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After a long diplomatic wrangle, ICANN today won independence from the US government.

The expected announcement ends an era of US dominance of the DNS system. ICANN - a non-profit organisation - will now become "independent and not controlled by any one entity".

Ties to the Department of Commerce won't be completely severed under the agreement. It will have a seat on ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which oversees policy making.

Today's move will delight the European Commission and others, however, who argued that the US' historic control of ICANN, and so internet governance, was unfair.

Telecoms Commissioner Vivian Reding said: "Internet users worldwide can now anticipate that ICANN's decisions on domain names and addresses will be more independent and more accountable, taking into account everyone's interests."

The Commission also plans involvement in the GAC.

There has long been international disquiet over the influence of US politics on ICANN. The repeated refusal to sanction .xxx domains was seen as a concession to the religious right, for example.

Vint Cerf commented: "[The agreement] fulfils a long-standing objective of the original formation of Icann: to create an organisation that can serve the world's interest in a robust, reliable and interoperable internet."

There are more details of the proposed new structures and how to comment here. ®

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Latest Comments

ICANN and EU Telecoms prison package

Vivian Reding declared herself the number 1 defender of net neutrality in Europe, as the same time as telling us that the non-neutrality clauses in the EU Telecoms package will strenghten neutrality.

I am sure ICANN was an imperfect entity, but it would be good to that any joining Board members had as a minimum agreed to support the Internet principles.

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No Matter

This is a touchy-feely stuff to make little countries feel better. The U.S. Dept. of Commerce still has a seat on the board and that means that no one else will have much of a say.

ICANN will never be allowed to leave the U.S. and will always remain under their thumb.

Not that it matters anyway, no matter where you live your government is already censoring what you can and cannot access online.

Fuck it. We really don't need the Internet anyway - life was better before it came along.

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@CD001

Thanks for the illustration of the typical blindingly poor understanding of how ICANN has worked, up to this point.

What, specifically, are you referring to with your "dictatorship" comment? And how does that differ from the process now being adopted? Are you implying that ICANN was a "dictatorship"? Is it simply because now there will be even more global players, not just the varied lot that has comprised ICANN's board and operational unit to-date? What are some of the things ICANN has done "badly", in your opinion, that will now be done "better" as a result of this change? Do you even have any idea what ICANN is, or how it is structured, or what, exactly, being "under the control" of the US government has meant to the activities it engages in?

I think you don't know what you are talking about, and are just jumping on the anti-American bandwagon armed with the barest awareness of what this corporation's structural modification means to the rest of the world.

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