EDITORIAL: Obama puts control of Internet at risk

OPINION:

The Obama administration is determined to give away America’s last remaining control of the Internet, an organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, by the end of this year. ICANN assigns the Internet addresses that makes the web work, and the Internet structure is not prepared to receive it.

ICANN is a nonprofit corporation, chartered in California during the Clinton administration, and is supervised by the self-perpetuating board of directors that writes the rules for the operation of the net around the world. Freed of an obligation to respect its origins as a free and democratic platform for expression, ICANN could relocate operations to Upper or Lower Slobbovia or anywhere it chooses, free to ignore or resolve the concerns of Internet users. There have been attempts to give governments, some friendly and some otherwise, control of making policies governing the corporation.

Governments unfriendly to the United States are invariably hostile to free speech and contemptuous of the Western freedoms that have given the Internet its power to transform communications, commerce and how the world works. This runs counter to the aims and goals under which ICANN was created.

Congress has the opportunity and the responsibility to make sure the transition works to the benefit of the net’s millions of users worldwide. The last remaining U.S. advantage is a contract between the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and ICANN, concerning the management of the Internet’s domain names, like .com, .org, .gov, .edu and the like.

This is the function the Obama administration intends to hand over to ICANN, whether it is ready to receive it or not. Last week two congressional subcommittees held hearings on this prospect, and the results were not encouraging. Some of the original domain names like .mil and .gov are sponsored by the Pentagon and the U.S. General Services Administration, and both are vital to how the Internet functions in the United States.

In the case of .mil, it is crucial to national security, but the U.S. government has no contractual right to them. They are a legacy of the net’s being spun off into the public sector when it was established in 1985. ICANN, once freed from U.S. supervision, could terminate those domain names or reassign them to a company outside the United States, or assigned to a corporation with ties to an unfriendly government.

There are many questions about what the Internet would look like after the transition to enable the Obama administration to go forward with the giveaway. The fate of the .mil and .gov extensions in particular needs further consideration. ICANN’s ultimate structure, whether run by its board of directors or its members will have the ultimate authority, is crucial.

More hearings are essential, and Congress must get answers to the important questions. Once the Internet is put at the mercy of governments hostile to the freedoms that have made the Internet what it is, there’s no going back. It’s crucial to get it right the first time. There won’t be a second chance.