In a letter issued by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, and John Dingell (D-Mich.), the two senators spoke of the importance of having the United States maintain its “historic” role in controlling the Internet’s root zone file.
"Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying domain name system of the Internet remains stable and secure," Barton and Dingell wrote. "As such, the United States should take no action that has the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the domain name system."
In a likeminded move, the Information Technology Association of America also voiced its strong belief that sharing control of the web is bad idea.
“Governmental interference threatens to undermine the innovative, robust nature of the Internet,” ITAA President Harris Miller said in a statement. “Turning this process into political football between national governments is terrible play calling — it certainly scores no points with the private sector. We owe the fast and widespread adoption of the Internet to the current system of governance.”
Commerce and ITAA’s written statements come just one month before the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisa where the future of the Internet’s governance will be debated by those who would like to see it spread more evenly spread across the rest of the world, and those U.S. delegates and ICANN representatives who feel it should remain right where it is.
The first warning shot that the U.S. government was planning to protect its stand in Internet governance came in late September when David Gross, the State Department’s coordinator for international communications and information policy, openly rejected demands from the European Union, the United Nations and several foreign countries to consider a shift in power and the possibly dissolution of ICANN.
The discussion to expand the role of control beyond ICANN has been underway for several years, but only recently gelled when the issue became part of a 24-page document issued by United Nations’ Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). The document was published in preparation for the World Summit and outlined reasons why ICANN should be reformed and handed over to an international board called either World ICANN or WICANN.
Among proponents of this shift in power, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged other international leaders governments and representatives from the private sector to push for more control.
ICANN was appointed by Commerce to administer the domain name system in 1998. Its Memorandum of Understanding with Commerce expires in June 2006, after which Commerce has said it plans to retain veto power over ICANN's management of the Internet.