[originator=The Register]An extraordinary statement by the US government has sent shockwaves around the internet world and thrown the future of the network into doubt.
In a worrying U-turn, the US Department of Commerce (DoC) has made it clear it intends to retain control of the internet's root servers indefinitely. It was due to relinquish that control in September 2006, when its contract with overseeing body ICANN ended.
The decision - something that people have long feared may happen - will not only make large parts of the world furious but also puts ICANN in a very difficult position. The organisation has slowly been expanding out of its California base in an effort to become an international body with overall responsibility for the internet.
The US government is professing its full backing for ICANN (which it created) at the same time that it awards itself control of the net's foundations, which will have the inevitable effect of pulling the organisation back into the US.
This is particularly relevant at the moment as a UN review of internet governance will report later this year and indications are that the team is considering handing over elements of internet control to a UN body, possibly the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
In fact, it is the UN report that has most likely focussed the US government's attention and prompted the statement, made yesterday at a communications conference in Washington DC.
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Clearly the internet has entered the Bush administration's vision and the resulting DoC statement - which boldly tells the rest of the world that the US will continue to run the Internet and everyone will just have to lump it - is very in keeping with how the US government is currently run.
The big question now is whether the rest of the world will be cowed. ICANN has yet to release a statement on the DoC’s surprise declaration but it knows which side its bread is buttered on and so will probably make a careful and broadly supportive statement.
The vision of a US-controlled internet infrastructure will be anathema to large parts of the world however and it is a demonstration of the US administration’s failure to think globally that it doesn't recognise that there is surprisingly little preventing other parts of the world from creating a second Internet outside of US control.
An already fractious situation has just got more difficult.
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