MARINA DEL REY, Calif., March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- On February 28th, ICANN's Board of Directors approved, by a majority vote, a set of agreements settling a long time dispute between ICANN and VeriSign, the registry operator for the .COM registry.

These settlement documents include a new registry agreement relating to the operation of the .COM registry. The new .COM registry agreement will now proceed to the U.S. Department of Commerce for final approval, and the entire settlement is dependent upon this approval before it is finalized. USDOC approval is required due to the unique history of the .COM generic top-level domain and it is the only gTLD, which requires such approval. If approved, this settlement will clear the way for a new and productive relationship between ICANN and VeriSign facilitating ICANN's stewardship and technical coordination of the Internet's domain name system.

ICANN's Board voted 9 to 5 in favor of the settlement agreements with one director abstaining. Affirmative votes were cast by the following Board Members: Vint Cert (Chairman), Alejandro Pisanty (Vice-Chairman), Mouhamet Diop, Demi Getschko, Hagen Hultzsch, Veni Markovski, Vanda Scartezini, Paul Twomey (President and CEO), and Hualin Qian. Directors who voted against the approval of the settlement documents were: Raimundo Beca, Susan Crawford, Joichi Ito, Njeri Rionge, and Peter Dengate Thrush. Director Michael Palage abstained. Statements by Board members on their votes will be posted on the ICANN website within the next two days.

In other business during the meeting, the ICANN Board approved seven separate recommendations by ICANN's ccNSO (Country-Code Name Supporting Organization) regarding improvements and clarifications to the ICANN Bylaws. One recommendation was put over for additional discussion with the ccNSO at ICANN's upcoming meeting in Wellington, New Zealand scheduled for the last week of March. These policy recommendations were presented to the ICANN Board from the first policy development process (ccPDP) conducted by the ccNSO. This successful policy development process generated from the ccTLD community was a significant milestone for ICANN's technical coordination of the Internet's domain name system.

Press conference details Date: Wednesday, March 1st Times: US - 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific Central Europe - 10pm UK - 9pm Format: Tele conference Host: Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO, ICANN Dial-in numbers: A list of dial-in numbers appears below Pass code: 8098851 NUMBERS: Country Toll Numbers Freephone/Toll Free Number AUSTRALIA 61-2-8211-1387 1-800-009-650 AUSTRIA 43-1-92-80-002 0800-677-078 BELGIUM 32-2-401-7011 0800-4-9615 CHINA* 10800-712-1187 10800-120-1187 CZECH REPUBLIC 420-2-25-98-56-00 DENMARK 8088-0233 FINLAND 358-106-33-150 0-800-1-12315 FRANCE 33-1-70-75-25-33 080-563-9646 GERMANY 49-69-2222-20596 0800-100-6507 GREECE 30-80-1-100-0624 00800-12-5989 HONG KONG 852-2286-5633 800-968-765 HUNGARY 06-800-15221 INDIA 000-800-852-1219 INDONESIA 001-803-011-3496 IRELAND 353-1-431-9673 1800-992-366 ISRAEL 1-80-9303044 ITALY 39-02-3600-0506 800-985-678 JAPAN 81-3-5539-5155 00531-12-1422 LUXEMBOURG 352-27-000-1315 MALAYSIA 1-800-80-8113 NETHERLANDS 31-20-713-3468 0800-020-3240 NEW ZEALAND 64-9-970-4642 0800-445-328 NORWAY 47-21-59-00-15 800-11798 POLAND 00-800-1210057 PORTUGAL 8008-12045 SINGAPORE 65-6883-9198 800-120-4142 SOUTH AFRICA 080-09-92395 SOUTH KOREA 82-2-6744-1053 00798-14800-6310 SPAIN 34-91-414-40-76 800-099-670 SWEDEN 46-8-506-92-117 0200-887-481 SWITZERLAND 41-44-580-4208 0800-000-662 TAIWAN 886-2-2795-7347 00801-137-559 THAILAND 001-800-1206-65078 UNITED KINGDOM 44-20-7950-0541 0800-279-3591 USA 1-210-795-0473 866-617-1522

*If you are participating from a country not listed here, you must use the USA Toll Number: +1 210 795 0473

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About ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organised, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

CONTACT: Tanzanica King of ICANN, +1-310-301-5804