The United States will yield its position as comptroller of the Internet and will hand over the oversight of assigning .com, .org, .gov and other domains of the Web to the international group to govern the information highway.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) under the umbrella of the U.S. Commerce Department announced Friday that it will pass the baton to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to oversee policies governing the Internet.
"The timing is right to start the transition process. We look forward to ICANN convening stakeholders across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition plan," said assistant secretary for communications and information of the commerce department Lawrence Strickling.
As the multistakeholder body meet, the NTIA will continue its current role until it formally turns over its responsibilities at the end of September 2015.
The NTIA basically helps the ICANN in a function similar to a city administrator and a post office. It ensures that all websites are properly registered without conflicting with existing websites. It also guarantees that when Internet users type in a web address onto a browser, the users will be led to the right website and not be lost in the information superhighway.
The NTIA has asked ICANN to collaborate with affected parties such as the Internet Society, Regional Internet Registries , Verisign, Internet Architecture Board, Internet Engineering Task Force, domain name operators, and other stakeholders.
The administration has sent a communication to ICANN to make sure that the proposal will have the support of the stakeholders and follow principles that will maintain the stability and security of the Web, support and improve the model of having multiple stakeholders, meet the needs of partners and users, and maintain Internet openness.
The planned NTIA move out marks the move to privatization of the DNS as originally outlined in 1997 by the U.S. government. However, there are speculations that the move is due to the controversy brought about by the leaked documents of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The role of the U.S. in governing the Internet has been criticized by different sectors following the Prism scandal.
Russia and China, for example, has been urging to give the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union to have more control of the web.
Brazil also points a finger at the U.S. and claiming that the only a pseudo-transition of responsibilities will happen. It has called for a global meeting next month to discuss governance of the Internet.
If the transition plans are created and implemented without a glitch, Internet users will really not feel any difference with the way they use the Web.
Of course, there are also parties that welcome the new development.
"The Internet was built to be borderless and this move toward a more multistakeholder model of governance creates an opportunity to preserve its security, stability and openness," said Google's chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf.
