The Obama administration is getting behind a plan that would have the U.S. government relinquish its last bit of control over the Internet – a move Republican lawmakers are fighting tooth-and-nail.
(FOX)- The transfer was set in motion two years ago when a Commerce Department agency said it would cede oversight over an obscure, but powerful, Los Angeles-based nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
The agency, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration,announced Thursday that the game plan they got back from ICANN – which would hand over the reins to a “multi-stakeholder” group, and not a single government – is now in line with what they want.
“The Internet’s multistakeholder community has risen to the challenge we gave them to develop a transition proposal that would ensure the Internet’s domain name system will continue to operate as seamlessly as it currently does,” NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling said in a statement. AFP first reported on the decision.
ICANN manages some of the most important elements of the Internet, including the domain name system and IP addressing. Domains include those tiny suffixes at the end of Internet addresses, like .com and .org; Internet Protocol addresses are the numerical sequences assigned to devices in a network.
Foreign governments had complained about the U.S. oversight, maintained through contracts with ICANN.