The U.S. government announced recently that it planned to give up its control of a group whose control over domain names for the Internet has been a longstanding cause of worldwide concern.

The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency within the U.S. Commerce Department, said in a statement that it will transition the functions to the "global multi-stakeholder community". Currently, the NTIA functions are performed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) pursuant to a contract that expires on Sept. 30, 2015.

Undoubtedly, the Internet is dominated by the U.S. because almost all the "roots" of the Internet are to be found there - there are thirteen root servers in the world and ten of them are in the U.S.

ICANN is a nonprofit organization founded in 1998 to handle numerous Internet-related tasks and is a part of the U.S. Commerce Department.

The Internet is a global system and domain names are the "identification numbers" of networks around the world. But they have been controlled by the U.S. for a long time, a fact that has aroused widespread concerns in terms of Internet security.

By using its monopoly on Internet resources, the U.S. can interfere in other countries' internal affairs through a variety of means. It even has a special troop of elite hackers recruited from countries all around the world.

When the NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed the PRISM program and other intelligence supervision programs last year, this proved that international concerns about Internet security were not unfounded.

Therefore the U.S. intention to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multi- stakeholder community at this time is a gesture towards rebuilding mutual trust with the rest of the world and to the realization of Internet freedom, openness and co-governance

But the truth is that what the U.S. will give up is only the governance of the ICANN. It has concurrently set the precondition that it "will not accept a proposal that replaces the NTIA role with a government-led or an inter-governmental organization" - which means that an enterprise or corporation will control the ICANN. But if a U.S. company wins the tender, the U.S. government will still control the company in accordance with its domestic laws, and it will therefore continue to dominate the Internet.

In an era of network integration, Internet security needs participants from all over the world.

The article is edited and translated from《 网络放权，山姆大叔真要“洗心革面”？》, source: Chinamil.com, author: Hu Yajun and Liu Mingxing.