MARINA DEL REY, Calif. – After 11 years as a territory of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on Wednesday was set free to helm its own ship. Under a new agreement between the U.S. and the now independent international organization, the U.S. will have the same voice as any other country in how the domain name and IP address structure underlying the internet is managed.Some are applauding ICANN’s new freedom as a step toward increased globalization of the information superhighway. Others expect mass chaos to erupt when newly empowered nations demand an increase in the creation of global Top-Level Domains, or when ICANN decides to create them on its own in an effort to replace the funding the organization will lose as a consequence of the new operating agreement.

For the record, U.S. officials are against the creation of massive numbers of new gTLDs, according to the agreement.

“Nothing in this document is an expression of support by [the Department of Commerce] of any specific plan or proposal for the implementation of new generic top level domain names or is an expression by DOC of a view that the potential consumer benefits of new gTLDs outweigh the potential costs,” the agreement notes.

The U.S. government has a long history of overseeing the World Wide Web, beginning in the 1960s with Arpanet, a Department of Defense project. As the Net grew, the domain name system came into being in the 1980s to facilitate management of points along the route. By 1990, Arpanet morphed into NSFNET, a high-speed network created by IBM, MCI and Merit under the auspices of the National Science Foundation. In 1992, Congress gave permission for commercial traffic to join the party, and the framework for today’s internet was established. ICANN came into being in 1998 to manage the burgeoning communication behemoth, after President Bill Clinton directed the Department of Commerce to privatize control of the DNS.

Movement away from U.S. control has been gradual since then, with the most recent joint project agreement between Commerce and ICANN signed in 2006 and dated to expire Sept. 30, 2009. Although Wednesday’s new agreement frees ICANN from most federal control, a separate agreement that does not expire until 2011 requires the organization to gain permission from the U.S. government before making any major changes in the way the Web works.

The authority for ICANN’s daily operations now rests with the organization’s Governmental Advisory Committee, a 100-member international body that includes a single seat for a U.S. representative. Under the terms of the new agreement, ICANN will maintain its headquarters in the U.S.

“This reflects the globalization of the internet,” ICANN Chief Executive Officer Rod Beckstrom said in a prepared statement. “By America relaxing some control and inviting other countries to have an active hand, that increases the possibility that the global internet will remain unified.”