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The Bush Administration has set out places to privatise ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It also controls the administration of some top-level domains such as .com and .net although operations are outsourced to third parties such as VeriSign.

The Commerce Department scheduled the hearing to consider 'the progress of this transition' to the private sector, according to a statement. The hearing is a reaction by some industry groups who fear that premature privatisation will be a disaster for the Internet. They say that ICANN needs to be fully prepared, truly independent and able to resist pressure from special interests both at home and abroad.

Currently, ICANN is a non-profit organisation that is nominally under the control of the Commerce Department although the agency has always claimed a 'hands off' approach to Internet governance.

Nevertheless, ICANN has come under fierce criticism from various non-US bodies that have claimed it is too much under the control of the US Government - something the US denies. Last May, ICANN voted down the creation of an .xxx top level domain, which was thought to be due to political pressure from the religious right and was fiercely criticised by the European Commission among others.

At the end other end of the scale, countries like Saudi Arabia and China have claimed that ICANN does not take account of any culture other than that of western liberalism and have demanded that control of ICANN be handed over to a UN body.