Internet unleashed.

• Author: Mueller, Milton
• Position: Letter to the editor

We in the Internet Governance Project were astounded to read in reason that ICANN has been "set free" from the U.S. government ("Internet Unleashed," January). Contrary to Katherine Mangu-Ward's article, ICANN has no "private life." Its early attempt to globalize and privatize Internet governance has failed, both because the U.S. refuses to give up power and because other governments would like a piece of that power.

The new ICANN-Commerce Department agreement, called a Joint Project Agreement (JPA), leaves the basic relationship between the government and ICANN unchanged. ICANN still gets general policy guidance from the Department of Commerce and still regularly reports to it for three more years. There is nothing in the JPA that guarantees an end to the supervisory relationship between the Commerce Department and ICANN in 2009.

There is also a separate contract between the U.S. government and ICANN to perform the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions. This agreement is actually more important than the JPA because it gives the government control of any modification of the Domain Name System root. This contract was renewed in August and has not changed. Indeed, the Bush administration has made it clear that it has no intention of giving up its power to dispense the IANA authority. Thus the new agreements do not substantially reduce the level of U.S. government control over ICANN and Internet identifiers.

In one important respect, the JPA actually...