A leading European official has called for the United States to lose its control over the Internet’s address system. Viviane Reding says an international independent body should take over the powers.

At the moment, Internet addresses are overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which operates under an agreement with the US government’s Department of Commerce. That agreement is set to expire in September.

Reding, the European Union Commissioner responsible for ‘Information Society’ says its inadequate to have a situation where ICANN is only answerable to the US government and the California court system. She’s calling for ICANN to become a fully privatized organization, but with ultimate legal accountability to an international tribunal. She said, “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.”

She’s also calling for a ‘G12′ of national representatives to co-ordinate global Internet policies. Her suggestion is for a body made up of two countries each from North America, South America, Europe and Asia, with three members from Asia/Australia. The twelfth spot would go to the chairman of ICANN acting in a non-voting role.

ICANN is responsible both for managing top level domains such as .com and .net. Its decision to reject proposals to create a .xxx domain for adult sites has brought into question its independence. Not only were there claims ICANN bowed to political pressure in rejecting the proposal, but there were also suggestions from politicians supporting the proposal to pass legislation forcing ICANN to introduce the domain. That didn’t come to pass, but the idea raised further questions about ICANN’s legal independence.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 3:31 pm under Internet, Legal, Politics.

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