Amazingly, there seems to be an unspoken consent of what is allowed and what is forbidden on the Internet that is widely accepted.
Sometimes violations not already subject to law, become part of governmental regulations, such as spamming, the sending of advertising mail messages. But engineers developed software against spamming. So, in some respects, the Internet is self-regulating.
There are many views and speculations on who exactly owns the internet many sites exploit the US Goverment saying they have ultimate control, but Iam not so quickly to agree, from my studing how networks work etc… and though my research, I have come with this conclusion.
- No one actually owns the Internet, and no single person or organization controls the Internet entirety.
The Internet relies on a physical infrastructure that connects networks to other networks.
There are many organizations, corporations, governments, schools, private citizens and service providers that all own pieces of the infrastructure, but there is no one body that owns it all.
There are, however, organizations (some say non-profit) that oversee and standardize what happens on the Internet and assign IP addresses and domain names.
There are several bodies associated with the running of the Internet, including the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Task Force, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, Internet Engineering Steering Group, and the Internet Society.
Here are the organisations websites.
Internet Engineering Task Force
- The Internet Engineering Task Force develops and promotes Internet standards, operating closely with the W3C dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. It is an open, standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements.
- All participants and leaders are volunteers, their work is usually funded by their employers or sponsors; for instance, the current chairperson is funded by VeriSign and the U.S. government's National Security Agency.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
- ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is a California non-profit corporation, in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Government by other organizations, notably IANA.
- The tasks of ICANN include managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses.
To date, much of its work has concerned the introduction of new generic top-level domains. The technical work of ICANN is referred to as the IANA function; the rest of ICANN is mostly concerned with defining policy.
- There were 20,242 unique commercial domains registered with InterNIC in September 1994, 10% more than in August 1994. In 1996 there were over 100 Internet access providers in the US and a few in the UK (e.g. the BBC Networking Club, Demon, PIPEX). Until it was taken over by ICANN in 1998.
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
- IANA is the body that oversees global IP address allocation, DNS root zone management, and other Internet protocol assignments. It is operated by ICANN.
Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
- IAB is the committee that manages the technical and engineering development of the Internet by the Internet Society (ISOC).
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG)
- IESG makes the final technical review of Internet standards and is responsible for day-to-day management of the IETF. It receives appeals of the decisions of the working groups, and the IESG makes the decision to progress documents in the standards track.
Kevin Ham - Kevin Ham just loves buying Domain Names, he has around 320,000 domain names.
Useful Links
Who owns the Internet and Who is in charge?
Who Owns the Internet? Ownership as a Legal Basis for American Control of the Internet
To understand exactly how big this subject of the internet is here is a useful link
for maps of how the internet is linked up. Internet Maps
Bibliography
http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611791/100438658447
How networks work? 6th edition Frank J. Derfler, Jr and Les Freed Illustrated by Micheal Troller
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/WhoOwnstheInternet.asp
American Psychological Association (APA):
Internet. (n.d.). The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. Retrieved December 06, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Internet