EU optimistic over wider governance of Internet

Internet News Article | Reuters.com: "By Huw Jones

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission hopes a meeting next week will come up with an agreement to allow governments more direct influence over the domain name system that guides traffic around the Internet.

A U.N. report has put forward a more multi-national approach to running the Internet which serves a billion users worldwide, saying this would be more democratic and transparent, a view the 25-nation European Union shares.

Day-to-day handling of domain names is done by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based non-profit organization created by the U.S. Commerce Department.

ICANN's governments committee has only an advisory role."