A House member wants the United Nations to lay off the Internet and leave its management with the United States, the Tech Daily Dose blog of
the National Journal reports. A non-binding resolution by Rep. Mary Bono Mack asks the White House to deter U.N. or foreign government attempts to take over supervision of Internet domains from the U.S.-based organization that has done the job since 1998.
Mack, a California Republican who chairs a subcommittee for energy and commerce, says the United Nations covets a greater role in Internet governance.
Mack's resolution says the same of some foreign governments that “use the Internet as a tool of surveillance to curtail legitimate political discussion and dissent.”
But support for U.N. involvement may be coming from the very organization overseeing the Internet now: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit that handles domain names and other Internet properties.
ICANN chief Rod Beckstrom said at a U.N. meeting in December that a “multi-stakeholder model” for Internet management “is not the problem. It’s the solution.”