ICANN's cosy relationship with the US must end, says EU

[Recursion]

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2014/021214-icann39s-cosy-relationship-with-the-278685.html

The exclusive relationship of ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) with the U.S. must end, said the European Union's digital agenda chief on Wednesday.

California-based ICANN is responsible for the assignment of top-level domains and has a long-standing operating agreement with the U.S. However, following the revelations by Edward Snowden of widespread surveillance of the Internet by the National Security Agency, many countries have questioned the arrangement.

The historical relationship, noted in ICANN's Affirmation of Commitments, is outdated and the governance of the Internet must become more global, said the E.U. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

Kroes was presenting the European Commission's new policy on Internet governance, which rejects any United Nations or governmental takeover of Internet governance and calls for a move to globalize ICANN.

I'm not sure what a non-UN-affiliated global governance structure would look like...

[ManiacJoe]

1. OK, I will ask the obvious question.

What is the problem(s) with the current setup?

Is the complaint that the creation and handling of top-level domains takes too long?

[Recursion]

2. Takes too long and is to US-centric

There were early complaints about issues around the creation of the .ps TLD for the Palestinian authority, for instance, as well as about the way .tp was created for East Timor (and a few others I can't remember of the top of my head). I think the overall complaint is that at least notionally the US does retain full authority over the root system (in fairness, we built the damn thing...)