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Saturday, November 12, 2005

"Showdown looms over control of Web"

Read Andy Sullivan's full article on Reuters/Yahoo! News.

"The United States is headed for a showdown with much of the rest of the world over control of the Internet.

"Countries like China, Brazil and Iran don't like the fact that the world's only superpower oversees the system that guides traffic across the global computer network, and have pushed for an international body to take over that role.

"The United States believes such a body would slow the pace of online innovation to a crawl, requiring entrepreneurs to win permission from a cumbersome bureaucracy before introducing services like Internet telephony.

"'It would be akin to having more than 100 drivers of a single bus. Right now we have a driver, and the driver's been doing a good job,' said Assistant Commerce Secretary Michael Gallagher, the U.S. official who oversees the domain-name system.

"Much of the business and technical community that actually runs the Internet agrees with Gallagher. But those groups will be relegated to the sidelines and the United States will find few allies among other governments at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia next week."

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