Tag Archives: Icann
Internet Control
Al Gore invented the internet and Barack Obama is giving it away.
Who Controls the Internet
Brendan Greeley in Bloomberg Businessweek explains how it works. The system that assigns names to web servers, the Internet domain name system (DNS), is run by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann). Icann is under the control of the U.S. Commerce Department. The government announced in a news dump last Friday it’s giving up that control.
Countries like China and Russia want that power to go the U.N. Then they would have influence over which websites get domain names. Without a domain name you’re nobody. As Greeley puts it:
It’s a bad sign that the U.S. has chosen to give up this power. It means that the administration doesn’t feel that it can get away with holding onto it, diplomatically, which means that on this issue, we no longer enjoy the support of countries such as Germany. Perhaps it was that time we tapped Angela Merkel’s cell phone.
