AW: RE: [governance] Who owns the Internet?

["Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"]

There was a GAO Report from the year 2000 which touched the issues of ownership and property of the Internet, in particular the status of the "control of the authoritative root server". The GAO ist the US Congress oversight body over the US government. It this paper http://www.icann.org/en/general/gao-report-07jul00.pdf the GAO analyzes whther the US Department of Commerce did have a right to delegate responsibilities to ICANN via the MoU from Ocgober 1998. 
 
The key passge of the report is below in full text::

" The question of whether the Department has the authority to transfer control of the authoritative root server to ICANN is a difficult one to answer. Although control over the authoritative root server is not based on any statute or ternational agreement, the government has long been instrumental in supporting and developing the Internet and the domain name system. The Department has no specific statutory obligations to manage the domain name system or to control the authoritative root server. It is uncertain whether transferring control would also include transfer of government property to a private entity. Determining whether there is government property may be difficult. To the extent that transition of the management control to a private entity would involve the transfer of government property, it is unclear if the Department has the requisite authority to effect such a transfer. Since the Department states that it has no plans to transfer the root server system, it has not examined these issues. Currently, under the cooperative agreement with Network Solutions, the Department has reserved final policy control over the authoritative root server."

The situation is rather unchanged today. If the DOC should plan to terminate the JPA in October 2009 this would not mean that the control over the root server system would be transfered. This control is subject of the IANA contract and the USG has made clear several times (in particular in its statement with the four principles from July 2005) that it does not intend to delegate this authority to anybody.

 

Wolfgang


________________________________

Von: Annan Ebenezer [mailto:siliconvalley2005 at yahoo.com]
Gesendet: Fr 20.03.2009 14:03
An: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Betreff: Re: RE: [governance] Who owns the Internet?




  was it the US that brought the internet?

ebenezer
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