This is a move that is pretty certain to have certaingroups of people around the world screaming about another nasty move by ‘Cowboy George’. The President has decided that control of the top level domain name machinery will stay in U.S. hands and NOT be handed over to ICANN or any other group.

ICANN itself has been coming under heavy fire in the past year for it’s somewhat ‘arbitrary’ behavior and decisions. I’m sure that the move to approve the .xxx tld, recently, made this announcement an easier decision for the current administration, based, as it is, on fundamentalist Christian backing.

The Bush administration announced Thursday that the U.S. government will not hand over control of the Internet to any other organization, a surprise move that could presage an international flap.

At the moment, the U.S. government maintains control of the Internet’s “root”–the master file that lists what top-level domains are authorized–but has indicated in the past that it would transfer that responsibility to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN

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[tags]internet,tld,george bush,icann[/tags]