| Summary/Abstract |
Who should control the Internet? That was the question the Obama administration sought to answer last fall, when the U.S. Department of Commerce ended [1] its long-standing contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN [2] is the nonprofit that performs the small but significant function of governing the Internet’s system of website and domain names—managing its address book, so to speak. The Internet began as a project of the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1960s, and since its creation in the late 1990s, ICANN had remained under U.S. supervision. By bringing the contract to a close, President Barack Obama freed ICANN to act autonomously.
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