"Meanwhile, suspicion of the United States' cozy relationship with ICANN appears to persist."

Has there ever been one proven instance of the US Government abusing the naming convention? Zoomba, the countries that objected to the US Government continuing to have control over the naming convention were Iran and Brazil. According to the Latin Business Chronicle, Brazil was relatively low in the piracy scale, with losses from software piracy estimated at a mere $766 million in 2005. (Source Link) That was low compared to some other nations.

I pretty much think Iran's record speaks for itself.

I wrote an article on this topic some time ago. See Link My summary then was "The United States built the Internet and has done a remarkably good job of maintaining it. What is broken that needs fixing, one should ask, and who would be better at maintaining it? Internet-wide problems have been, with some exceptions, few and far between. Legislative interference has been almost unknown. There is no reason for change that I can see."

wasn't the internet origianlly created by the US? Why should the US have to let go of something we created?

It works perfectly well as is....and I'd hate to see the likes of lil Johnny (oz Gov't) get their hands on it, so let's leave the administration where it is.

***that's my tuppence worth****

Its a shame the US always eventually bows to idiots when for the most part we created the things the other nations want us to give up.  But I guess we rely on other nations for our exsistance so we feel obliged to give in.

The problem and proven fact is that the american government blocked the proposed .xxx domain name because of bible belt/right wing lobbing when in fact it would have been a good thing. Just block kids browsers from.xxx it would help spam filters the world over.That was an abuse of power.
The internet was first set up between MIT and CERN (America and Europe) it was invented by an English man (the hyper text transport protocol) The american military had been playing with country wide networks since the 70's and had never got it quite right so they adopted the system very quickly and added alot of root servers to help globalize it.
If the internet represents free access to information and communication it should be run by the UN or another international group America did not invent it.

The problem and proven fact is that the american government blocked the proposed .xxx domain name because of bible belt/right wing lobbing when in fact it would have been a good thing. Just block kids browsers from.xxx it would help spam filters the world over.That was an abuse of power.

I don't want to start a whole thing here, but the .xxx idea was awful. As many have said, it would create an internet 'red light district,' which probably isn't a good idea in itself. And who would define what pornography is? Who would force porn sites to switch? What would the consequenses be? Who would enforce them? What if someone had some porn, but other content as well? Would art with nudity count?

The .xxx domain would create a bad precident that websites would be segregated by content. Would tech websites be forced to be .tech? .news? .games? .skins?

America didn't invent certain aspects of the internet, but did create the overall 'networked computers' thing. Do you really think the UN can handle the internet? Nobody listens to the UN.

America didn't invent certain aspects of the internet, but did create the overall 'networked computers' thing. Do you really think the UN can handle the internet? Nobody listens to the UN.

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter who invented/developed certain aspects of the net, the fact remains that the U.S. has administered it without prejudice or major issue and I see no valid reason the change it now.

As for the U.N. administering it, I think not! When you have a U.N. Security Council that can very rarely agree upon anything unanimously, a conglomorate of nations all vying for power, position and control, it would be disaterous to hand the internet over to to a largely dysfuntional U.N.

The U.S. has never denied any country free/open access to the internet, not even countries like Iran or N Korea, etc, so I fail to see how any one of them could legitimately argue that the U.S. administration of the net excludes or disadvantages any one. So unless the U.S. breaks it, there's no reason to fix it, is there!

I sorta wouldn't mind too much if the Brits were to run it....my only concern there would be discrimination/reprisals against those who don't speak with a stiff upper lip and a Pommie accent.

I wouldn't mind an international organization taking control over 'net administration, but only if that their only job. I'd be especially worried by countries like China pushing their own censorship laws on the rest of the world.

As Starkers has said, we've been quite good at keeping the 'net open and easy, so unless someone can come along with something better, not just different, we'd all be better off with US as the 'net admins.

I wouldn't mind an international organization taking control over 'net administration, but only if that their only job. I'd be especially worried by countries like China pushing their own censorship laws on the rest of the world.

That's exactly my point/concern...the policies and agendas (national interests) of individual countries covertly sneaking into 'net administration. It has to remain completely transparent and accessible to all, and to date the U.S. has maintained it that way.

For example, even the U.S' No1 enemy Osama bin Laden can access the internet to post his propoganda and etc, but I do not see George Bush or other democratic leaders being afforded the same opportunity if say Iran, China or N Korea were to gain any kind of control.

I'm not even an American, but as I see it, the U.N. is a toothless tiger that is too fragmented to be efficient/effective....and I see no impartial, unbiased country with the resources as a viable alternative.

There are few international "bodies" that can do anything right, heaven forbid one like the U.N. get control of the Internet.

The UN couldn't handle East Timor properly....how the heck do you think they could handle something the 'size' of the net?

I doubt they could organise a chook raffle....