ICANN Wants To End Commerce Dept. Oversight In 2009

Ian Lamont writes "ICANN's current Joint Project Agreement with the US Commerce Department is set to expire in September of 2009, and ICANN wants to become more autonomous and switch to a global governance model, says ICANN's executive officer. The agreement between the nonprofit ICANN and the Commerce Department has been in place since 1998, and was renewed in 2006 despite international protests. A few US-based groups named in the article — including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the trade group TechNet and a conservative think tank iGrowthGlobal — would like the agreement with the Commerce Department to continue, in part to provide 'accountability.' The ICANN officer quoted in the article says expiration of the Commerce Department agreement would not remove accountability, as ICANN still has a contract with the US to operate the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and must follow California law governing nonprofits. The Register is running a related story about why some people are uncomfortable with the United States' influence on ICANN. We discussed ICANN's request for independence a few months ago."

Comments

Re:Accountability

[mordors9]

Ah yes the UN. Wonder what nations they will put on the committee to oversee this area, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran... Maybe the same group they put on the Human Rights Committee a few years back, Syria, Lybia, etc. Yeah, this will work really well.

Better hand control of your Elec Grid to Italy ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh in that case, you better hand the control of your electricity grid to the Italians, Germans or French then ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electricity#Modern_history ). On a more topical note hand over complete control of HTTP & HTML to original CERN signatories ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Member_States ) and no I don't mean CERN observers.

-AC