Which is Closer, the Moon or the European Union?
Empirical evidence indicates that the European Union is actually slightly closer than the moon. It took eight years between President Kennedy's speech announcing the goal of putting an American on the moon and Neil Armstrong's and Buzz Aldrin's historic steps. On the other hand, it looks like it will take only about seven years between the time European Commission decided to institute a .eu TLD and the time that domain is expected to go "live." As long as there are no unexpected delays.

According to the U.K.'s Computer Business Review Online, "After close to six years of red tape, Brussels-based non-profit EURid absl/vzw suggested the domain could go live within a year." Now that the EU has reached their own internal agreements, they can begin "negotiations" with ICANN to get to the .eu TLD up and running.

"EURid said it ‘will be looking for a speedy conclusion to negotiations with ICANN', so it can get the .eu up and running in nine months." Why "negotiations" with the technical manager of the internet are expected to take close to a year is not explained. The seemingly long delay is particularly perplexing given that ICANN has "had the policy framework in place to allow it to approve .eu as a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD)...for a little over four years."

On the other hand, it is seems unfair to criticize ICANN for delays given how long it has taken the Europeans to approve the .eu TLD, which, according to the press account, meant that "the EC first had to adopt regulations, the Parliament had to adopt legislation, an operator had to be found, and policies created."

The purpose of citing the .eu experience is not to highlight problems with either the EU or with ICANN. Instead the real lesson learned is that neither multinational bureaucracies nor out-of-control non-profit corporations are capable of making policy decisions regarding the internet.

The EU/ICANN experience is a prime example of why as many internet governance decisions as possible should be left to the marketplace. At a time when advances in internet technologies and services are progressing on almost a daily basis, the world cannot afford to allow bureaucracies to spend years dithering over policies before allowing stakeholders to take advantage of new internet capabilities.