What House lawmakers still don’t get about control of the Internet

America is the reason why everyone thinks the Internet is awesome and, more important, it's why Russia and China haven't already taken over the Web and foisted their draconian rules on the rest of us.

That's apparently what some members of the House believe, at any rate. Republican lawmakers grilled officials about a recent proposal that would end the Commerce Department's business relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit charged with administering the Internet's system of names and numbers. This system syncs Web domains to IP addresses and makes sure that when you type in Google's address, you actually land there. Maintaining this system has technically been the US government's job.

But for more than a decade, it has contracted with ICANN to do the work. This contractual relationship is what people are talking about when they refer to the United States' "control" of the Internet. It also helps that ICANN's international headquarters are in California.

Now the Obama Administration may let that contract lapse, replacing it with a multistakeholder body composed of corporations, states, advocacy groups and other potential members. It's not yet clear what that body will look like, but this idea already has some members of Congress worried. They're concerned it means the United States is giving up its influence over the Web -- even though that critique has already been debunked.

The power over the Internet that some in Congress think the United States has to beat back authoritarian regimes doesn't actually reside in the United States at all. But that reality is being obscured by a myth: that the United States, having played a pivotal role in the Internet's creation, has a magical power to thwart speech-stifling regimes.