Keys to the Internet up for grabs at global summit

The US Commerce Department's decision to ease its governance over the Internet and open it up to multiple stakeholders will be on the docket in Brazil starting Wednesday.

Government representatives, along with members of academia and private industry, from around the world are heading to Sao Paulo for Net Mundial, a two-day meeting to discuss how the future of Internet governance will be handled. The meeting will kick off with discussions between governments, corporations, and members of academia on a transition plan for Internet governance and could extend into other topics, including cyberspying.

Last month, the US Department of Commerce announced plans to hand off supervision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In a statement, the Commerce Department tasked the nonprofit with convening its "multistakeholder" community to develop a transition plan for Internet governance. ICANN is responsible for assigning top-level domain names and handling the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) -- which translates numeric Internet Protocol addresses into human-readable domain names like cnet.com -- as well as managing the Web's root servers that house DNS records.

The Commerce Department's decision is not so much a desire to cease Internet oversight, as an attempt to extend an olive branch to other governments around the world that are growing increasingly concerned with alleged US surveillance programs.

Secret documents leaked last October by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the US may have been spying on international governments and in some cases, their leaders. The news hurt international relationships, and as ICANN Chief Dxecutive Fadi Chehade told CNET earlier this year, "US oversight (of the Web) is not sustainable any longer."

The Net Mundial discussions will aim to determine how oversight will be handled after the US steps aside as Internet caretaker. The Commerce Department has asked that the Web's oversight be conducted by a group of countries, companies, and members of academia.

Proposals are expected to be brought to the meetings this week that would include moving Internet administration to the United Nations -- a prospect that the US doesn't agree with. If such a move were approved by participating countries, the US has already said that it would delay any planned handover for at least four years.

All of that, coupled with the expectation of a contentious discussion over Web surveillance, will come to a head on Wednesday. And as of this writing, it's unclear whether anything will actually be decided at the international confab.

(Via WSJ)