The road to surfdom?

WHOEVER controls the internet’s address book has the power over life and death on the network. Delete a domain name (economist.com, for example), and a website can no longer be found and an e-mail no longer delivered.Such authority currently falls under the auspices of America, but not for much longer. On October 1st the federal government is scheduled to let lapse a contract that gives it control over part of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that oversees the internet’s address system. Some—notably Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, who seems willing to risk a shutdown of the government to block the transfer—argue that this amounts to giving away the internet. He says that the handover would allow governments in autocratic countries such as China, Iran and Russia to have greater control over what is available online. In fact, the opposite is true.