The State Department’s plan to spark a global SOPA-style uprising around Internet governance

For years now, there has been a fight brewing over whether Internet governance should rest with the 16-year-old Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or be shifted to a United Nations-affiliated body. ICANN and the 150-year-old International Telecommunications Union, which has long acted as the traffic cop of global non-Internet telecommunications, might be headed to a crucial face-off next month. And so, the U.S. State Department, which wants ICANN to retain control of Internet governance, is making a bid to broaden the debate and engage an audience all over the world with a simple proclamation: "The Internet belongs to everyone." The first step in that campaign is a two-minute animated video.