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Over the weekend, I was reading Anna Politkovskaya's book "Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy," a collection of her investigative work on the Russian government for which she was assassinated in 2006.

You might also notice an ad in The Jewish State publicizing an upcoming speech by Bangladeshi dissident Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury at Rutgers University. Choudhury faces execution (if he survives to the end of his trial) for trumped up charges due to his support for Zionism.

We owe a debt of gratitude to these two -- and many, many other -- brave dissidents who have been able, despite attempts to silence them, to make important information public at great personal risk -- often using the Internet as their only line of communication with the outside world.

One way the United States has aided journalists like Politkovskaya and Choudhury in the past has been by simply retaining control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit body that oversees and regulates Internet domain name registration, ensuring such voices weren't denied access to the World Wide Web.

The U.S. Commerce Department had control over ICANN and held veto power on its decisions to award domain names, but stayed away from any real involvement. America's veto power prevented despotic regimes and Islamic overlords from trying to prevent organizations they didn't like from registering domain names.

And so the Internet flourished under America's watch, and the free flow of information enabled people like Choudhury and Politkovskaya to reach millions. It also prevented the world from taking punitive action against Israel, since the U.S. would never allow, for example, Israel to be stripped of its national Internet domain address (.il).

Until now.

"Icann had previously been operating under the auspices of the American government, which had control of the [Internet] thanks to its initial role in developing the underlying technologies used for connecting computers together," explained the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, in a story titled "U.S. relinquishes control of the Internet".

America had control until Sept. 30, when the Obama administration announced it was ceding that control to a more "international" forum. How, then, will decisions be made going forward? Who will have control, and how will it all function?

The Guardian helpfully adds: "But the fresh focus will give other countries a more prominent role in determining what takes place online, and even the way in which it happens -- opening the door for a virtual United Nations, where many officials gather to discuss potential changes to the Internet."

A "virtual United Nations." Sorry, Anna. We have failed you.

Unfortunately, you know just how a "virtual United Nations" would rule. You know the records of the various incarnations of the U.N.'s human rights councils on Israel. You know that an Egyptian runs the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, and that he has been covering up for Iran's nuclear-driven quest to destroy Israel. You know (in part because we exposed it) that the U.N. forces in Lebanon interfered on behalf of Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

And there's a lot more you know about the United Nations and its devolution into what has become simply the new Arab League. And now you know that we've surrendered the final bulwark against the World Wide Web version of the United Nations.

"This new affirmation marks an exciting new stage in ICANN's development as a truly international entity and it confirms, once and for all, that the ICANN model of public participation works, and works effectively," said ICANN chief executive Rod Beckstrom.

Beckstrom added: "It endorses a truly unique form of Internet governance, which is critical since every voice on the Internet is unique."

If only we could plead ignorance. But we can't. We know what Beckstrom's "truly unique form or governance" means -- what the internationalization of the Internet means. It means the Anna Politkovskayas of the world will be far less of a threat to their regimes. After all, in the last couple of years Russia has led "cyber-attacks" against its enemies in Georgia and Estonia, two post-Soviet democracies. Now it won't have to go through all that trouble.

And the administration could read all about how Iran tries to suppress its cyber-journalists thanks to organizations like the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. Not for long, though, since the Obama administration just announced that, for the first time in the organization's history, it will be denied its requested funding from the U.S.

The group's director, Rene Redman, told the Boston Globe that it may now have to shut down in May, when its funding runs dry.

The ICANN decision means the enemies of freedom can far more acutely silence the voices of opposition. But it also means our friends in Western European nanny states can tax and regulate the life out of Web users. Those states don't even have the codified free speech rights that Americans enjoy and that America protected during its stewardship of ICANN.

A "virtual United Nations" is a nightmare. Thanks to the current administration's recent action, that awful dream is about to become a virtual reality.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.