Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that there is a “compelling case” for a voluntary organisation to regulate the internet. He said the BJP government was committed to ensuring freedom of expression but there was a need for the world to work together on regulating the internet, as some people abuse it to spread hatred and terrorism or to carry out cyber-attacks.
Mr Prasad said regulation of the internet was necessary so that the right to freedom of expression does not get compromised. The minister was speaking at the 57th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) being held in India for the second time, in Hyderabad.
ICANN is a non-profit entity which manages Domain Name System that helps in organising the internet into domains such as .in, .com or .org. Localisation of domain names in 22 Indian languages will form important part of discussions at the meeting. India leads the world with seven internationalised country code domains and passed evaluations for eight more domains.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers helps organise the Domain Name System (DNS), or “the phone book of the Internet”. Humans need words and computers know only numbers. ICANN bridges this divide by giving each address a unique number.
This will be the first ICANN meet since the US has given up its stewardship role. This puts ICANN under the care of the global multi-stakeholder community.
