[Rubber Duck]

When I mean World Wide Web, I mean it in the narrow sense of the www. protocol which is currently nearly everyone's default.

You are correct in as much as countries can orchestrate the moving away from this protocol within their own boundaries. However, if ICANN were not seen as being important they would not all be heading to LA on mass to fight over their IDN extensions.

It should also be noted that that this is not an purely an IDN issue. If you turn the lights out on IDN.com you also turn the light out on all the ASCII.com and all the other gTLDs. You could end up in a very lonely webspace indeed. But getting back to the point, it is perfectly legal and perfectly feasible. It is really a question of whether i-DNS can persuade more than a handful of people to travel this route. No pun intended.