2/28/2023 0 Comments Netcontrol uk ltdBut the internet, made up of private networks rather than nationally-licensed operators, lacks that sort of formal political control. The International Telecommunications Union sets international standards like Britain’s calling code of 44. That is a big contrast to the telephone system, for instance, which is run by a UN agency full of diplomats. It is a California-based non-profit organisation that includes a toothless advisory committee of government representatives. Where in an earlier era, a global asset like the names and addresses of the internet-the lifeblood of the digital world-would be regulated by inter-governmental treaty, ICANN represents a departure. For the net, that job goes to ICANN, which sets policies over monikers like “.com” and has power to mint new addresses, acting as a kind of central bank for the internet. Any network system, be it a telephone, railroad, canal or cyberspace, requires a certain degree of central co-ordination. It marks a subtle, but symbolic, shift in power.Īlthough the myth persists that no one controls the internet, it is not really true. This year, however, the policy-makers and business executives that comprise ICANN will go to Shanghai, China, for the end of October board meeting. The location of the board meeting served as a reminder that, no matter how global the internet became, its power base remained in the US. ICANN, backed by the US government, took over the role when Postel died in 1998. He managed the addressing system and routing numbers that enable the internet to work. It was there, for over two decades, that the internet’s underlying operations were co-ordinated by a single computer science professor, Jon Postel, funded by the Pentagon. In the four years since it was founded, the board of directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ICANN-the “UN of Cyberspace”-has held its meetings in the organisation’s hometown, a backwater of Los Angeles.
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