What’s Happening to the Internet?
Editor’s Note: For more on the history of ICANN and internet governance, see FISMA Focus here.
From: American Thinker
It sounds like something you don’t want to know too much about. When you type an address into your computer’s browser, you go to that address. How your computer knows where to find the Google image of kittens and puppies isn’t your problem, is it?
Well, it might be. Not kittens, perhaps, but what if you want to find the Israeli Ministry of Tourism or the American Constitution?
DNS and ICANN are acronyms you should know. DNS is the Internet domain name system — a single list that gets you to the server that runs the program you’re looking for. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages DNS under a contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce. If it sounds like an American monopoly, it is — for now, but not much longer.
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