Today, 1 October 2016, the IANA functions contract officially expired. As a result, the coordination and management of the Internet’s unique identifiers is now privatized and in the hands of the volunteer-based multistakeholder community.
The most significant change in the internet's functioning for a generation will happen tonight at midnight.At 12.01am Washington DC time, the US government will walk away from the IANA contract, which has defined how the internet has grown and been structured for nearly 20 years, and hand it over to non-profit organization ICANN.Nothing will change for ordinary internet users – ICANN will keep doing what it has done since its inception in 1999 – but the shift represents something much bigger: the first time that a new communications technology has been released from, rather than pulled under, government control.With the transition to ICANN, it will be the internet's users and not their countries' representatives who will ultimately decide how the global network develops from here on in.
una locura, ahora si que me voy a vivir al campo fijo...
