(credit: Christiaan Colen)
Remember the projected Y2K bug disaster? The world’s computers would supposedly go haywire as the clock ticked to January 1, 2000, thus destroying the world and ensuing widespread panic. Didn’t happen. Fast forward to today, however, and another doomsday scenario is afoot (albeit with much less fanfare).
If many politicians are to be believed, an Internet disaster is set to commence this Saturday. That’s when a tiny branch of the US Commerce Department officially hands over its oversight of the Internet’s “address book” or root zone—the highest level of the domain naming system (DNS) structure—to a nonprofit, a Los Angeles-based body called the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Calling it an “Internet giveaway,” many Republican lawmakers tried to block the changeover, a transition that is strongly supported by the President Barack Obama administration and by Internet giants like Facebook and Google.
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Source: Ars Technica – Y2K 2.0: Is the US government set to “give away the Internet” Saturday?