Fergie's Tech Blog

Beckstrom Defends U.S.-Based ICANN

Eric Pfanner writes in The New York Times:

The U.S.-based agency that regulates Internet addresses, facing criticism that it is too America-centric, remains the best guardian of a “single, unified, global Internet,” according its new chief executive.

Rod Beckstrom, a technology entrepreneur and former U.S. government Internet security official, took over this month as head of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, succeeding Paul Twomey, an Australian.

As use of the Internet expands around the world, there have been rising calls for a new way of overseeing some of its basic functions, including the allocation of domain suffixes like .com and .org. This duty, and other important technical functions, have been in the hands of ICANN, a private, nonprofit organization based in Marina Del Rey, California, for the past decade, under an agreement with the U.S. Commerce Department.

“There will always be different voices out there, but the ultimate proof that ICANN is functioning properly is that the Internet is functioning properly,” Mr. Beckstrom said by telephone last week.

posted by Fergie @ 7/12/2009 10:43:00 AM