Hi Eddie Thanks for your response. You seem to imply that the weakest link of the internet is it's potential to fork, and you are quite entitled to hold that view. But I don't think you charcterise my views fairly when you say: "If she believes that the US should not have control, and doesn’t think that there should be debate about it, then this means she must either want to accept the status quo, or make the decision to fragment the internet by setting up different root servers which a seperate global body will administer, leaving the US out of the picture. This would essentially break the internet." Actually, I think that the best solution would be for an international forum to inform ICANN's Memorandum of Understanding with the US Depertment of Commerce, as recommended by the Internet Governance Projects report "the political oversight of ICANN". This seems to be what has been decided at WSIS - and thankfully early so that they can get on with discussing how to bring the benefits of the internet to the developing world - their original agenda. Although I agree with you that the limits of a user's control of the root zone file is to create one of their own (and fork the internet) users can: 1) Create free proxy servers that help people living in oppressive regimes access the web without being censored or tracked 2) Create easy to use, free publishing software that allows millions of people to make up for the sorry state of the media in their contries by engaging in citizen journalism and blogging 3) Invent technologies like RSS and delicious that make sure web access through search does not fall to one shareholder-controlled organisation ...among other things. For me, the most crucial thing is that we get these technologies out to the developing world as quickly as humanly possible.