ICANN Take Up The Reins Of The Web

[GhostShip]

At last we are seeing movement on moving control of the web from US hands over to an independent org , this is after all something that was promised some years back.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5388648.stm

The US government says it will maintain oversight of the internet but with far less hands-on involvement.
Icann, the body which oversees the future of the net on behalf of the US, has been given more independence in a new agreement for the next three years.

Dr Paul Twomey, ceo of Icann, said the deal was "a major step forward for Icann autonomy".
The US government has pledged to cede control of the net to private sector hands at an unspecified future point.
The US government has stated its policy of wanting the management of DNS to be in the hands of the private sector and that Icann is the organisation charged with managing it."

Some good news for the countries that raised this matter in protest it seems.

[KM]

they've been making those pledges for how long?

believe it when i see it...

however as for the internet being out of the US governments hands, it already is - technically ICANN say who controls which zone in the DNS system and who controls which IP Address allocations and ASN allocations and that is it, ICANN actually do nothing but say who does what, and what they say only gets done because ISPs agree with it. if ICANN tried to say "right no more regional IP Address allocations, only we are giving out IP Addresses from now on" then ISPs would ignore them and continue to use IP Addresses given out by regional registries for example... ICANN have no power to change things, all they can do is say "we want this to happen" then ISPs can chose to do it or not