• NYTimes, Monday, November 14, 2005 3:16 PM

Government intervention in the evolution of the Internet since its early years has been limited, to say the least. Now an omnipresent, worldwide phenomenon, the Internet has become a subject of great political debate between nations. The debate over Internet regulation continues this week at a United Nations meeting in Tunis, where the world is expected to challenge the U.S.' authority over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which manages the domain name system by assigning network names like mediapost.com. As The New York Times points out, some say this gives the U.S. unilateral control over the DNS, effectively controlling the Internet, but scholars disagree, saying the heartbeat of the Internet is not DNS - rather, it's more like the ocean, something that flows uncontrollably. Pentagon officials agree, saying "there's nothing there to control," and that, if anything, a centralized organization would slow innovation. Several countries, China and Brazil chief among them, want the U.S. to relinquish control of ICANN to a neutral governing body, which they believe would help oversee the Web.

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