This was written by Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel Weitzner
[Tim is an English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.]

Ted Cruz is wrong about how free speech is censored on the Internet - The Washington Post


Let’s consider the most egregious threats to free speech and human rights online. Egypt shuts down nearly all Internet traffic during the Arab Spring to disrupt citizen’s right to oppose the government. Pakistan blocks access to entire platforms such as YouTube because they host a few offending videos, with the result that a huge amount of speech is suppressed.

ICANN
[The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the private sector, non-profit corporation created in 1998]
had no role in these shutdowns nor could it prevent them. Countries such as China and Iran operate large-scale firewalls controlling nearly all of the Internet’s content within their countries and restricting what information can cross the border. ICANN cannot shut down these firewalls. And Russia routinely mounts attacks on web sites of opposition groups inside and outside the country, leading to suppression of democratic discourse. ICANN has no role in preventing this kind of hacking.

Trump is of the same opinion because neither one knows how the internet works.