'Control' of the Internet?

As we’ve said before, we believe the Internet is perhaps the greatest vehicle for disseminating the ideas of Liberty ever made available to mankind. Perhaps we’re biased, being an Internet publication, but we don’t think we’re overstating things. That’s why Internet governance and regulation is so critical. Indeed, that’s why conservatives view with alarm any headlines about the U.S. “relinquishing control” of the Internet. No conservative wants to trust other nations — or the UN — to control something so fundamental, and any time Barack Obama is part of the discussion, it’s bound to be a bad idea.

But what’s really happening?

A Los Angeles-based private nonprofit group called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is a U.S.-government-chartered nonprofit corporation established in 1998, and it manages the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). DNS is what causes typing “patriotpost.us” into your browser to bring up our website.

ICANN has been moving toward a “multi-stakeholder community” since its founding in 1998 — it was never intended to stay under U.S. government oversight forever. The Obama administration has now officially backed the plan after signaling for two years that it would. George W. Bush’s administration worked toward the same goal. But congressional Republicans want to know how it serves U.S. interests to cede “control,” or whether control could be regained once given away. Several in Congress are working to stop this transition.

Maintaining a free and open Internet is important, but Russia and China already don’t need to have any say in regards to ICANN in order to create Great Firewalls and digital Iron Curtains. The Internet cannot be centrally controlled — that’s the point. The question is whether it will remain generally free and open if ICANN isn’t under U.S. government oversight. There are reasons to think it will, and reasons it might not. Internet inventors like Vinton Cerf still think the Internet is too centralized, and he, for one, thinks this ICANN move is a good one.