United States to Give Up Its Control of the Internet Written ... We thank the U.S. government for its ... morphing from “protecting” intellectual property to ...
Tuesday, 18 March 2014
United States to Give Up Its Control of the Internet
Written by
Bob Adelmann
Last Friday the Department of Commerce
announced
that in October 2015 it will relinquish all remaining control over the
“root” of the Internet to an obscure but vital private non-profit
organization. That group, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN), promises to create a new structure that will keep
the Internet private, safe, and robust. Many freedom-loving people and
organizations are concerned that ICANN will now fall under the
governance of the UN and the totalitarian regimes that make up the bulk
of its membership.
From the start of the Internet, informally considered to be in 1994, a
computer genius named Jon Postel managed the Internet from his office
in California, under the name Internet Assigned Names Authority (IANA).
When Postel died suddenly in 1998 at age 55, his responsibilities were
transferred to ICANN under the control of the Department of Commerce
(DoC). Although the relationship between the DoC was constitutionally
questionable, violating various constitutional boundaries and safeguards
(
according to Michael Froomkin, a
University of Miami Law School professor), the DoC largely kept its
hands off the new entity, allowing it to grow and change and respond to
the explosion of the Internet over the next 15 years.
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