ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom penned his thoughts on being selected to lead the organization and his vision to support globally unified Internet.

Specifically relating to the new gTLD initiative are the following comments:

The Internet has historically thrived whenever the system is opened up further to allow users to express their creativity and innovation. We are now working on opening up the top-level domains so that not only nations but also other peoples and groups can have a unique identity on the Internet.

For example, the chief of the Zulu tribe, His Majesty King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu, recently sent a letter notifying us of his intent to register the dot-zulu domain name so that different but related businesses and other groups can be linked by their domain name to the entire Zulu community. According to His Majesty, “We believe that the .Zulu TLD, as conceived and proposed by the Dot Zulu Project Inc. represents the best interests of the Zulu community and will be able to provide a viable structure for us as an evolving community.” New York City and the city of Berlin have expressed a similar interest in their own domain names. It is impossible to imagine the possibilities that could occur when these and a multitude of other TLDs are opened.

The ICANN responsibility to support methods for securely introducing new TLDs was specified in the original White Paper that led to our formation. And our original 1998 memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Government stated one of our key responsibilities this way: “Oversight of the policy for determining the circumstances under which new top level domains would be added to the root system.” It went on to say, “The Parties will jointly design, develop, and test the mechanisms, methods, and procedures that will achieve the transition without disrupting the functional operation of the Internet.” According to Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush, “We are declaring success on these points. It’s been 11 years. We have developed and tested those mechanisms, and we find that they work.”

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