Debate over U.S. control of the Internet's core system threatens to overtake the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), an international meeting in Brazil, next week. The meeting was meant to cover topics including spam, free speech and cheaper access.

IGF is the result of a compromise world leaders reached at a U.N. summit in Tunisia two years ago. They agreed to let the United States remain in charge. But they established an annual forum to discuss emerging issues, including whether control of how domain names are assigned — and thus how people use the Internet — should remain with the U.S. government and ICANN.

Read full story: Associated Press

Related topics: DNS, Domain Names, ICANN, Internet Governance, Spam