COOL! Dept. of Commerce grows some stones...
From
Ars Technica:
US to ICANN and UN: UCANT
On Thursday, Michael Gallagher, an Assistant Secretary of Commerce announced a stunning change in US policy regarding the Internet.
In four short paragraphs, the US has declared it will retain "its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file." The "root zone file," or Domain Name System (DNS), is composed of 13 computers containing the master lists of net suffixes, and is currently managed by private companies under the supervision of the US government. At the same time, the new policy also makes it clear that US will not interfere with country suffixes (ccTLD), as "governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to the management of their ccTLD." Finally, the principles state that while the US will maintain ultimate DNS control, the technical, or day to day, operations can continue to be run by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Of course until yesterday, it had been assumed that ICANN would eventually take over ultimate control of the DNS.
The article then goes on to trenchantly comment on why the US Department of Commerce made this decision:
ICANN was created in 1998, largely at the behest of the US government. The idea then was to foster competition in the domain registration business under ICANN guidance, resulting in a flowering of personal and commercial expression. It worked big time, as there are now more inane and useless websites than anyone back in the 20th century could have dreamed possible. ICANN also began with high hopes (or naive fantasies) regarding a democratization of the web. The board of directors was to include actual Internet users voted on by people who never leave their computers, as well as representatives from countries where most people had never even seen a computer. This failed big time, as ICANN quickly transformed itself into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy with an exploding budget and seeming disdain for the people actually using the Internet. Since then there has been talk of the United Nations becoming involved in some capacity, most likely through the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In fact, world leaders will be gathering in Tunisia shortly to complain bitterly about the recent US decision and attend expensive banquets.
This is so true... Once again, this will not affect people who want to set up alternative Top Level Domains. This will only affect those people who want to take over the administration of the .COM, .ORG, .GOV and .NET domains.
As the personal owner of several of these (all registered with US Based ALT registrars), I want the DNS servers managed by US companies who bid competitively for the job. Watching the slow trainwreck that ICANN has become does not give me confidence in them for anything but planning meetings in very nice places...
Posted by DaveH at July 1, 2005 11:36 PM