Who controls the Internet?

• No single entity controls the network.
• The controversy over who controls the Internet has simmered in insular technology-policy circles for years and more recently has crept into formal diplomatic talks.
• Many governments feel that, like the phone network, the Internet should be administered under a multilateral treaty.
• The users of the system determine the policies of acceptable use and enforce what few rules exist.
• Acceptable use is determined by convention decisions, not by regulation.
• This consensus decision-making has evolved into a net culture, which dictates how users should act and communicate with others.
• ICANN (the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers), in their view, is an instrument of American hegemony over cyberspace: its private-sector approach favors the United States, Washington retains oversight authority, and its Governmental Advisory Committee, composed of delegates from other nations, has no real powers.
• But what is ICANN, what does it do and how will it affect you?
• ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – calls itself a small, non-profit organisation.
• But ICANN wields immense influence over the Internet today and tomorrow, both technically and politically.
• So it is said that ICANN is the strong arm of the Internet?
• The California nonprofit ICANN has directed traffic on the Web since 1998.
• ICANN oversees the Domain Name System, the database that makes it possible for you to surf to Slate by typing http://www.slate.com rather than a string of hard-to-remember numbers.
• It also ensures that each address is unique by managing “top-level domain names”—the dot-suffixes like .biz, .com, and .edu, as well as country codes like China’s .cn and Australia’s .au.

Ø ICANN hasn’t been doing a bad job.

Ø For one thing, there have been no major outages in its seven years as cyber traffic cop.

ØNevertheless, in the months leading up to the summit, a group of countries (most notably Brazil, Cuba, Iran, and Zimbabwe) pressed the United Nations to assume ICANN’s functions, while members of the European Union clamored to dilute American control.

ØICANN stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a non-profit organization based in California – they control the system and write the rules for domain names and IP addresses that everybody has to live by on the web – think of them as a kind of Postmaster for the web.

ØFor the last 13 years, ICANN has been officially affiliated with the US Department of Commerce but they recently announced their intention to break away from the US Government.  

ØNumerous international bodies, such as the UN and the European Union, have been saying for years that this is unfair and that the web needs to be controlled by a more global set of stakeholders.  

ØAfter years of pressure, the Department of Commerce is losing its grip, as ICANN outlined in its new Affirmation of Commitments.