By the end of this week, the Obama administration will give the keys of the internet to “the global internet community.”
The lightly regulated core of the internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), would be ceded to other governments which mostly want closure or censorship.
Formed in 1998 as a nonprofit corporation and overseen by the U.S. Commerce Department, ICANN coordinates the internet’s naming system. The government’s contract with ICANN ends Friday, which means the nonprofit becomes independent. Opponents of this transition, including Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, have argued that allowing ICANN to become independent will allow other governments to exert undue influence on the internet.
Allowing the transition to move forward is consistent with Barack Obama’s globalism, Hillary Clinton’s global initiative and George Soros’ globalist agenda. The only thing worse than a government monopoly is a totally unregulated one. But don’t worry; it would not be for long. China wants to control the internet; Vladimir Putin has announced his desire to gain control of it.
Why change a successful model for one that can get us into a fight with Russia and China? We created it and have built so much of our business and information technology on it, to put it out there for the world to fight over is not sane.