The decision means that the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) may not gain independence in September 2006, as envisaged by its contracts with the US Department of Commerce.

Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of Commerce, in a speech, outlined four US Principles on the Internet’s Domain Name and Addressing System.

One of those principles is that the US is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.

Ironically, the decision to maintain its historic role in the second half of that sentence is precisely the kind of action that could adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS referred to in the first half of the sentence.

The authoritative root zone file is the master list of domain names that sits on 13 server constellations at the very top of the domain name system hierarchy. It ultimately tells you how to get to web pages and where to send email.

Mr Gallagher’s words are being broadly interpreted as meaning the US has overturned the Clinton and Bush administration pledges to privatize the management of the DNS by eventually turning over control to ICANN, a California non-profit company.

Mr Gallagher indicated as much in an interview with the Associated Press following his speech, while not, of course, admitting that it is the policy U-turn that it is. It was the NTIA under President Bush, not Clinton, which set the September 2006 target for ICANN’s independence.

NTIA officials, who usually decline to comment on this type of thing, declined to comment on Friday. ICANN played its cards equally close to its chest, and said just that it was reviewing the statement.

However, it is very likely that the new policy has very little to do with ICANN and a lot to do with the United Nations.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is set to reveal, on July 18, the final report of the Working Group on Internet Governance. The document will come into play in November in Tunis, at the second World Summit on the Information Society.

The WGIG report, and the group’s discussions to date, have been almost unhealthily preoccupied with ICANN, given that it is the most tangible existing embodiment of internet governance outside of government itself.

Several members of WGIG come from nations not thought of as US-friendly. The 12 governmental officials in the 40-person WGIG come from China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Belgium, Luxembourg, Japan, South Africa and Barbados.

Syracuse University’s Milton Mueller, author of the 2002 book ‘Ruling The Root’, said he believes WGIG report will recommend the creation of a new forum for discussing internet governance matters. The group will not necessarily have any powers, he said.

The NTIA statement is somewhat shocking, Mr Mueller said, particularly in its timing, coming before the Working Group has released its report.

Brazil and China have been leading the charge to have the International Telecommunications Union, or a new UN-affiliated body, take over ICANN’s functions. It is not yet known what the WGIG report will conclude, but it is unlikely that it will recommend such a radical move.

Given that UN-baiting has become a sport among Washington’s controlling right-wingers since the Iraq war started, it seems possible that the NTIA decision is just one part of the Bush administration’s broader strategy, which some characterize as anti-UN.

Mr Mueller said he doesn’t believe that. Rather, he said, it could be a case of the US government digging in its heels to create a bargaining chip that will help it get what it wants when the WSIS meeting comes around later this year.

The US government can exercise power over the DNS root more or less unilaterally because of a complex series of agreements, involving everybody on the Internet, that chain all the way up to the White House.

Internet users agree to let their ISPs resolve domain names on their behalf. These ISPs agree to get their DNS information from, ultimately, the DNS root servers. The root server operators agree only to publish the root zone file that ICANN tells them to. And ICANN is beholden to its memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the NTIA.

This MoU gives ICANN a set of tasks that were expected to lead to its independence, some of which had deadlines, many of which are ongoing. The organization finished the last timed task last week.

One of the ongoing tasks is securing international support. This has been the most difficult task, and represents something of a Catch-22, in that ICANN cannot secure the global support it needs to achieve independence until it is independent.

The fact that ICANN answers to the NTIA is a constant sticking point for operators of country-code domains, many of which are affiliated with the local governments and cannot sign up to agreements that could be seen as handing sovereignty to the US.

The US government is already a destabilizing factor for this very reason, according to Mr Mueller. The longer ICANN answers to Washington, the greater the probability of other nations setting up their own roots, introducing incompatibility and potentially balkanizing the Internet.

That is already happening to some extent in Asia, where countries including China, annoyed that the ASCII-based DNS still doesn’t support their character sets, have started turning to private companies that can provide alternate resolution services.

To date, the NTIA has operated in very much a hands off mode when it comes to ICANN, at least publicly. The department merely rubberstamps ICANN’s decisions, and has not to date forced it to change its mind on any matter.

But other branches of the government, notably Congress, have attempted to force ICANN’s hand in the past, albeit unsuccessfully, to score political points.

For example, NeuStar, which operates the .us domain, was forced to waste time creating the massively unsuccessful .kids.us second-level domain, but Congress’s original plan had been to force ICANN to create .kids at the top level.