Owning internet

Other Nations Hope to Loosen U.S. Grip on Internet from NYTimes

"When Libya lost the use of its Internet domain ".ly" for five days last year, it needed help from an agency in California that reports to the United States Commerce Department.
Anyone looking to do business with an .ly Web site or e-mail an .ly address probably met with a "file not found" or "no such person" message. For anyone on the Internet, Libya was just not there.
In a day when Internet access is critical to world commerce - let alone casual communication - even a five-day lapse is a hardship. And when one government needs the help of another to make its citizens visible again on that network, it can be a damaging blow to its sovereignty, and perhaps a matter of national security, even if the cause was a dispute over payments, as in the Libyan case.
What if, by historical chance, France or Britain controlled country domain names on the Internet? Would the United States settle for asking another government to fix its own addresses?
That kind of power to hinder or foster freedom of the Internet, centralized in a single government, is the crucial issue for many of the 12,000 people expected in Tunis this week for a United Nations summit meeting on the information age."