Breitbart - FCC Commissioner on Internet Oversight Switch: ‘If You Cherish Free Expression,’ ‘You Should Be Worried,’ This Is ‘Irreversible’. So an FCC commissioner doesn't want to see control of the internet given to ICANN because it has members from foreign countries. What nonsense.
Yahoo - Internet caretaker ICANN to escape US control.
When I began this blog I wrote about ICANN. When I began this blog one of the groups that worked form me was a systems group and I used to ask every new employee if they knew who owned the internet and not one of them ever knew or had heard of ICANN. They would instead tell me nobody owned the internet and look at me as if I were stupid. I would then tell them that the United States government owned the internet and they would not believe me. Guess what, the United States government still owns the internet. The federal government created the internet (ARPnet originally) and owns the parts that make it work. The same is true for GPS by the way, it uses 3 satellites all owned by the military.
If you in any way wish to understand the world you should understand who owns the internet. ICANN does NOT own the internet. ICANN controls the internet because it has a contract with the federal government to do so. Without the contract from the government ICANN has NO right to do anything. It doesn't even have the right to assign domain names, it's number one job.
Here is the real issue for the establishment. The first amendment applies to the federal government, ICANN only has a say over the internet because they are given that right by the government. This means that the internet must follow the rules set forth by the federal government and the government must follow the constitution.
The two biggest issues the establishment is interested in are controlling what is said over the internet and forcing everyone to have a unique public identification that uses the internet. Some seem to believe that by turning over the internet to ICANN it can then be purchased by other countries or more likely American companies who will then profit from this public infrastructure that was created by your tax dollars.
The FCC wants to keep control over the internet; but, it does not control the internet. That is a power grab. Investors want to control the internet because they could charge lots of money and force you to follow their rules or pay them a fee for using the internet. The questions about who controls the internet are about money and power and the government wants to turn those things over to others rather than keep it under the control of the federal government because you can vote to change what the government does.