The BBC is reporting that the US government will relinquish some (not all) of its control over how the Internet is run. Currently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the not-for-profit organization responsible for the top-level domain name system (among other things). They make decisions related to domains like .com, .ca, .uk, etc. ICANN was established in 1998 and has been under the oversight of the US Commerce department ever since.
Even though the Internet is essentially an American invention developed with government funding (through the Department of Defense), it has grown to the point where more nations want some say in how it’s run. While the US won’t back out completely (which makes complete sense to me), they are allowing other panels and committees to review ICANN’s work.
In other words, instead of having just one country looking after ICANN, we’ll have multiple committees, panels and representatives – I’m not sure if this is good or bad.
Read more on the story from the BBC.
