A Progress Bar at 50%

Recently, the United States government announced that it would give up the last formal elements of its control over the internet.  Currently, domain names (i.e. google.com or yahoo.com) are assigned to specific owners.  In other words, companies or individuals can buy web addresses.  Facebook owns facebook.com, for example.  The apportionment of domain names is managed by an agreement between the US Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).  ICANN is nominally an independent non-profit, but until now has been constrained by contractual agreements with the Commerce Department.  The new policy by the Obama Administration would opt to not renew these contracts and allow ICANN to be fully independent.

Supporters of this policy argue that it is critical to enable a truly global internet, one not controlled by any specific government.  They believe that in a post-Snowden world, nations will become inherently suspicious of any US-controlled communications system.  Iran, North Korea, and Turkey have all discussed setting up intranets that do not communicate with the outside world.  China already imposes the so-called "Great Firewall" that blocks politically sensitive content from the West.  

By contrast, opponents of the Administration's plan believe that this surrenders control over one of the twenty-first century's most important technologies to an obscure, poorly understood agency.  Some argue that ICANN, headquartered in southern California, is overly influenced by Silicon Valley technology companies to the detriment of internet users.  Dozens of Congresspeople wrote to the President to ask that he change his stance, and the Department of Commerce appears to be trying to walk back their announcement.  

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, this debate highlights the highly contentious issue of an open vs. closed world wide web.  Perhaps even more broadly, it is about the role of government in regulating what is currently an open ecosystem.  National security and personal freedom seem to often be at odds, but this example pits national security and technological freedom.  The issue even seems to ask whether unilateral governance is better than multilateral governance.  In short, the seemingly-obscure issue of domain names has echoes of many of the most controversial issues of our time.  The ability to compromise on these will be critical, as the Obama Administration is discovering.  Their latest plan is to slowly transition to a system of global internet governance (they've nicknamed it "e-governance") while using the existing framework to help smooth the transition.  This seems like a good middle ground, but only time will tell.