It was Icann's application to continue overseeing Iana that was thrown out by the US Department of Commerce in March.

BBC: Net body Icann pledges to be more open

Part of this role involves overseeing the work of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (Iana), which does the technical work required to maintain the net's address books.

BBC: Net body Icann pledges to be more open

Icann's involvement with Iana was crucial for the body's plan to open up the net with the introduction of many more top level domains that will sit alongside .com, .org and .info.

BBC: Net body Icann pledges to be more open

Currently the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has a contract from the U.S. government to maintain the Internet infrastructure, but the U.S. government wants to hand that responsibility off to a nongovernmental body that will have international representation.

CNN: Groups protest ICANN plans

However, the formality of the power structure was thrown into stark relief when the US government under George W Bush intervened directly on the subject of .xxx domain names, and then moved responsibility for certain naming from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (Iana) to Icann.

BBC: Technology

In addition, if the newest ICANN bylaw proposal goes through as is, individual countries will be left to deal completely with their own TLD administration process, instead of being part of the global domain-name process that many hoped would come from the dissolution of IANA and the creation of ICANN, IATLD said in its statement.

CNN: Groups protest ICANN plans