Who Owns The Internet?

Owners of Internet

No one person, company, institution, or government organization owns the Internet. No one source foots the bill for it. No one entity governs it or even has a controlling interest. The Internet is truly a collaborative, collection enterprise.

There are a handful of organizations that are truly influential and that taken together to form a sort of checks and balances system:

• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) sets the standards for HTML and other specifics of the Web.
• The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) focus on the evolution of the Internet with a specific eye toward keeping the Internet running smoothly as a whole.
• The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) is a related organization responsible for managing IETF activities and the Internet standards process.
• The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is responsible for defining the overall architecture of the Internet (the backbone and all the networks attached to it), providing guidance and board direction to the IETF.
• The Internet Society (ISOC) is a supervisory organization made up of individuals, corporations, non-profit organizations, and government agencies from the Internet community. The group comments on Internet policies and oversees a number of other boards and task forces-including the IAB and IESG-dealing with Internet policy issues.
• The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC) lead the organizations responsible for assigning IP addresses and domain names, respectively.