Looming struggle over Internet control could put network's freedoms at risk

The Seattle Times reports:

Next month, world diplomats will travel to Tunisia to tackle a topic so dense that it normally clears a room in seconds: how the Internet is governed.

But the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society could be the scene of an international brawl, with some claiming that the core freedoms of the global network are at risk. The battle centers on how much control the United States will continue to have in overseeing the Internet's plumbing.

This sounds like geeky stuff, but it matters for everyday users. The technical rules for how networks and computers find and recognize each other can determine how freely and securely information can be retrieved and sent.

These matters are the province of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), under a contract with the Commerce Department that expires next year.