. The impact on global communication and domain name management would be awesome. It's about time for all organizations big and small to better prepare themselves for these upcoming issues.