DrewWilson
June 13th, 2009, 02:20 AM
Warnings about a possible split of the single root zone underlying the global internet have been made by internet governance experts outside the United States following a hearing of the US congressional Subcommittee on Communication Technologies and the Internet on the future of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the internet’s technical oversight body. If the US administration extends the joint project agreement it has with ICANN this year, it might well result in “the emergence of alternative naming and numbering systems” and a further push for the “establishment of intergovernmental internet governance bodies,” warned internet governance expert Wolfgang Kleinwaechter.
Not only is a French project already promoting “Competitive Governance Arrangements for Namespace Services,” but also some future applicants for new generic top-level domains are considering testing their potential zones based on routing via local internet service providers, according to sources.
ICANN’s departing CEO and President Paul Twomey was questioned hard at the 4 June congressional meeting about ICANN’s effectiveness in fighting fraud in the internet domain name system (DNS) and the high budget surplus of the nonprofit organisation. Twomey has appealed to Congress to send a signal of confidence in private-sector-led DNS management by letting expire the US-ICANN joint project agreement and continuing to exercise its oversight function through the joint agreement on the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function, which is key to changes in the internet structure.
ICANN was created in 1998 under an agreement with the US Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Administration that ICANN would gradually become fully independent. The next deadline for ending the agreement and setting ICANN free is later this year. Support for expiration of the joint project agreement (JPA) also came from highly respected internet pioneer Vint Cerf and the Internet Society. Answers to the US government notice of inquiry about the transition are not yet completely posted, as some European governments had filed individual comments, according to one government source.
More... (http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/06/10/heated-debates-over-us-free-internet/)
I could have sworn I heard talks like this a year or two ago. This "tearing apart the internet" talk is back again?
Not only is a French project already promoting “Competitive Governance Arrangements for Namespace Services,” but also some future applicants for new generic top-level domains are considering testing their potential zones based on routing via local internet service providers, according to sources.
ICANN’s departing CEO and President Paul Twomey was questioned hard at the 4 June congressional meeting about ICANN’s effectiveness in fighting fraud in the internet domain name system (DNS) and the high budget surplus of the nonprofit organisation. Twomey has appealed to Congress to send a signal of confidence in private-sector-led DNS management by letting expire the US-ICANN joint project agreement and continuing to exercise its oversight function through the joint agreement on the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function, which is key to changes in the internet structure.
ICANN was created in 1998 under an agreement with the US Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Administration that ICANN would gradually become fully independent. The next deadline for ending the agreement and setting ICANN free is later this year. Support for expiration of the joint project agreement (JPA) also came from highly respected internet pioneer Vint Cerf and the Internet Society. Answers to the US government notice of inquiry about the transition are not yet completely posted, as some European governments had filed individual comments, according to one government source.
More... (http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/06/10/heated-debates-over-us-free-internet/)
I could have sworn I heard talks like this a year or two ago. This "tearing apart the internet" talk is back again?