In her weekly video message, European Union commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, urged for the body that assigns internet addresses to shed its US government links.

Ever since the birth of the internet as a Pentagon project, it has been under different forms of US government supervision. For the past decade, day-to-day responsibility for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses has been in the hands of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). 

ICANN has been registered in the state of California as a not-for-profit corporation.

"In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world," Reding said.

With current agreement running out on September 30 2009, Reding said "the time to act is now."

According to Reding, ICANN should become a fully privatised, fully independent company, held accountable by "a small, independent international tribunal."

While Reding wants to leave "day-to-day management of the internet" ... "to the independent decisions of ICANN and of the global internet community," she said she believes "should be a multilateral forum available for governments to discuss general internet governance policy issues."

As examples of issues where Reding thought "expertise of ICANN, the pressure of market forces, as well as international law and principles" would require "swift and efficient coordination among governments," Reding mentions "threats to the stability, security and openness of the internet."

Reding proposed the creation of a "G-12 for Internet Governance." This group of government representatives would meet at least twice a year and make recommendations to ICANN, Reding said.

The G-12 for Internet Governance would include two representatives from each North America, South America, Europe and Africa, three representatives from Asia and Australia, as well as the Chairman of ICANN as a non-voting member.

Reding called on US president Barak Obame to "have the courage, the wisdom and the respect for the global nature of the internet to pave the way in September for a new, more accountable, more transparent, more  democratic and more multilateral form of Internet Governance."