POLITICAL power is rarely ceded without good reason. So eyebrows were raised last week when the US Department of Commerce decided to relax its grip on the (ICANN), the body responsible for the naming system that ensures that when you type a web address, your browser knows where to go.
In future, governments and other international organisations will be able to nominate staff to sit on one of ICANN鈥檚 three newly created steering committees, something the DoC had resisted for years. 鈥淲hat it really means,鈥� says ICANN鈥檚 chief executive Rod Beckstrom, 鈥渋s that we鈥檙e going global.鈥�
Countries that don鈥檛 use Latin characters, which ICANN says web addresses must be written in, will welcome the changes. Millions of web users are currently blocked from using domain names in their own language. Beckstrom says the changes to ICANN could soon fix that and predicts that addresses in Chinese and Arabic alphabets may emerge in little more than a year.
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The change also pleases the European Union, which has for years worried about US domination of the body. 鈥淚CANN鈥檚 decisions will be more independent and more accountable,鈥� says , European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.
It has been suggested that US fears of other countries breaking away and forming an 鈥渁lternative鈥� internet were behind their decision. However, such concerns aren鈥檛 credible, says Lesley Cowley of , which regulates .co.uk domains. 鈥淐urrent browsers wouldn鈥檛 be able to access it,鈥� she says.
So will the changes improve the internet? There were already plans to accept local language domain names in the pipeline, so it is doubtful they will proceed much differently. Also, adding committees can hardly streamline a body long-accused of bureaucracy, and the internet has flourished under the existing regime.
The US may simply have been happy to relax its control because it believes the current system is sufficiently established to run under its own steam.
