Excerpt:

By "root zone file," Novack was referring to the nonprofit’s coordination of the domain name system, meaning a text file of the top-level domains that form part of web addresses. Contrary to Novack's characterization, though, the root zone file is not the "master address book" of the Internet, Milton Mueller, a professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy and author of a book on ICANN’s creation, cautioned when we asked. Rather, Mueller said by email, the root zone file "is just a list of top level domain names (like .COM, .ORG or .EDU)." Mueller presents a longer description in this September 2015 blog post.

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