The Internet is an American phenomenon. The addresses are in English characters. 10 of the 13 root mirrors are in the USA. The standards board that makes all the decisions is in the US with no international members... What should a "global" Internet look like?

In what would be a historic first, Vaitkadamas might have spotted a bona-fide trend here. This concerns in this article are about political control not technical issues, like spam and fraud, but expect to see more news on this topic over the next few years. It is a bit amusing to hear the US government say that they need to control the Internet because other governments, like the United Nations, is too bureaucratic. I wonder how many voters would agree that our government is the pillar of efficiency?

In Threat to Internet's Clout, Some Are Starting Alternatives

Rise of Developing Nations, Anti-U.S. Views Play Role; Pioneer Sounds the Alarm

A 'Root' Grows in Germany

By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

January 19, 2006

More than a decade after the Internet became available for commercial use, other countries and organizations are erecting rivals to it -- raising fears that global interconnectivity will be diminished.

German computer engineers are building an alternative to the Internet to make a political statement. A Dutch company has built one to make money. China has created three suffixes in Chinese characters substituting for .com and the like, resulting in Web sites and email addresses inaccessible to users outside of China. The 22-nation Arab League has begun a similar system using Arabic suffixes.

The Internet, developed by U.S. government agencies beginning in the 1960s, uses a so-called domain-name system, also called the "root," that consists of 264 suffixes. These include .com, .net, .org and country codes such as .jp for Japan. The root is coordinated by a private, nonprofit group in Marina del Rey, Calif., called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or Icann. This body works under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which set up the organization in 1998.

As the Internet's role grows around the world, some are uneasy with the notion that a U.S.-based body overseen by the U.S. government has sole power over what domain names are used and who controls each name. Other countries such as China also say Icann is too slow in forming domain names in non-Roman languages, hindering the development of an Internet culture in those countries.

Concern about U.S. oversight increased last summer when the Commerce Department persuaded Icann to postpone the approval of a new domain-name suffix to be used for pornographic Web sites, .xxx. The department said it had received letters of complaint from Christian groups. While other countries also opposed the name, critics cited the incident as evidence of Washington's influence.

The matter of control came to a head last November at a United Nations summit in Tunis, where the U.S. delegation fought off demands from more than 170 countries to give up unilateral oversight of Icann.

More than half of the Internet's users today are outside the U.S. Governments increasingly are interested in how the Internet works. Brazil, for instance, collects much of its tax revenue online. "The Internet has become a critical part of our lives," says Abdullah Al-Darrab, Saudi Arabia's deputy governor for technical affairs. "These policies should not be left to a single country or entity."

Some countries with non-Roman alphabets are also taking matters into their own hands. China has created three domain names in Chinese characters -- .zhongguo, .gongsi and .wangluo -- and made them available for public and commercial use inside China only.

Similarly, Arab countries have in the past 18 months experimented with country code domain names in Arabic, distinct from the Icann system, says Khaled Fattal of Surrey, England. Mr. Fattal is head of Minc.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Internet multilingual.

"There is no such thing as a global Internet today," says Mr. Fattal. "You have only an English-language Internet that is deployed internationally. How is that empowering millions of Chinese or Arab citizens?"