Owners of the Internets

July 6, 2005

Apparently, the US government ‘owns’ the internets, and “will not hand over control”. There seems to be a file that lists all the top level domains and it is the property of Bush et al. Is this the internet though? They have control over all the .com, .org, .au, .whatever domains (obviously why US addresses don’t end in .us), but this isn’t the net. This site doesn’t end in .au, but I’m Australian; there are many, many .tk addresses (raduza.tk, for example) but I’m pretty sure there’s not too many Tokelau residents that are occupying these. The US powers are also keeping an eye on ICANN to make sure they don’t stray from their mandate. Guess that is going to be comfortable; just make sure these are US interests as well.

I’m uninformed, of course, but all I’m hearing is the big kid in the playground saying all the toys are his, and he’s not going to share. Now we wait for the “international flap”.

via CNet and SplaTT

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