Who owns the Internet?

ü  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.

ü  No one actually owns the Internet, and no single person or organization controls the Internet in its entirety.

ü  The Internet is more of a concept than an actual tangible entity, and it relies on a physical infrastructure that connects networks to other networks.

ü  There are, however, organizations that oversee and standardize what happens on the Internet and assign IP addresses and domain names, such as the National Science Foundation, the Internet Engineering Task Force, ICANN, InterNIC and the Internet Architecture Board.

Ø Quite simply, no one person or entity owns the network.

Ø It is made up of individual computers that are owned by people, businesses, universities, and government agencies.

ØThe Internet network consists of approximately 1,900,000 smaller networks and the links between them.

Ø Some of the networks and links are owned by organizations that established them.

ØThe larger system is owned by the people that use it.

ØThis includes you and other users on the system. We all the world own it.