Google evangelist and “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf has made a compelling argument on The New York Times about how Internet access is not a human right.  Ever since thousands of people communicated through the Internet to form protests in the streets of the Middle East, questions have been raised about whether Internet should be a civil or a human right.  Cerf argues that technology is an enabler of rights, but not a right itself.  In order for something to be considered a human right, it should be a thing that we as humans need in order to remain healthy and lead meaningful lives such as freedom from torture.

The Internet Protocol version 4 is close to becoming obsolete. A pool of over 4 billion Internet address has been emptied yesterday morning so now we are moving to the Internet Protocol version 6. This is not a huge problem for average consumers, but businesses with a lot of servers will have to make some adjustments.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) President and CEO Paul Twomey will be stepping down at the end of 2009.  Twomey decided not to renew his contract for another three years.  He announced this at an ICANN meeting in Mexico City.  Twomey said he wanted to “move on to another leadership position in the private or international sectors.”

Twomey will remain on board until a successor is named and will be around until July 1.  ICANN is in the midst of adding many more new domain name suffixes.  ICANN is in charge of overseeing all domain name rules as selected by the U.S. government.  Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet stepped down as chairman of ICANN about a year ago.

“I can think of no other person who has had more influence on the course of ICANN’s evolution than Paul,” stated Cerf.

[via AP]