By Aaron Eitan Meyer

Lawfare, the abuse of the law and legal system to achieve strategic political and military goals, has taken many forms in the decade since Major General Charles Dunlap first defined the term as "the use of law as a weapon of war." On May 19, 2009, my colleague Brooke Goldstein and I warned "the next phase of Islamist lawfare may well center directly upon the internet itself." Our concern lay in the expiration of a contract between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the U.S. Commerce Department, which had been in place since November 25, 1998.

ICANN was established as a non-profit corporation based in California in 1998, and is the entity responsible for assigning domain names on the Internet. ICANNworks "in particular to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems." As part of this mission, ICANN approves Domain Name Registrars, which are organizations that register specific domain names, and assigns IP addresses, the numerical codes by which computers actually connect to each other via the Internet.

Read the full text at The American Spectator.