ICANN to Cut U.S. Apron Strings?
An agreement that gives the U.S. sway over Web addresses and domain names will soon expire, but Uncle Sam seems reluctant to cede control.
At stake is the oversight of the infrastructure and processes by which Internet protocol address and the Web site domain names that correspond to them are assigned. Currently that’s the job of a nonprofit private entity called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, created in 1998 and overseen by the U.S. Commerce Department.
