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Giving Up
Control of The Internet |
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On March 14, 2014 the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA) announced its intent to transition key Internet
domain name functions to the global multistakeholder
community.
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Currently NTIA contracts with the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Verisign to manage
the database containing the list of names and addresses of
all top-level domains.
IN other words they manag ethe Domain Name System
(DNS). This
contract is currently schedule to run out September 30,
2015.
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ICANN is a non-profit organization based in California.
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High level domain names includes .com, .net, .org, .biz,
etc. Without
buying a high level domain name you cannot setup and run
your website.
Without the high level domain names there is no Internet.
Consumers gain
access to these high level domain names through Domain Name
Registrar Service Providers such as Godaddy, Register.com,
Google, Network Solutions, Yahoo, etc. who contract with
ICANN to provide this service to the public.
These registrar service providers lets you purchase a
domain name such as myname.com, mycompany.biz, etc.
which includes a high level and lower level domain
names. Anytime
a registrar offers this service they must pay an annual fee
($0.20) to ICANN and
($5.62) to Verisign.
The Registrars make a profit by charging a higher
price than the annual fee or by getting their customers to
buy other services.
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The Domain Name System (also referred to as Domain Name
Service) is critical to the inner workings of the internet.
It is a series of servers throughout the Internet
that enables communication across the internet by
translating text into numbers that computers understand.
For example, when you type in
www.google.com that gets
translated to an Internet Protocol (IP) address that may
look like 74.125.225.83.
The IP address is how computers on the Internet
communicate with each other.
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He who manages the high level domain names and the Domain
Name System c ontrols the Internet.
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There are concerns that handing over control to an
international body under the UN would give countries like
Russia, China, Iran, etc. too much influence over the
Internet that could result in less access.
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Sources:
The National Telecommunications & Information
Administration
ICANN
Verisign
By Owen
Daniels
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