Will Obama Break the Internet?

The Bush Administration has mentioned that they have no desire to give up control of the Internet (ICANN and Verisign) to the international community.  I believe McCain would maintain the same stance.  However, Obama has yet to take a stance on the subject.

There is a bit of an issue at hand here as to what would actually be lost, the .COM and .NET registry or the root servers that maintain the records of where all sites are hosted.  In my opinion, a loss of one would hurt the power of the other.

Now, I do agree that the US should not govern the Internet in the same manner that we have to often police the world.  The laws of the US would overprotect some countries and are too loose for others.  But I do think we have proven ourselves as a reliable safe keeper.  Other countries that I do think would be up to the challenge could be Switzerland and England.  But in no way would I want the power to fall into the hands of the UN.  At that point we might as well give up on the Internet as a whole and start reading newspapers again and sending snail mail.

There is a good chance that the progress made with IDN’s and new registries that ICANN has pushed through would come to a complete standstill with the UN.  In that regard, the UN taking control would actually be more negative for the international Internet community than positive.  As much as they hate to admit it, leaving the Internet in the hands of the US will be the fastest way to grow it worldwide.

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