Obama Administration Wants More Inclusive ICANN

ICANN is the Marina del Rey, California nonprofit that sets the rules for the Internet, including doling out suffixes, such as .com or .net. New suffixes coming include .gay, .nazi and .muslim.

....The United States proposed that any country within ICANN's advisory council should be able to recommend eliminating any new domain name. If no other country objected to that nation's veto recommendation, then ICANN's board would have to follow suit. ICANN, however, wants those challenges to go before three experts guiding the International Chamber of Commerce.

But ICANN's advisory body of foreign countries recently decided that any nation's objection will be considered as non-binding advice to ICANN's board.

Commerce Department officials worry that if foreign governments feel they have no role in the process, they will start ignoring ICANN, blocking Web sites and splitting up the Internet so that only certain domains can be accessed, depending on the country.

Critics of the Commerce Department say the agency is bending too much to other nations' preferences. WaPo