Group Offers Plan for Self-Governing Internet

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority submitted its plan for a self-governing Internet to Commerce Secretary Bill Daley. The plan to create an independent, nonprofit group, called Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, represents the consensus of the global Internet community and calls for an open decision-making process, said Jon Postel, who heads the authority at USC’s Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey. Internet Corp. would be based in Los Angeles, and four of the group’s nine interim board members are Americans. A White House official said the proposal would be posted on the Internet for at least a week to gather comments from the public. Representatives from the Commerce Department did not return calls seeking comment. Christopher Clough, a spokesman for Network Solutions, the Herndon, Va., firm that runs the Internet domain name system, said he expects one or two alternate proposals to be submitted to the government as well.