China and the Break-Up of the Net

The internet community experienced a bout of trepidation earlier in March when “The People’s Daily” announced pending changes in China’s domain name system. The move could signal an attempt to break away from the single-body control over worldwide net domain names by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, a US non-profit organization that controls website accessibility and email-routing. Many non-English speaking countries have felt stymied by Icann’s failure to branch out into multi-lingual domain names. Chinese officials noted that the proposed changes do not represent an attempt to create an independent Chinese internet, which could lead to the global network fracturing into competing turfs. To this date no country has been successful in creating a national substitute for the US-administered internet, but the Chinese domain names, are certainly a step in that direction and could diminish the internet’s global reach. – YaleGlobal