Obama administration approves transition of Internet domain system

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The Hill:

The Department of Commerce gave its approval Thursday to a hotly-debated plan to transition away from United States control of the domain name system.

 

“The Internet’s multistakeholder community has risen to the challenge we gave them to develop a transition proposal that would ensure the Internet’s domain name system will continue to operate as seamlessly as it currently does,” said Larry Strickling, who heads the agency’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), said in a statement.

 

The domain name system helps direct users easily around the web by connecting numerical addresses with the names — like Google.com — consumers associate with websites.

 

Strickland told reporters that “we have determined that the proposal in meeting our criteria has broad support from the Internet stakeholders, it will support and enhance the multistakeholder model, it will maintain the security, stability and resiliency of the domain name system, it will meet the needs and expectations of the global customers and partners of the IANA functions and it maintains the openness of the Internet.”

 

“And most importantly, the proposal meets another key condition and that is it does not replace NTIA’s role with a governmental or intergovernmental solution.”

 

For years, the United States has controlled the domain name system through a contract it has with a non-profit, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The Obama administration initiated steps in 2014 to hand over control to an international group of stakeholders.