The United States government is set to hand over the "address book" of the internet to non-profit organization Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on Oct. 1, a move that many Republican lawmakers are calling as an "internet giveaway."
A tiny branch of the Commerce Department of the United States will assign the oversight of the root zone, which is the highest level of the domain naming system structure of the internet, to ICANN, a non-profit created in 1998.
ICANN will be running the database after the oversight contract of the United States government ends, and it will become accountable not just to the country but also to international stakeholders of the internet. These will include a governmental advisory committee, an industry committee, a technical committee, telecommunications experts and average internet users.
Republican lawmakers, however, have been trying to block the handover, which is strongly supported by internet companies such as Google and Facebook and the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama.
"Today our country faces a threat to the Internet as we know it... If Congress fails to act, the Obama administration intends to give away the Internet to an international body akin to the United Nations," said Texas senator Ted Cruz in a speech on the senate floor.
The campaign of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump shared the same sentiments, calling for the American people to support the Republicans in Congress in their fight to "save the internet."
Republican attorneys general have even filed a lawsuit in the federal courts as a last-ditch effort to block the handover of oversight to ICANN, seeking the judge to block the transition.
The argument is that, without the oversight of the United States, foreign governments and hackers might be able to take over the internet, causing its infrastructure to crumble and leaving the internet in anarchy.
However, ICANN, the Commerce Department and many others have scoffed at the assertions being made by Republicans over the matter.
According to a statement by ICANN, the United States government never had the ability to set the direction of the non-profit organization's policy development work, which is what Senator Cruz seems to be suggesting. The government of the United States, along with any other government in the world, will not see an increase or decrease in their role on overseeing the internet.
The doomsday scenarios that the Republicans are warning against will simply never happen, according to other government officials, companies in the tech industry and the architects who helped build the current internet system. The oversight of the United States on the internet is too small that handing over the duty will not have any great effect.
In fact, even with the handover, the United States will still retain vast control over the internet, as the most popular top-level domains in the world, specifically .com, .org and .net, are based in the United States, which means that these organizations will still follow laws and court orders in the country.
