China Looking to Form New Internet?

In a move that some speculate to be the initial steps towards a possible breakaway from the global Internet, new versions of top-level domains will be added on separate Chinese root servers, China's Ministry of Information Industry said on Tuesday.

According to the state-run People's Daily, the country is launching ".cn," ".com," and ".net" in Chinese.

The adjustments were made to bring the country's domain names into agreement with an article in a government decree known as the China Internet Domain Names Regulations.

"It means Internet users don't have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of the United States," the paper wrote. The story was ambiguous as to exactly what the country's plans were.

For that reason, ICANN was not commenting on the situation, saying it would attempt to clarify what the ruling means for the Internet in general, and whether China was creating top-level or second-level domains.

If China is indeed creating new top-level domain, the repercussions for the Internet as a whole loom large. The Communist-controlled country could essentially create a closed Internet network within its borders, further limiting the freedoms of its citizens.

Furthermore, two sets of ".com" or other domains could create massive headaches for root server administrators, as they would be forced to figure out ways to properly resolve the new domain names.

One administrator called it the equivalent of having a phone number that routes to two different people.

Speculation that China, and possibly other countries, would start to break away from ICANN began after the Bush administration was successful in keeping control of the group last year. The European Union, along with several other countries, wanted a UN body to assume control of the worldwide network including its name servers.

China was one of the countries that objected to United States control.