This new letter from the NTIA to ICANN is worth reading (and worthy of dusting off the ol' ICANN.blog for a quick post). The letter, dated yesterday, essentially says that whatever happens with the JPA and ICANN's existential internal examinations, it won't affect the authority of the United States over the root zone.

Here at Lextext Central, we've known this forever, and people close to the ICANN process have known it too. On one level, the letter is a little bit like stating that the sky is blue. But for those who have been looking at the sky through their rose colored glasses (which includes a lot of people in Europe and Asia), this letter may look like the U.S. just dropped a big bomb on the Internet.