Viviane Reding, Information Society Commissioner of the European Union, is calling for the United States to hand over control of ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers). She said that the organization running ICANN needs be free of control by one single nation but controlled by a private entity and governed by multiple nations.
ICANN headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California was created in 1998 to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks. Responsibilities include the Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocations, generic and country-code top-level domain name system, root server system management functions, and protocol identifier assignment.
Reding believes
“The US, so far, has done this in a reasonable manner”, referring to the oversight that the US government has given ICANN. In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world.”
On September 30th, the agreement between ICANN and the Department of Commerce will end and Reding calls this the “moment of truth” and when privatization of ICAAN should take place.
Reading will be presenting her case this week and hopes that President Obama will take her points into consideration.