Late Tuesday night, after the Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas, Republican leaders in Congress released a $1.15 trillion budget proposal. It’s a massive bill with several huge points of contention, including tax breaks and military spending, but nestled within its 2,009 pages is a small provision that could frustrate attempts to loosen the country’s grip on governance of the web.
It’s a contentious issue. Since 1998, the nonprofit organization ICANN has managed the IP and DNS systems that form the heart of the web, under the oversight of the US government. But other governments, especially in the wake of the NSA spying scandal, have asked for more control over the basic functions of the internet. Different countries want different levels of control, but there’s already some agreement (including within parts of the US government) that DNS governance should not be the responsibility of a single country. And in March of last year, the US Department of Commerce prepared to relinquish some of the government’s authority to oversee ICANN.
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