They Control the Internet

Have you ever asked yourself: who really controls the Internet?

I am talking about a body, or agency, that exercises authority, controls and administers Internet public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its subjects...I'm talking about Internet governance.

Policies and mechanisms for Internet governance have been topics of debate between many different Internet stakeholders, but the ultimate response is that no single body can control the Internet.

Individual Governments can control and promote the utilization of the International network, but only in their jurisdiction. In as a whole, they can only have a say on the Internet, but their control is diminished. Check out the US Senate Internet services usage rules and policies.

All in all, there must be some Internet governance. The Internet is a system and there has to be some sot of administration and regulations.

Esther Dyson, a journalist and commentator on emerging digital technology, an entrepreneur and a philanthropist, described Internet governance as the control put in place to manage the growth of the Internet and its usage. In her words below...

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"Now with the advent of the Net, we are privatizing government in a new way - not only in the traditional sense of selling things off to the private sector, but by allowing organizations independent of the traditional government to take on certain 'government' regulatory roles. These new international regulatory agencies will perform former government functions in counterpoint to increasingly large companies and also to individuals and smaller private organizations that can operate globally over the Net."

Esther Dyson, 1998

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So, once again, who controls the Internet?

There are 5 supra-governmental organizations that control different aspects of the Internet, these include:

1. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This is a non profit body formed for domain names an IP allocation and management. It is perhaps the most public of the Internet control organizations since domain names or web addresses are one of the most tangible aspect of the Internet.


2. The Internet Society (ISOC). This is a professional membership society, formed in 1992, and that focuses on technical issues of standards and protocols. Similarly, the organization is conscious of how these will affect the global society.
   


3. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This is an International community of network designers, operators, vendors and researchers, concerned with the development of the Internet Architecture and its transport protocols such as IP. It is one of the main technical bodies.
   


4. The World Wide Web Consortium (w3c). This is an organization that is responsible for web standards. It focuses on improving publishing standards such as HTML and XML.
   


5. Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium (TINA-C). This is a consortium that takes a higher-level view of how applications communicate over communication networks. This approach makes it somewhat different from the others mentioned above. It does not define detailed standards.