Daf... I mean.. mmmkay. Bob.
Not better than my friend's yorkie Julio.

ps: I knew an british girl named Gal. Her signature was "I'M GAL, AND I'M A GIRL - SOOOO ORIGINAL XD XD <3 <3"
Yup, so original. She probably wore one of these amazing daiads ;P

You win! Julio is way better than Bob! XD

Julio isn't as good as Uncle Bob, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCS4NdCbeBU

WOW! :P
Dude, I can't use headphones in here but I've seen this movie so many times that I know that Sarah says "sieeempre como colebra" and he goes "CONNOR" and some *bla bla bla* and then" BAAAAH YOLANDA TRAGA TEQUILA, CARAJO * " :P

* means "happy" in spanish ;)

Okay, that works. What does it mean, without the FUD, please.

It will never happen.

Basically, before the internet was a global thing, the organization ICANN was formed to administer the basic functionality of the internet. Eventually that evolved into a non profit corporation made up of multiple international advisory committees that gets to decide things like protocol standards, how IP addresses are doled out, what top level domains are allowed (.com, .org, .sucks, etc.) and pretty much who and what is allowed on the internet. When ICANN got its contract from the US Department of Commerce, it was given one directive: come up with a democratic way to make all decisions that affect the global internet, including the input from the multiple international advisory committees. They failed completely to come up with a system that everyone could agree to. Several of the more restrictive countries wanted to exert greater control and make ICANN largely responsible for the content actually on the internet, while the rest pretty much preferred the "hands off" approach, letting ICANN focus solely on the technical aspects of internet administration (keep it working, let local governments decide what their citizens can do with it). Being a US company, much of the debate was a moot point, since ICANN could never do anything in violation of US law anyway. So, a few years ago, they started working on plans to release ICANN from its contract and get it out from under US regulation. Those plans have been up on the ICANN site for public review for a while now and they are way too complex to summarize here (seriously, they are long and the universal cure for insomnia). The contract itself expires this September, so this will be happening no matter what. The big question now is where will ICANN be based and what laws will it be required to adhere to. There has been speculative talk (aka tinfoil hat paranoia) that China will become the new home, but no matter where it ends up, the rules of the internet are likely to change, and not necessarily for the better as long as the public remains generally unaware of what is happening.

Imagine if every road you drove on had to obey the laws in China.

If ICANN is hosted in China, websites will have to abide by Chinese authorities or suffer. Who knows what weasel words they'll use, or how consistent it will be, or if they'll develop separate rules for foreign and internal sites, or if they'll use their authority to undermine foreign businesses...it has the potential to be a huge mess and seriously undermine the economy of the developed world.

People don't appreciate how hands off the US government has been. Yes, surveillance, it's horrible, but it's not a patch on the kinds of things the governments pushing for this (repressive tyrannys for the most part) will do.

Exactly but then anyone who protests gets called a racist, xenophobe, or fascist.

Also to those whining about Washington Examiner, while I normally do not use that site (I prefer Washington Times and local news stories that get forwarded to me), the information is not automatically invalid because you do not like the source. All news sources are bias in some way, shape, or form and it is hypocritical to automatically attack the source for being "too conservative" especially if you use sources like the Huffington Post, the BBC, the Guardian, MSNBC, or CNN especially since CNN is owned by Time Warner which has executives that are paying tribute to Hillary Clinton.

Come on, we're all friends here. Tell us how you really feel.

No, this is definitely happening.

Nothing you listed is full of hardcore network engineers. Google News selects articles based on personal interests, for one thing. Everyone outside of network engineering and possibly technology law is ignoring this because they don't understand or even want to understand internet infrastructure. It's work for so long that people take it for granted.
It means that whichever country starts hosting ICANN, that country's laws will apply to the entire internet.

Right now, ICANN is in the US, where we have strong free speech protections, good infrastructure, stable business laws, strong anti-corruption laws and a general hands-off approach from politicians. When it moves - and no one knows to where yet, but China is pushing the hardest for this - that country will be the one deciding things like which sites are allowable, who can stay online, etc.

This is huge. It's a tremendous issue, messing with the fundamentals of the US economy. But network engineering is boring and full of acronyms, so most people aren't paying attention.

I've wondered for a while if an internet2 will be coming, if this happens, that might be the tipping point to start it all over again. Using IP6 instead of IP4 among other things. Or completely redone.

In some ways it could be a good thing, but as things stand good ideas are corrupted by corporations to the worst possible outcome.

So, does that mean the FBI will stop taking down websites for good, a la Megaupload and Sharebeast, and sometimes torrent sites? Because the US giving up the internet and getting that kind of benefit is something I'd die for. The benefit of the FBI not nosing into wherever they can nose in.

So I was able to infer from further perusing; but it also seems that even if China were to (somehow) become the authority, because the way most of the Internet is already centralized in the USA, most of us would go about our merry business...or so I vaguely understand from this ELI5 I just read.

Now say it moves somewhere sensible, like the Scandinavian States, what then?

Can't ICANN just buy a ship and make all their decisions out at sea?