EU Wants Shared Control of Internet

Yahoo! News reported The
European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance.

Certainly sharing it with the EU is better than turning it over to the UN (as I said earlier, but I thought each country already did the domain registration in their country. Here is a list of domain registrars in other countries.

Drew McKissick blogged While I'll admit there's a lot of stiff competition, the notion that the UN should take over management of the Internet takes the cake. Imagine turning over something like the net to the folks who've brought us that model of efficiency and virtue known as the United Nations. No need to worry about THEM screwing up something that can and is transforming the world for the better. Not to mention the fact that the US created the Internet...provided the initial funding for it, etc., etc.. But hey, we did the same thing with the Panama Canal, right?

BusinessWeek reported A senior U.S. official rejected calls on Thursday for a U.N. body to take over control of the main computers that direct traffic on the Internet, reiterating U.S. intentions to keep its historical role as the medium's principal overseer.

We built it, we control it. If the UN wants to develop some new technology, it can control it.

"We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet," said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. "Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable."

Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet as a Pentagon project and funding much of its early development..... A stalemate over who should serve as the principal traffic cops for Internet routing and addressing could derail the summit, which aims to ensure a fair sharing of the Internet for the benefit of the whole world.

Some countries have been frustrated that the United States and European countries that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations with a limited supply to share.

If they are just worried about running out of IP addresses, Internet 2 will take care of that