US government completes Internet 'privatisation'

The US government has announced that it’s to let go of the Internet’s reins by ending its ‘oversight’ role in the Internet’s technical operations. By I.D. Scales.
According to the US Commerce Department the move - to hand over complete control of the Internet’s underpinnings to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) - marks the final phase of the ‘privatization’ of the domain name system to the multi-stakeholder model that has embedded itself over the past 20 years or so -  a model under which different aspects of the Internet and the World Wide Web’s operation are overseen and managed by different stakeholder groups.

These include Icann itself, the Internet Society, the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Taskforce, many of whose active members participate on a voluntary basis but may also be ‘sponsored’  by their companies to attend meetings and spend time on documents and proposals.

Much is being made of the Snowden revelations being the final spur to US government action. But while the activities of the NSA have provided a rallying point for those who want the US government to further loosen its grip, there’s also no doubt that the ‘privatisation’ has been under way for some time and that, eventually, the US government was more than happy to get itself out of the way.