BIPT represents Belgium in the Governmental Advisory Committee (
GAC) within the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (
ICANN). The GAC numbers some 100 member countries. As the Internet is becoming more and more important for the Belgian economy it is logical for the Government to be involved in the way the Internet is organised and used. The domain name system is the infrastructure underlying the functioning of the entire Internet and therefore it has major implications for the government policy. As such domain names are the equivalent of telephone numbers in the Internet world.
The GAC advises ICANN in those areas where there is interaction between ICANN's policy objectives and national and international legislation and regulation. Examples are setting out the policy rules for selecting new top-level domain names and regarding the ‘multilingual domain names (IDN)’, the WHOIS, principles regarding the efficient management and administration of the national ccTLDs (including the various roles of the national authorities), the internationalisation of the top-level root servers and associated zone files and the policy concerning IP addresses.