SAN FRANCISCO – After 25 years of keeping the internet strong and stable, the nonprofit ICANN — responsible for its technical infrastructure — is warning that increasingly polarised geopolitics could start cracking the foundations of the online world.
“It’s super important to differentiate between what countries decide to do with controlling content, as opposed to the technical infrastructure,” the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ interim chief executive Sally Costerton told AFP in a recent interview.
“The risk of fragmentation at the technical level is enormous. The foundation crumbles and game over.”
ICANN has managed the technical underpinnings of the internet since the group was established in Los Angeles in 1998, and for the past seven years it has operated under an international model that has all “stakeholders” work collaboratively.
“That…
