U.S. Retains ICANN oversight
Summary: This article discusses the decision of the United States to continue to oversee ICANN for at least 18 months, and possibly for up to three more years. ICANN is the nonprofit organization which manages DNS hosting and nameservers; in other words, when you type in a web address, ICANN is the group which directs your request to the right web server - an essential part of the internet as we know it today.
Reason: There are two sides of the argument regarding whether or not ICANN should be under the (partial) control of the U.S. government. Some are of the opinion that letting the U.S. government have control of something as international as the internet is an ethically bad decision, as it could allow the U.S. to use discretion as to what websites function and which do not. On the pro side are those who argue that ICANN still cannot handle the amount of traffic passing through the internet on its own, and without the assistance of the U.S. government, could become overloaded and fail, cutting out the internet altogether for unseen amounts of time.
Credibility: This article was posted on itworld.com, and the site cited the IDG news service, a reputable tech news source.
Friday, September 29, 2006
