For over a decade, the United States has promoted a free and open Internet as a central tenet of its foreign policy. To date, this has most visibly involved shaming governments that limit access to online content and developing tools that help individuals circumvent censorship and surveillance.

Earlier this month, the US Commerce Department announced a plan to back away from its last direct involvement in running the Internet. The man who made that decision, Lawrence Strickling, sees the government's role today as merely "clerical," but letting go of even that sends an important symbolic message: The Internet is all grown up now.

The National Telecommunications & Administration of the Department Commerce on Friday announced a plan to shift responsibility for overseeing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to “the global multistakeholder community.”   This plan reflects a strong commitment to keeping the technical operations of the Internet in the hands of its nongovernmental community and out of the hands of governmental bodies.