The United States Government has said it has no intention of giving up its oversight role of the authoritative root zone file, the file that stores the database of how domain names are reached on the internet.

The notification comes in a letter from the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that says the NTIA is “not in discussions with either party to change the respective roles of the Department, ICANN or VeriSign regarding the management of the authoritative root zone file, nor do we have any plans to undertake such discussions.” So as the NTIA says, it “has no plans to transition management of the authoritative root zone file to ICANN as suggested in the PSC documents.”

The letter describes the relationship between the NTIA and ICANN as “defined by two distinct legal arrangements: A Joint Project Agreement (JPA), which is a continuation of a series of agreements between the Department and ICANN to facilitate the transition of the technical coordination of the management functions related to the Internet domain name and addressing system (DNS) to the private sector; and a contract to perform the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions. Both agreements are administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on behalf of the Department.”

The change is nothing other than what was expected, but it will not be something that is overly pleasing countries such as Brazil and China who have been agitating for a more international body to take over the role of ICANN, originally possibly under the auspices of a United Nations body.

To read a more detailed posting on the letter on IP Watch, see ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1185. The letter from the NTIA to ICANN is available from www.ntia.doc.gov/comments/2008/ICANN_080730.html.