The Internet Giveaway

Attorneys general from four U.S. states have filed a lawsuit to stop the Obama administration from handing over control of the internet to an international governing body.The White House had planned to officially hand the reins of the internet address system over to a group of international stakeholders on October 1, but the states’ fears the move could be unconstitutional threatens to block one of Obama’s top tech initiatives.The attorneys general for Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada and Texas all signed on to the lawsuit this week that argues the Obama plan to hand over control of the internet in an illegal transfer of U.S. government property, and any such giveaway would require congressional approval.The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit group that handles oversight of internet domain names. Since its creation in 1998, ICANN has been under the control of the U.S. Department of Commerce, but the Obama administration began plans in early 2014 to relinquish that control, with the process coming to completion Friday.ICANN is the authority that controls domain names for websites and individual IP addresses for internet users. Opponents of the transfer fear that it will lead to censorship of the internet, should countries with poor free speech records like Russia or China somehow gain control.“Trusting authoritarian regimes to ensure the continued freedom of the internet is lunacy,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.