Au Revoir to the Open Internet

[Commentary] When the Obama Administration announced that the US would end its stewardship of the open Internet, critics warned that Russia and China would take advantage of the American surrender. We didn't anticipate that supposed friends of the multistakeholder system of self-governance would also be eager to grab control.

France joined authoritarian regimes in seeking to replace the self-regulating Internet with a new system of one-country, one-vote control. France made the most headlines when it opposed an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plan to add .wine and .vin as new top-level Internet domains. France objected that the new suffixes would give makers of sparkling wine a way of passing plonk off as champagne. The French power grab over the wine domains is a timely reminder that governments of all kinds would like to take control of the Internet if the US lets them. The Obama Administration should retract its plan to give up the open Internet before it causes any more damage.