The Council of Europe (CoE) released a declaration Wednesday calling on member states to ensure that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages internet domain names, to strengthen its measures against rights abuses.

The declaration calls on the 47 participating countries of the CoE to use their participation in ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) to help put in place "mechanisms to identify, prevent and mitigate possible breaches to human rights in its work, notably the rights to freedom of expression and privacy."

The CoE Council of Ministers underlined in its declaration that, "The internet is a global resource which has public service value and should be managed in the public interest."

In this case, public access to top level domain names (TLDs) such as .com and .org has been extended to almost 1,000 different addresses, including recently .movie and .bank in 2015.

The pressure on ICANN from the CoE arrives as debate heats up surrounding the pending approval certain controversial domain names including '.gay'. According to the ICANN website, 720 new addresses are pending as of May 29.

The CoE worries that some names can lead to abuses of individual rights:

"Some decisions taken by ICANN to accept controversial domain names, such as '.xxx' or '.sucks', had relevant implications for freedom of expression and access to information," the CoE Communications Division announced in a press release.

The declaration asserts that ICANN should take into account international law in order to protect the rights of individuals while pursuing the economic interests of involved parties.

On the issue of privacy this relates to the WHOIS online database which makes publicly available personal information about the owner of a domain and can be held by domain registrars for as much as two years after the expiration of a contract. Endit

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