US to give up control of the Internet
In a historic moment, the US had agreed to hand over control of Net by releasing its stranglehold of the technical co-ordination and management of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS).
The announcement came last night at a meeting of Internet governance experts in Washington, and sees the US government return to its original stance over the Net, undoing some of the confusion caused by the announcement of a series of “principles” released by the Bush administration last year.
However there remains some debate over how and when the US government should relinquish control of the private, non-profit overseeing organization ICANN that is in effective charge of the DNS. Those in favor of completing a transition which began in 1998, said the political price of having the US involved in DNS management has become too high and holds back the international development of the Internet.
ICANN recently was a hotbed of controversy over the proposed .xxx domain with the US putting significant pressure on ICANN to deny that extension. The US commerce department, who has final approval on everything ICANN does, threatened to reject the .xxx domain if ICANN didn’t, allowing the US to flex it muscle when approving all TLD extensions.
With the privatization of ICANN, the US no longer will have veto power over any actions that ICANN takes which will be a major step to help foster the growth of the internet in a healthy manner.
Or maybe not? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060727-7366.html
The US “stranglehold”?
How will releasing control of the internet to a body of international bearuacrats “help foster the growth of the internet in a healthy manner”?
The American government invented the internet in the mid-twentieth century. We had a “stranglehold” over it because we created it and pushed it along to what it’s become. With everything the internet has done for the world and the global economy, you think we’ve not fostered its growth in a healthy manner? Why? Merely because we preferred NOT establishing a portion of the internet as a legitimate sector for pornography? Please.
The only thing that worries me about this move is that currently the web is like the wild west and anyone can have a presence. Anyone who wants to Blog or put out information can do it. If its controlled by governments maybe they will have decision power on who gets a website. If they declare your website having terrorist ties because you speak out this move is scary…
I see the web as the last place for real news out there. If they take this away we are screwed. You can’t trust CCN, FOX or any media provider to tell you about what’s going on. Britney Spears is more important than world events to them. They also hate this form of “new mediaâ€Â? because it has put such a dent into their market. These media giants hopefully will not have influence on our government…
Well the internet IS a series of tubes…
[...] The speculation two weeks ago about ICANN being released from US control apparently was wrong. ICANN’s contract with the US Commerce department has been renewed for the next five years. Well technically, the agreement lasts for one year, and the government has the option of renewing it each year for up to four additional years. [...]