It’s about power creep...own the naming system and those who want to remain free on the web have to go back to using the number system(one can still put in numbers) and then come up with a way to communicate to others what the ‘number’ of their web site is! Demands for “international” owner ship of the nodes and the main trunk lines in this nation will be next and that is where the ax will need to be laid at the root.
I have wondered why the delay in implementing IPV6...perhaps it opens up trillions of web sub addresses which can’t be controlled by one “naming” agency.
Dynamic DNS and alternate DNS Services will quickly get around ICANN and any totalitarian control over the Internet, the same way TOR and BitTorrent have.
The one truth that's missing from this entire thread is that Government Bureacracy, whether here in the U.S., the Useless Nations, or a Communist regime like China or a totalitarian regime like Iran, Saudi Arabia and North Korea (for example) cannot keep up with TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES.
Since the advent of Computer Technology, Government Bureaucracies world-wide have been unable to keep up with all the different things technology can do, nor stop it from being used in ways they (the bureaucracy) haven't thought of yet.
We may see a temporary blip in free speech being stopped on the Internet but the creative use of technology will overcome that quickly and we'll all see FREE SPEECH come roaring back so quickly and so forcefully these bastards will rue the day they did this.
I'd stake my life on that.