Doc Searls, in his post “Public as a verb“, quotes Britt Blaser:

When you make a public good private, it's said that you privatize it. So if you rescue a public good for the continued use of the public, doesn't that mean that you publicize it? Yeah. It's time to publicize the Internet…

The Internet must be publicized because it's way too vulnerable to privatization. It's encroached upon more each week, with the latest assault being the awful Verisign dereliction of its stewardship of .com and .net domains. We know that Microsoft will do everything it can to make the Internet its private sandbox. Telecoms have proven that they will do anything they can to avoid commoditization. The only force on earth that can stop it, sad to say, is the police power of the state. Lilly-livered libertarians like me hate that truth, but truth it is.

Well, then, the Eisenhowerian glove has been laid down. Is the government our last refuge from the opression of capital? As the government tries every day to slough off its responisbilities to the private sector, has the time come to reverse the trend?

I don't think nationalization (that's what it would really be) is the answer. I think proper stewardship is the answer, and the government has to take a more active role in kicking the ass of ICANN and its vendors when they step out of line with the public interest.

Since the Internet extends outside the US borders, I suspect we might have some problems putting it under government control. What we really need is an Internet like the US interstate highway system–built with federal money, the use of which is governed by regulations designed to promote public interest; but constructed, policed and maintained by the localities it passes through.

If the Commerce Department were to take over the registry of domain names, it would probably treat it like it does the Patent and Trademark Office–as a piggy bank to raid for other projects. What has to happen is that ICANN needs to be made publicly accountable, and made to reclaim its responsibility to oversee the master DNS, supported by royalties from multiple registrars and contract revenue from the federal government based on its adherence to public policy.