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. 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. He managed the addressing system and routing numbers that enable the internet to work. He was the dictator of the dot.
ICANN, backed by the US government, took over the role when Postel died in 1998. 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. This year, however, the policy-makers and business executives that comprise ICANN will go to Shanghai, China, for the end of October board meeting. It marks a subtle, but symbolic, shift in power.
Although the myth persists that no one controls the internet, it is not really true. Any network system, be it a telephone, railroad, canal or cyberspace, requires a certain degree of central co-ordination. 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.
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