On Friday, March 14, the U.S. announced it’ll relinquish control of the Internet’s root zone file, which contains all information about top-level domain names. According to Ars Technica, the move came as a surprise, although the United States has promised for many years that eventually the system would be put in the hands of an international body.
Currently, the Department of Commerce has ultimate control over the Internet’s domain name system (DNS), which is managed by contract by the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). That contract will expire on September 30, 2015.
The timing of the move indicates it’s perhaps in response to international blow back against Washington as a result of the Snowden/NSA revelations. The next ICANN meeting is scheduled to be held in Brazil in April, just one of many countries taking action to isolate the Internet within its borders from the U.S.