Monday, July 18, 2005
Who is running the internet?
If memory serves, the internet started in the USA and the US government handed over control of domain names to some agency which in turn sells these domain names to whomever is interested. Now the UN wants to take over this process to at least some degree.
Could someone with greater internet knowledge please explain this to me? I don't see why a country like the United Kingdom or New Zealand couldn't automatically be granted control over domain names ending in .uk or .nz. Is the rest of the world really that concerned about the fact that Americans alone control the .com rights? I understand that we Americans are spoiled in not needing to add .us to the end of our web addresses but so what? This is one situation that brings out my red, white and blue...not in the sense of blind patriotism but in the sense that I don't want an even bigger agency controlling the internet.
Could someone with greater internet knowledge please explain this to me? I don't see why a country like the United Kingdom or New Zealand couldn't automatically be granted control over domain names ending in .uk or .nz. Is the rest of the world really that concerned about the fact that Americans alone control the .com rights? I understand that we Americans are spoiled in not needing to add .us to the end of our web addresses but so what? This is one situation that brings out my red, white and blue...not in the sense of blind patriotism but in the sense that I don't want an even bigger agency controlling the internet.
