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Who will govern the web if the US government relinquishes its contract with ICANN, which manages much of the Internet, in 2015? (Photo: Ken Hawkins)

Feature

Who governs the online world?

Who will govern the web if the US government relinquishes its contract with ICANN, which manages much of the Internet, in 2015? (Photo: Ken Hawkins)

The Internet feels like it has always been with us and it is easy to forget just how recently it became part of public consciousness.

The number of regular web-users has increased from 150 million in 1998 to over 3 billion, and technologists see no reason why this number cannot swell up to 7 billion over the next few years.

The brainchild of engineers such as Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn from the 1970s onwards, the net has also tended to be run by the engineers that created it. Its gov...

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Author Bio

Benjamin Fox is a seasoned reporter and editor, previously working for fellow Brussels publication Euractiv. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He heads up the AU-EU section at EUobserver, based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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