Unlike other countries in the world, The United States of America has more saying on the functioning of the Internet than any other nation, not the whole Internet but the most important part of it.
The US control the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) which activity fall into three main categories, Domain names, Number Resources and Protocol Assignment. The most important activity is managing the Domain Name System Root.
The DNS is the reason you are able to type steemit.com into your browser instead of the IP address of the server that runs the steemit website.
Currently, NTIA(National Telecommunications and Information Administration ) which is part of the department of commerce has control of IANA function, but this will change this October 1st, when the NTIA will hand over IANA completely to the not-for-profit organization ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
ICANN is run by a multiple stakeholder of countries, businesses and group who have vested interest in controlling the internet. ICANN has already been doing the IANA job since its creation in 1998, but that was under contract that was renewed every year, so for most users of the Internet nothing will change.
Some republicans fear that the US handing over of the IANA to ICANN may result in abuse of the Internet by foreign government even though the NTIA said that the prospect of government interference is "extremely remote".
even though The US made sure that the power it had over IANA get shifted to ICANN, not to the UN as some foreign countries want it to be, some suggest that the Obama administration have no plan on how to allow ICANN to keep its antitrust exemption, which allow it to be as a legal monopolist which mean that ICANN would look for another governmental group to control it, so it can retain that exemption, if that was the case ICANN could fall under UN control.
If you liked this post follow me @arnoldwish.