e-Meddling
October 22, 2005
International bureaucrats and assorted countries are struggling to wrest control of “Internet governance” from that old unilateralist bogeyman, the United States. There’s one big problem with this picture: Cyberspace isn’t “governed” by the U.S. or anyone else, and that’s the beauty of it. But if the United Nations gets its way in the coming month, the Web will end up under its control. Uh-oh is about right.
Internet governance, such as it is, currently falls under the purview of a California-based nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Better known as Icann, it was created by the U.S. Commerce Department in 1998 to administer the “root zone file,” the master list of all Web addresses world-wide, which the U.S. has kept since the creation of the Internet in the 1970s. Ensuring that any given Web address, or domain name, is assigned to only one Web site is a key reason why the Internet has become such a powerful tool.
This one bears watching, given the politician’s propensity to fix things that ain’t broke. Even this old fogey can see that the incredible usefulness of the Internet is primarily due to the lack of regulation. Let the Chinese do what they will; let us keep our meddling political fingers out of the Internet pie.
Dave, Internat fan to the core.
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