Who owns the Internet?

It is generally said that "nobody owns the Internet" or that "we the people" own the Internet, or that each respective country owns their Internet, but is that really true?

ICANN is the world authority for issuing site names such as .com, .org, .net, .name, .edu, etc. To have these domain names you need approval by ICANN. ICANN is controlled by the U.S. Department of Commerce and they can seize any Domain name they want...including foreign ones. Hence, the United States "own" the Internet to some extent, because they can determine who can and cannot have a Domain name. This is why some countries have been protesting and calling for a more international control of ICANN.

What is your view of who - if anyone - "owns" the Internet? And who has the most power in determining the future of the Internet?

reply to post by Skyfloating


It's an interesting idea.

ICANN certainly does control the vast majority of the internet, however they have no say out back in the dark net.

Which mind you is getting larger and larger, especially through foreign folk who don't have access to traditional internet because of censorship heavy regimes.

At this point, a shut down and censoring of the internet is impossible IMO. Private, wide reaching networks would spring up everywhere and eventually there would be a full, world wide "black market" internet.

Personally I feel like we, the people own the internet. Much like ATS is a Community Generated Content platform, the internet is simply a larger scale version of that. There are far more people using the internet for their own personal reasons than there are businesses and governments using it for policy and commerce.

I guess in order to answer that question fully, I would have to see an actual attempt to control the internet.

~Tenth

don't know who owns it.. but an advanced AI or AI group seems present... within it

reply to post by Skyfloating


Well that's like saying the person who makes the street directory owns the country. It's not really the same. They can ensure that certain domains are only used by certain entities, but to access the services you don't strictly have to rely on a fqdn.

I can still access any server with the IP, I just have to know it. Depends on the system I suppose.

When I first got on the net in 95, the ISP I used didn't even have a proper dns server yet, and there was no such thing as google, so finding a website was almost impossible. I think metacrawler was the first meta-search engine that sorted that out. But it was interesting at the time. We had to connect to some systems via IP. Yay the dinky little ISP in australia lol. Big whopping company now too.

But I don't think holding the rights to the domain names, equates to owning the internet. All it takes is something like .onion addresses and tor to bypass the entire thing anyway. It's just a matter of necessity these days, with business needing access to fully qualified domain names, and how it's all becoming layered.

I found it interesting, that the country of Tuvalu decided that they'd rather have cash than a unique Domain name, and sold it. That's why we have .tv domains all over the place for tv shows or other such things, as opposed to specific to their country.

reply to post by Skyfloating


Here are the words of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of The World Wide Web (which we are using here right now)
This should answer your question:-

www.ibtimes.co.uk...

reply to post by Skyfloating


I don't think any one person or group owns the Internet. It is a Collective.

I do know that Al Gore has claimed in the past that he was actually the one who Invented it though. Which is a line of B.S.

I personally believe that anyone who has paid for a subscription to log on OWNS a piece of it.

There will NEVER be an effective control of it. It is Entirely to big.

To Control it they would have to Completely Shut it Down. .. . .. . .. .

Oh, . . wait a minute. .. They can't do that .. . why?. . .. Because Banking NEEDS it, Business NEEDS it.

Welp, .. I guess that we have finally fou8nd something that Can't be Controlled by Anyone.

reply to post by Skyfloating



My thoughts are the God Mercury...he just seems to get swifter and chattier by the day.

reply to post by alldaylong


After reading the article you posted I couldn't help but to notice that my B.S. Meter went off the Charts.

The Internet was not invented by that guy. It was created by Medical And the Military as a means of collaboration. I think it was in the 60's or 70's. I am sure someone here will correct that if I am wrong.

reply to post by winofiend


Agreed you dont actually need a web address:

173.193.40.4

That is the web IP of ATS (through it directs to the domain) you don't actually need it...

That's like asking - who owns the world?

Domain providers definitely control who gets which web address. But I don't think they 'own' the world-wide-web. The internet is literally it's own 'universe' per say. It's constantly expanding, and so much of it is invisible.

The deep-web for instance, is (x) amount of times bigger than what people can see in the visible-web. Even the amount of everything above the surface is beyond comprehension. Awesome question. But I don't think anybody owns the internet, not even its creator.

Originally posted by ShadellacZumbrum
reply to post by alldaylong

 

After reading the article you posted I couldn't help but to notice that my B.S. Meter went off the Charts.

The Internet was not invented by that guy. It was created by Medical And the Military as a means of collaboration. I think it was in the 60's or 70's. I am sure someone here will correct that if I am wrong.

Please point out where i said Sir Time Berners-Lee invented the internet. He invented The World Wide Web.
Go back and read it again and put your glasses on first.

Well... lets consider this. If I set up one of my old computers as a server and connected it to the internet I don't necessarily need a domain name because if people know the IP address of my server they can still access it... as far as I know, I haven't actually set up my own server before. Purchasing a domain simply attaches the domain name to the IP address in the DNS records so that everyone can look up the IP of the server with only the domain name. All this happens each time you type a domain name into the address bar, the domain name is resolved into an IP address behind the scenes. This is why it's important to use good DNS servers such as the Comodo Secure DNS servers or the OpenDNS servers. I never use the default ISP DNS servers because they can easily censor any website they want by removing it from their DNS lookup tables.

But getting to the point I'm making... it's the individual computers all over the world which make up the internet, regardless of if those servers have domain names, so in some sense we all do own the internet. However it's the ISP companies which provide the connection gateways and infrastructure which connects all the computers around the world together. Here in Australia it seems like the Telstra Corporation pretty much owns all the telecommunications infrastructure. I think the best answer to this question is that the companies which own the telecommunications infrastructure are the ones who own the internet. But the companies are spread all over the world and many of them are public government companies. Telstra used to be a government department until it was fully privatized not too long ago.

reply to post by alldaylong


Is it a matter of Semantics?

