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.

Comments

Re:Clueless moron

[Waffle Iron]

If all of the countries other than the US were to agree to use the same fork, then the original DNS system would become the USA's very own intranet.

Re:Ham-handed

[rtb61]

Makes not difference what ever the opinion of the US, it is only an illusion of control, brought about by the claimed value of that illusion. DNS data entries in a database aligning a string of characters in the form of an IP address with a string of easier to remember text. That power is an empty illusion and all the governments of the world can set up their own servers to favour themselves and strip the US servers of value beyond what it has in the US and remains only so long as people choose it or even ISP choose to point to it rather than alternate DNS choices. Why give you customers away for free, for another corporation to make money out of, when you can selectively mirror certain entries and sell others, from your own databases, super cheap to set up and could be very profitable, mirroring the bulk of DNS addresses and only selling the high sticker value addresses makes sense or just charging for the default config. Want us to point our customers at your database so that you can make money, well, your going to have to pay for that.