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Ted Cruz Proposes Bill To Keep US From Giving Up Internet Governance Role (washingtontimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Times: Internet legislation proposed Wednesday in the Senate would prohibit the U.S. government from relinquishing its role with respect to overseeing the web's domain name system, or DNS, unless explicitly authorized by Congress. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a division of the Commerce Department, currently oversees control of the DNS, a virtual phonebook of sorts that allows internet users to easily browse the web by allocating domain names to websites the world over. The NITA has long been expected to give up its oversight role to a global multi-stakeholder community, however, prompting lawmakers to unleashed a proposal this week that would assure the U.S. government maintains control unless Congress votes otherwise. The bill, the Protecting Internet Freedom Act, "would prevent the Obama administration from giving the Internet away to a global organization that will allow over 160 foreign governments to have increased influence over the management and operation of the Internet," according to a statement issued Wednesday by the office of the bill's co-sponsor, Sen. Ted Cruz. Specifically, the bill aims to ensure that the NTIA's relationship with the DNS doesn't terminate, lapse, expire or otherwise end up cancelled unless authorized by Congress, while a separate provision would guarantee that the U.S. government's exclusive control over .gov and .mil domains remains intact. In the UK, the controversial Snooper's Charter -- or the Investigatory Powers Bill as it's officially known -- has been passed through the House of Commons by UK MPs.
Any country, or any company, or any kid with spare time can set up their own root servers, their own TLDs, and their own domains. Then with the authority of laws, policies, or a note passed around the local high school, users can be convinced to point their resolving to that custom DNS, bypassing anything the US government wants to do.
The whole notion of maintaining control of the internet is somewhat asinine.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The DNS root zone is the top-level DNS zone in the hierarchical namespace of the Domain Name System of the Internet. For example, it contains the name servers of top level domains (TLDs).
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the United States Department of Commerce exercises ultimate authority over the DNS root zone of the Internet.
Through the NTIA, the root zone is managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), acting as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), while the root zone maintainer is Verisign.
In March 2014, the NTIA announced that it will cede this authority to an organization whose nature has yet to be specified.
Also regarding who would take over from NTIA, they state:
"The U.S. Government has made it clear that we will not accept a proposal that replaces its role with a government or intergovernmental organization.
The criteria specified by the Administration firmly establish Internet governance as the province of multistakeholder institutions, rather than governments or intergovernmental institutions, and reaffirm our commitment to preserving the Internet as an engine for economic growth, innovation, and free expression.
The U.S. government will only transition its role if and when it receives it receives a satisfactory proposal to replace its role from the global Internet community - the same industry, technical, and civil society entities that have successfully managed the technical functions of Internet governance for nearly twenty years."
Note that there is a history of alternative DNS roots (OpenNIC for example). Generally few people bother to use them.