Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project has sent out an alert to internet activists that the US Government’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has recently asked for public comments about its supervision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In response, the IGP has launched a call for emails to the US Government telling them your opinion of its controversial assertion of control
over the Internet’s core technical coordination functions.
While there is lots of debate among internet governance experts about how to evolve the domain name system, there is a growing consensus that US control of this essential global resource is not a sustainable plan. Indeed, the message that the IGP wants you to support is super simple, and hard to argue with:
The Internet’s value is created by the participation and cooperation
of people all over the world. The Internet is global, not national.
Therefore no single Government should have a pre-eminent role in
Internet governance.As the US reviews its contract with ICANN,
it should work cooperatively with all stakeholders to complete the
transition to a Domain Name System independent of US governmental
control.
I’m happy to sign on to that statement
. For more
information about how the U.S. controls ICANN and how it has used that
control, click here.