Although the majority of the worldwide web believes that it operates on its own and that the whole system functions on the basis of self-regulation, the truth is different. The Internet is being managed. Truth be told, differently that it is the case with political or administrative systems: institutions that are concerning the Internet exist and operate internationally, and at least theoretically, beyond politics.
The most important international organization whose role is to make the internet function by the rules is ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
According to the definition by the World summit of information society – managing the Internet represents developing and applying principles, regulations and acts for decision making and programs which constitute the internet, operated by state systems, civil society intergovernmental and internet organizations.
Managing the Internet is a complex multidisciplinary field that involves many different aspects, such as infrastructure, standards (such as DNS), matters of intellectual property, cyber-space crimes, court duties as well as matters of law, in general, economic questions, equal world-wide internet development, and many other important topics, such as privacy rights, personal data privacy, education and human rights.
One of the most important aspects of managing the Internet is organizing the system of internet addresses. Internet address can be stated by numbers (the internet protocol or IP address), but they can also be stated using letters and numbers, most often with specific meaning. Using the IP addresses, the devices communicate within the network, and given that the numeric marks are hard to remember and identify by the internet users, a translating system has been put in place. The role of this system is simplifying the network use and communication by assigning real-life meaning to the IP addresses. System that allows the translation of numeric to textual marks and vice-versa is called DNS. On the other hand, DNS server is a device that enables requested services on a certain internet domain receive appropriate IP addresses, needed for communication and network data exchange.
So, the internet addresses in everyday use are expressed in the form of internet domain name and represent the textual mark registered by the user – registered for his own use with the purpose of network visibility and are compliant with certain administrative and technical requirements. Upon registration, the name of the internet domain is placed in the Central database – The Central Registry, governed by the Internet Domain Registry. The internet domain names are mostly consisted of the English alphabet (ASCII code), but with further IDN standard (Internationalized domain name) development, the possibilities have expanded so that the internet domain names can be constituted from different world languages and scriptures. The names are also constituted out of dots, dashes, Arab numbers, and their total length can’t be longer than 63 or shorter than 2 characters.
Internet domain name has its own classification. The most important is certainly the part called – the first level Internet domain or top level domain (TLD), and it is located on the far right of the name. These are extensions like .com, .net, but also .rs or .mne. The second-level domain (SLD) is the part of the expression next to the top-level domain, which is actually the subject of users registration. This is, for example, a google extension, in the term google.com. There is also the third-level domain that builds on the second-level domain.
Further, first-level domains can be generic gTLDs such as .com, .info, .net and so on. But they can also be national (country code – ccTLD), such as our .rs internet domain. The second level national domain – ccSLD, such as co.rs, is also worth mentioning.
Generic Internet domains are managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – ICANN, which also maintains a central registry of these domains, while the national Internet domains are managed by authorized registers supervised by ICANN, such as RNIDS (Serbian National Internet Domain Register) in the Republic of Serbia.
When it comes to the relationship between internet domains and intellectual property rights, the most important is the second-level Internet domain, that is, the name of the internet domain, because of the fact that its registration causes the greatest number of violations of the rights of others, i.e. litigation in practice. Such disputes can be resolved before a competent court, although they are also characterized by arbitral dispute resolution, where the participants exercise their rights much more quickly and efficiently. The arbitration panel ruling on the .rs internet domain is the responsibility of the Domain Dispute Resolution Commission, which is located with the Serbian Chamber of Commerce.