U.S. cedes control of key Internet body

[struggle4progress]

By Associated Press
March 14, 2014 9:38 p.m.

San Francisco — The U.S. government is relinquishing its control of the Internet's address system in a shift that may raise questions about the future direction of online innovation and communications.

The decision announced Friday begins a long-planned transition affecting the stewardship of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. That's a not-for-profit agency launched in 1998 by the Commerce Department to govern the system that assigns website addresses and directs Internet traffic.

The department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA, hopes to end its oversight of ICANN's Internet Assigned Numbers Authority by the time its contract expires in September 2015. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority administers the technology that keeps computers connected to the web and steers Internet traffic.

Proposals for a new ICANN stewardship will be accepted beginning next week at a conference in Singapore ...

http://www.jsonline.com/news/usandworld/us-cedes-control-of-key-internet-body-b99225990z1-250422481.html

[functioning_cog]

1. WTF? Not liking this.

[misterhighwasted]

2. Sets up Privatization perhaps

by a global invested group who answers to no one but their own bylaws.
Maybe?

[2naSalit]

3. enter

Rupert Murdock...

[misterhighwasted]

4. A shuddering thought

Murdock in control of all the communication on the planet.
I see a handful of gazillionaires in a race to own the most toys

[2naSalit]

7. Very likely

However, I do recall several years back hearing a news something or other regarding Murdock's intent to control the media world-wide. He's made serious gains in that direction so far. At that time, of the reporting I heard, he was enlisting his son(s) in cornering the markets of China and Europe.

And we have sNewt Gingrich to thanks for helping him gain a foothold in the media markets (now one market or so it appears) here in the good ol' US of A. It was all part of that $4mil deal he got for the book he never wrote in 1993/1994... the part where Murdock was in trouble with Congress and sNewt fixed that for him when he became Speaker of the House.

But I digress.

You may very well be correct sine there are a few more interested parties on the scene these days.

[octoberlib]

5. Kick &Rec

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Good. Way past time.

Now ICANN or its successor needs to turn over control of the .com TLD from Verisign to an international body. Since that means this sort of thing will stop happening: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/

[2naSalit]

8. Oh my!

Interesting point there.