INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE OF THE INTERNET: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

Economists have long recognised that government may serve as a vehicle to create and maintain monopoly power and hence generate economic rents for a favoured few. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has a government-provided monopoly of the allocation of top-level domains (TLDs) on the A-root server and so generates economic rents. The A-root server is the only computer network that links registered TLDs to the Internet. This paper uses insights of the economics of regulation and rent seeking to explain how existing technology may bypass ICANN and thus restore a competitive market in domain names.