Shane Tews

[Commentary] The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced that it plans to end its formal relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) by not renewing the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) contract in 2015.

Now, as this technical function of the Internet enters a highly politicized environment, new challenges arise. Chief among those challenges are the lack of a public plan regarding whom to transfer the root zone management function to in the absence of the NTIA and how to protect this function from political desires by foreign countries or here in the US to limit freedom of speech.

For instance, the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), issued a statement praising NTIA for its move on the IANA function a day after he sent a letter to the Obama Administration suggesting “.sucks” should not be added to the root zone as a new Top Level Domain. If the first amendment protects “.sucks,” it should also protect .wtf, .god, .dog, or .shabaka. Similar letters have arrived at the Department of Commerce from multiple foreign governments for years, but no one worried that the suggestion of censoring the Internet via the root zone was truly a possibility.

Now, censorship is a live question thanks to the NTIA’s announcement. Those of us who care about the future of the Internet have it in our best interest to make sure ICANN keeps the free and open Internet as its top priority.

[Tews is the Chief Policy Officer at 463 Communications]