Because the last time I checked both words are used by EVERYONE as interchangeable.

So no need ro re-read it.

P.S. .. my B.S. meter is still Maxed out.

Originally posted by alldaylong

Originally posted by ShadellacZumbrum
reply to post by alldaylong

 

After reading the article you posted I couldn't help but to notice that my B.S. Meter went off the Charts.

The Internet was not invented by that guy. It was created by Medical And the Military as a means of collaboration. I think it was in the 60's or 70's. I am sure someone here will correct that if I am wrong.

Please point out where i said Sir Time Berners-Lee invented the internet. He invented The World Wide Web.
Go back and read it again and put your glasses on first.

No Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the internet the ARPANET project and the federal government directly funded the creation of the Internet we know today. The TCP/IP set of communication protocols were developed for ARPANET by computer scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf. When it comes to who invented the internet Berners-Lee name doesn't even come up. He created the world wide web which is just an interface not the net itself. There is a difference.

If nobody will.

I now claim ownership of the Internet.

I own every electron through the wires.

I now disclaim the internet and give ownership to equal parts of every human on Earth.

The ones in orbit are out of luck.

Hurry up on the internet holodeck ! Please.

Originally posted by ShadellacZumbrum
reply to post by alldaylong

 

Is it a matter of Semantics?

Because the last time I checked both words are used by EVERYONE as interchangeable.

So no need ro re-read it.

P.S. .. my B.S. meter is still Maxed out.

edit on 8-6-2013 by ShadellacZumbrum because: (no reason given)

What is the domain address for Above Top Secret? If you don't know it's www.abovetopsecret.com.
The www indicates World Wide Web. Who invented The World Wide Web? Answer Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
Don't bother coming back unless you have something of sense to say.

Originally posted by buster2010

Originally posted by alldaylong

Originally posted by ShadellacZumbrum
reply to post by alldaylong

 

After reading the article you posted I couldn't help but to notice that my B.S. Meter went off the Charts.

The Internet was not invented by that guy. It was created by Medical And the Military as a means of collaboration. I think it was in the 60's or 70's. I am sure someone here will correct that if I am wrong.

Please point out where i said Sir Time Berners-Lee invented the internet. He invented The World Wide Web.
Go back and read it again and put your glasses on first.

No Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the internet the ARPANET project and the federal government directly funded the creation of the Internet we know today. The TCP/IP set of communication protocols were developed for ARPANET by computer scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf. When it comes to who invented the internet Berners-Lee name doesn't even come up. He created the world wide web which is just an interface not the net itself. There is a difference.

Are you someone else who can't read plain English. I never stated that Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet.
God some people are really hard going.

I'm assuming it's Kevin Ham

money.cnn.com...

Originally posted by alldaylong

Originally posted by buster2010

Originally posted by alldaylong

Originally posted by ShadellacZumbrum
reply to post by alldaylong

 

After reading the article you posted I couldn't help but to notice that my B.S. Meter went off the Charts.

The Internet was not invented by that guy. It was created by Medical And the Military as a means of collaboration. I think it was in the 60's or 70's. I am sure someone here will correct that if I am wrong.

Please point out where i said Sir Time Berners-Lee invented the internet. He invented The World Wide Web.
Go back and read it again and put your glasses on first.

No Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the internet the ARPANET project and the federal government directly funded the creation of the Internet we know today. The TCP/IP set of communication protocols were developed for ARPANET by computer scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf. When it comes to who invented the internet Berners-Lee name doesn't even come up. He created the world wide web which is just an interface not the net itself. There is a difference.

Are you someone else who can't read plain English. I never stated that Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet.
God some people are really hard going.

Mind pointing out where I said you did? I just pointed out that he didn't create the net. Seems like your reading skills aren't that great either.

Originally posted by buster2010

Originally posted by alldaylong

Originally posted by buster2010

Originally posted by alldaylong

Originally posted by ShadellacZumbrum
reply to post by alldaylong

 

After reading the article you posted I couldn't help but to notice that my B.S. Meter went off the Charts.

The Internet was not invented by that guy. It was created by Medical And the Military as a means of collaboration. I think it was in the 60's or 70's. I am sure someone here will correct that if I am wrong.

Please point out where i said Sir Time Berners-Lee invented the internet. He invented The World Wide Web.
Go back and read it again and put your glasses on first.

No Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the internet the ARPANET project and the federal government directly funded the creation of the Internet we know today. The TCP/IP set of communication protocols were developed for ARPANET by computer scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf. When it comes to who invented the internet Berners-Lee name doesn't even come up. He created the world wide web which is just an interface not the net itself. There is a difference.

Are you someone else who can't read plain English. I never stated that Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet.
God some people are really hard going.

Mind pointing out where I said you did? I just pointed out that he didn't create the net. Seems like your reading skills aren't that great either.

Here are the words of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of The World Wide Web (which we are using here right now)
This should answer your question.


Above is my original post. Please point out where the word "Internet" is used.


And here is your reply to my post stating that i implied Time Berners-Lee invented the internet.


No Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the internet the ARPANET project and the federal government directly funded the creation of the Internet we know today. The TCP/IP set of communication protocols were developed for ARPANET by computer scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf. When it comes to who invented the internet Berners-Lee name doesn't even come up. He created the world wide web which is just an interface not the net itself. There is a difference


Is that good enough for you?