Sen Cruz touts bill as 'last chance' to delay Internet domain handoff

Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) is circulating a new bill that would prevent the government from handing off oversight of the Internet domain name system without approval from Congress. Sen Cruz began circulating the legislation recently to colleagues with background information that called it "our last chance to save internet freedom."

The legislation is titled the Protecting Internet Freedom Act. The bill would also require the Obama Administration to certify that it has secured "sole ownership" of the top-level domain names used by the federal government and the military, which end in dot-gov or dot-mil. Sen Cruz's legislation is the latest move in his long-running criticism of the Obama Administration's plan to hand off its oversight of some of the technical functions that underly the Internet. Those functions help pair up numerical IP addresses with their familiar web addresses so users can more easily navigate online. In 2014, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced it would begin a long-planned transition to give up its oversight to a global multi-stakeholder community. The department is slated to finish reviewing a transition proposal in June.