U.S. Set To Give Up Internet Domain Control

The Commerce Department announced that it intends to give up control of Internet administration, including the coordination of the domain name system that is currently subcontracted to ICANN, but with strictures. The announcement, which came from a Commerce Department agency called the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), said that proposals for a replacement system won’t be accepted if they designate “a government led or an inter-governmental organization solution.” The transition is to take place in 2015.

Some see the change as a reaction to the recent revelations about U.S. monitoring of Internet communications. The announcement comes just a month before Net Mundial, a global meeting on Internet governance, to be held in Brazil. Some of the strongest international criticism of U.S. spying has come from Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff, who was incensed when she discovered the U.S. was monitoring her phone calls. “[T]he U.S. is trying to make sure the transition happens on its own terms, and that the U.S. is setting the rules for the transition,” Greg Shatan, a partner at Reed Smith, told the New York Times.