US Tech Firms Urge Congress To Allow Internet Domain Changeover (reuters.com)

Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: Major technology companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter are urging Congress to support a plan for the U.S. government to cede control of the internet's technical management to the global community, they said in a joint letter dated on Tuesday. The U.S. Commerce Department has primary oversight of the internet's management, largely because it was invented in the United States. Some Republican lawmakers are trying to block the handover to global stakeholders, which include businesses, tech experts and public interest advocates, saying it could stifle online freedom by giving voting rights to authoritarian governments. The years-long plan to transfer oversight of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is scheduled to occur on Oct. 1 unless Congress votes to block the handover. The California-based corporation operates the database for domain names such as .com and .net and their corresponding numeric addresses that allow computers to connect. In the Sept. 13 letter, a copy of which had been reviewed by Reuters before it was sent, the technology companies said it was "imperative" that Congress does not delay the transition.

Comments

Why

[TFlan91]

I see a lot of posts about "why".

Well the reason is that if the US doesn't give up control, countries have been threatening with building their own internet infrastructure to run in parallel.

If these countries (Brazil, Russia, etc) did create a "second internet", then Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, would all be shut off from their customers in those regions.

Can't do the math?

They get a lower customer base, lower potential profit, lower actual revenue. Unless the spend the R&D on developing their platform to conform to the "second internet".

Re:Cynically thinking...

[Nidi62]

I get a bad feeling for the transfer just from the list of supporters: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Cloudflare and Yahoo. It feels, to me, that they are not doing it for freedom but rather for money. They are going to have services or other means of making money off the transfer where they cannot do it currently.

The problem is the Congressmen trying to block the changeover aren't doing so in the interests of online freedom, but rather in the interests of maintaining control over the internet. Either way it's all about power.