SL Attorney in ICANN leadership position

Sri Lankan Attorney-at-Law Jayantha Fernando has been selected as a member of the Panel of Experts of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the global internet governing body based in California, USA.

Mr. Fernando, has been selected to serve as a member of ICANN’s Panel of Experts for the review of generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) Registry services worldwide. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the global Internet governing body, based in Marina Del Ray, California. Previously, Mr. Fernando served as the Associate Chairman of the ICANN Nominating Committee, becoming the first Sri Lankan to hold a leadership position within ICANN.

In an announcement made recently, the ICANN Board has decided that new registry contracts and proposed changes to existing registry contracts in respect of the gTLD domain name categories (i.e internet names ending with prefixes .com, .net, .org, .biz etc), would be reviewed by a Panel of Experts for potential impact on Internet security and stability issues and recommend contractual changes where necessary. This was a result of the consensus policy developed by ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO).

Mr. Fernando holds a specialized LLM in IT & Communications Law from the University of London, which he completed on a prestigious British Chevening Scholarship. He currently serves as Director/ Legal Advisor of ICT Agency of Sri Lanka and has over 10 years ICT Legal experience which spreads across the Government and the private sector (local and overseas).