Internet Governance and Protocol

This week’s lecture was tough, I found the content really hard to understand, but thankfully, John tried to make it as easy as possible. When looking at internet law, it’s difficult to understand how a corporation like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), can exist within such a supposedly, egalitarian space. From what I can gather, ICANN is a privatised American company which in essence, rules the internet. They are the final body of law to the internet and govern those who use. Part of this governing is the ownership and distribution of domain names and spaces (i.e. Australia’s domain space is .com.au). I was really surprised that so many nations across the world are allowing American governance over a global internet. To hear that recently there were changes to the hold ICANN has over the internet society and yet the matter of domain names was left in their power, was to me, incredible. I suppose I always envisioned, a UN of style internet governance or, at least a somewhat collaborative system. But then isn’t that the point? The internet is seen as a peer to peer, non-hieratical system, but, as a society we need a level of governance. Without it, wouldn’t there be chaos? I hope that with time and internet growth the global society shall see this as an injustice and continue to strip ICANN of such overwhelming power… Like Robin Hood, they can take from the rich (power rich in this instance) and give to the poor. Maybe this is already happening. On my serch to find the ICANN homepage I found the icann watch site. This is a site devoted to the movements of ICANN legislation and how it works. Have a look, it contains some strong internet speak, looks at legal terms, and may even been a little one sided, but aren't those anti-establishment arguements always like that?
until next time.
Soph