Subject: Article: Should Geeks, Or Governments, Run the Net?

From: "Meritt James" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 12:35:09 -0500

Once again, the people who decide how the Internet is supposed to
function are not getting along. The Net is alight with e-flames, and
people from all over the world
are in Accra, Ghana, this week, arguing with the passion of parents at a
Little League game.

Sometimes, what these relatively anonymous Internet gurus worry about is
impossibly geeky. Things like root servers, protocol parameters and port
numbers are
critical to making sure we see the right Web pages and get the right
e-mail, and we're grateful for these people -- as long as they don't go
into too much detail at
parties.

But as the Internet has insinuated itself more deeply into global
commerce and daily life, more fundamental business and political
questions have begun to boil:

What are the rules for assigning and naming Web addresses, which enable
us to find anything and everything? Who controls, and profits from,
granting and
registering these addresses? Should there be space reserved for purely
public endeavors? And so on.
...

Full article available at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24234-2002Mar13.html
-- 
James W. Meritt CISSP, CISA
Booz | Allen | Hamilton
phone: (410) 684-6566