Prof. Michael Froomkin, who has long been one of the leading experts on the mess that is ICANN, points out a significant change in the US government's take on the Domain Name System (US Drops ICANN/DNS Bombshell (on WSIS?)).

The US Department of Commerce has announced an unexpected new policy regarding the Domain Name System (DNS) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

In previous pronouncements, the US had indicated that the US would someday release its ultimate control over the "root" -- the file that contains the master list of authorized registries and thus determines which TLDs show up on the consensus Internet and who shall have the valuable right to sell names in them. That day would come if and when ICANN fulfilled a number of conditions spelled out in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

Today's announcement says the opposite: the US plans to keep control of the root indefinitely, thus freezing the status quo. Nothing will change immediately as a result. But the timing is weird, coming as it does only a short time before the forthcoming meeting of the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). [links in original]

Personally, I'm actually not that upset with this promise to maintain the status quo because I don't see ICANN as deserving to slip loose of the last significant source of even potential control on its ever-expanding budget and activities. And, although it's not politically correct in international circles to say so, I'd be uncomfortable with any international control over the Internet that gave any foreign despot a say in how domestic communications work. (I'd be fine with a coalition of the willing serving as co-trustees if membership were limited to democracies; for some reason that's never what anyone contemplates.) ....

The bright side from the point of view of potentially angry foreign governments is the invitation to thinking about new ways to deal with ccTLD issues; coupled with the reference to multiple fora, this suggests a possible deal on taking the ccTLD part out of ICANN and situating it somewhere else. But that's pure speculation on my part.