Question about ICANN

Isn't this type of central control opposed to the spirit of the Internet?

While I'm at it, the following quote from a few years ago may be of interest:

It might have been better had ICANN never have been created.  But the
alternative would have been to permit a much more uncertain process to go
forward--involving not just competing registrars, but competing registries
or some entity truly evolving from the bottom up--not of the type we are
presently able to imagine.  Whatever happens with this current agreement
between NSI, ICANN, and Commerce, we should be on guard that privately
evolving alternatives--entirely new keyword or name-based methods of finding
Net content, or alternative root servers--are not foreclosed.

It might be necessary to start forming them now.