Does the US government protect Internet freedom or threaten it?

[Commentary] It’s curious to see lawmakers who are otherwise zealous promoters of deregulation and free markets argue against privatizing the world’s most important communications medium. More important, they’re wrong about the facts and wrong about the effect of stopping the planned transition.

Simply put, the US government doesn’t control any aspect of the Internet today, and it hasn’t for years. Yes, an entity it nominally supervises — the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority — manages the master online address list that organizes the virtual location of sites and services online. And that master list helps assure that the Internet remains an interconnected whole, not splintered into separate regional networks with incompatible addresses and protocols — a key factor in the Internet’s transformative power. But the federal government turned over management of the numbers authority long ago to a California not-for-profit organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Significantly, ICANN was created to transfer issues related to Internet addresses and traffic management from the U.S. government into the hands of Internet “stakeholders” — online service providers, data equipment vendors, user groups and the like.

Ted Cruz’s crusade to maintain the limited amount of supervision the federal government exercises over Internet addresses could yield the exact opposite of what he says he wants to accomplish. Repressive regimes already wield excessive but imperfect control over the Internet within their borders. To prevent them from gaining even more leverage over global data traffic, the best route is to limit all governments’ role in the management of Internet names and addresses. Congress should let the administration give up what little ministerial power it holds over the Internet’s technical functions and allow a more accountable ICANN to move forward.