ICANN might finally become independent (of the US Commerce Department).
Yeah right. How many times have we heard this lame old story? And to be honest with you, I don’t think that the Americans have done bad by the rest of the world BY controlling ICANN. The Internet and domain name system (which is what ICANN controls) seems to have progressed smoothly then all this nonsense about who controls what comes into play. Why ruin a bad thing?
From that MSNBC article:
U.S. control of ICANN had become a sticking point for countries such as Iran and Brazil, which argued it should be managed by the United Nations or another global body.
The United States argued that such a body would stifle innovation with red tape.
And I completely agree with that argument. Look at how badly the UN has managed say, Rwanda, or hmm, Sudan (Darfur). Not very bloody well I’d say.
There’s a good article on this at Searchviews, which points out some details on the agreement the Commerce Department made with ICANN. Note that they point out The Register‘s discussion on some loopholes in that agreement…
The EU of course, welcomes any autonomy ICANN might have from the iron-like grip of the US Government, but again, honestly, I don’t think they’ve had much to complain about in the last decade or so with regards to domain name management. Have they?
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