• Reuters, Thursday, November 17, 2005 11:32 AM

As expected, nothing came of the U.N. Summit where several countries challenged the U.S.' control of the domain name system. Under an agreement reached yesterday, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a California-based nonprofit, will continue to oversee D.N.S, the system that registers domain names and directs Internet traffic. Said U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan: "Day-to-day running of the Internet must be left to technical institutions, not least to shield it from the heat of day to day politics." But not everyone was happy with the decision. Germany's deputy economics minister said the U.S. has won the battle but not the war over D.N.S. "We want influence on the decision. We want to be asked if there is a structural change," he said.

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