I was interviewed on the PBS NewsHour, on March 24, 2014, along
with Vint Cerf, Google's Chief Evangelist, about the Obama Administration’s recently-announced
plans
to transfer oversight of the Internet to some yet-to-be-determined entity.
I expressed concerns about what will happen at the end of
the contemplated transfer process – how the new international entity or
organization that will manage the Internet will work, especially with regard to
whether such entity will be truly insulated from government control and
interference and whether, under the new structure, governments will assume more
leeway to prevent the free flow of information on the Net and censor messages
with which they disapprove.
Since 1998, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, has exercised light oversight
over the current manager of the Internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers, or ICANN. ICANN is a non-profit, private sector-led multistakeholder
organization. ICANN is required to operate in a collaborative and transparent
manner that fosters accountability to the various non-government stakeholders –
commercial enterprises, civil society organizations representing Internet
users, technical experts, and so forth – that are represented in ICANN's
governance structure.
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