November 2016 U.S. Elections and the Fate of Internet Privatization

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November 2016 U.S. Elections and the Fate of Internet Privatization

By CircleID Reporter
September 24, 2015, 10:46 pm PDT Views: 5,234 Add Comment

The currently ongoing process of privatizing the Internet technical functions under the IANA Contract—outside the direct control of the U.S. government—will not happen before March 2017, predicts Sophia Bekele in an op-ed piece published in The Hill. She writes: “The September 30, 2016 will be a few weeks before the November 2016 U.S. elections, and if the IANA Transition is made a campaign issue, chances are that the 114th Congress will not approve the proposal immediately. The coming elections will result in a new Congress—the 115th; and a possible change of the administration party. If the Republicans form the next federal government in January 2017, chances are that the entire transition program will be revisited. Accordingly, whether the transition will be approved or not will be based on how the Republicans evaluate the issue of fear of capture of the Internet DNS by foreign governments. Moreover, the most important question of ‘why transition at all?’ has not been thoroughly answered by anyone—especially by those who want to fix what is not broken.”

By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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