The Internet has always attracted libertarians and iconoclasts who found a freedom in cyberspace, which offered an anonymity and anarchy absent in the unwired world. Not surprisingly, regulating the Internet has long proved a hazardous endeavor. What little regulation exists is frequently criticized and its supporters “flamed” (or vilified by e-mail).

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) bears much of this anti-regulatory wrath. ICANN emerged in 1998 when the Clinton administration directed the U.S. Department of Commerce to privatize management of the domain name system, the database ensuring that Internet browsers call up the right information when someone enters a Web site address. In addition, ICANN manages disputes over domain names and determines whether .com and .org will be augmented by .biz, .travel, or even Chinese characters. These responsibilities may not seem momentous, but if any organization governs the Internet, it's ICANN.

University of Oslo legal scholar Susan Schiavetta and Konstantinos Komaitis of the University of Strathclyde (in Glasgow, Scotland) describe and denounce ICANN in a recent issue of the International Review of Law, Computers & Technology. The authors dub ICANN a socially pernicious force that has “managed to initiate a great deal of control over the 'inhabitants' of cyberspace.”

ICANN surely deserves some of this opprobrium, especially for failing to represent the international character of Web users. As the birthplace of the Internet, the United States dominates Net management, but placing ICANN outside the Department of Commerce was supposed to transform it into a truly international governing body. However, movement in this direction has been slow and halting, not least because ICANN has abandoned democracy: It recently...