Domain Name News – U.S. Government to Transition Domain Name Functions http://t.co/PPLzRubQyg via @webnames – Could only be good news

— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) March 18, 2014

The announcement includes:

U.S. Government To Transition Key Internet Domain Name Functions – The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has announced “its intent to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community.”

NTIA’s responsibility includes “the procedural role of administering changes to the authoritative root zone file – the database containing the lists of names and addresses of all top-level domains – as well as serving as the historic steward of the DNS.” NTIA has a contract with ICANN to carry out the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions. The contract expires on September 30, 2015.

Going back to ICANN’s beginnings in the late 1990′s, the U.S. had always intended that its role in the IANA functions would be temporary.