Where are You Going?

I remember a running gag in college about the Chinese and they're naval plans, specifically, that they were building a "blue-water" or "deep-water" or at any rate, high-seas fleet. The line went something like this: "When a nation that's never had a blue-water navy starts building a blue-water navy, the logical question is, 'Where are you going?"

This is what I thought of when I read about the coming hostile takeover of the Internet.

There's a perfectly good reason why the U.S. Government should be allowed to continue in "control" of the internet indefinitely, and I'm not saying that because I'm an American. I happen to be one of those Americans who doesn't think the U.S. Government should have control over anything besides highway construction and blowing things up. On everything else, their hand is is the oily taint of death. But I say, Uncle Sam should continue to "control" the internet, because as long as it has done so, it hasn't controlled the Internet at all.

But is it really "fair" for one nation's government to control something that the whole world uses? Well, when that government a) invented the something, b) freely distributed the something at its own expense, c) derives no revenue or profit from the something, and d) permits all to use the something as they see fit, then, well, yes.

I can understand people who don't trust the U.S. Government objecting to this. But I don't trust the EU or the UN. Nor do I understand their motives. What could possibly be wrong with the Internet that it needs to be handed over to a bureaucracy that has a past history of obsessive top-down micro-management? I wasn't aware that there was anything wrong with the way the Internet currently works. Absent that, we are left with the question "Where are you going?" to which answers are easy to imagine.