Though Republican lawmakers have painted this moment in Internet history as ‘doomsday,’ and rallied a last ditch-effort to block it, at midnight on Saturday the U.S. government cede control of the web’s core naming directory to a multi-stakeholder nonprofit.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based group of international stakeholders will now control the functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which includes the database that translates website names into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
The handover, hailed as “the most significant change in the Internet’s functioning for a generation” by the U.K.-based technology site The Register, was long fought for by open Internet advocates.
And though a technical change that will not affect everyday users, a number of Republican lawmakers raised hell over the plan, including Sen. Ted Cruz, who called it a “giveaway” that would cause “irreparable damage…not only on our nation but on free speech across the world.”
Republican attorneys general from Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Texas submitted a last-minute motion to block the plan, which was rejected (pdf) by a Texas judge late Friday.
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