The government’s getting out of the Internet business

You go to your computer or pull out your phone, fire up the browser of choice, type in marketplace.org, and magically our website shows up (and you’re here, so case in point.)

Except… it’s not magic. The internet is a deeply complicated and completely essential system, the architecture of which has been run under contract with the United States Goverment by a group known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

For now.The Commerce Department announced it’s going to get out of the internet business just as soon as a replacement group is set up to keep an eye on things.

We called up the CEO of ICANN, Fadi Chehade, to see how that might work.