US government cuts cord on Internet oversight

Washington

THE US government ended its formal oversight role over the Internet, handing over management of the online address system to a global non-profit entity.

The US Commerce Department announced that its contract had expired with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages the Internet's so-called "root zone". That leaves ICANN as a self-regulating organisation that will be operated by the Internet's "stakeholders" - engineers, academics, businesses, non-government and government groups.