Who "owns" the internet?

[Jamastiene]

I have a research paper that I am working on for an English class. Almost every bit of the research I have done so far says that the internet started as an answer to the launch of Sputnik during the cold war and that the Department of Defense really started the original infant version of the internet.

My english teacher told us the other day that Netscape owns the internet and that it was "born" in the 1960's for universities to form a network and that the Department of Defense had nothing to do with it. He said that was misinformation. Que? I don't understand how anyone can "own" the internet, or internets as I have heard some people call it/them. And I really don't understand how I am going to write this paper (not a technical paper, but a paper for a general audience) without going into too many technical details about ARPANET and the real beginnings of an internet, period.

Anyone out there familiar with the real story who can direct me to a reputable link on this topic? I really need some solid sources so I can get on with this project.

[Oeditpus Rex]

1. As usual, Wikipedia

is a pretty good place to start.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

Good luck. :hi:

[Jamastiene]

4. Thanks for the link to Wikipedia, but I'm afraid

he'll rake me across the coals if I use them. He seems to have a thing about the internet. He doesn't trust any information from it unless it is from some corporation somewhere. He has already warned us. I will go back there and try to follow some of the sources there and see if they turn up some "trusted" (his word: translated he only trusts corporate bullshit) sources. I'm so behind on my homework and I've been working on it since I came home from school Friday. This is too much homework for one person to do in a weekend. So much for resting at all.

Again thanks for the help.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. How about educational institutions?

Here's a site dealing with the history of the Internet written by a history professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and I'd say it's more likely to be correct than somethign a corporation would have on their site. (And you can tell him if he's unwilling to accept academic sources that he's a moron and you'll go over his head about it, as you should anyway).

Here's the most salient section: http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap2.htm

[Jamastiene]

9. Thanks, he will have to accept this

source. He is not likely to dispute what another teacher, especially a history teacher. At least, I don't think he will. He has a tendency to be a jerk about things. I had him last semester too. What a drag that was. He made me revise a paper on Jeffrey Dahmer so much, I was having nightmares, literally.

[ChoralScholar]

2. The DoD did have something to do with it:

In fact, ARPANet, one of the precursors to the modern Internet, stands for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) which is a military entity, housed at the Pentagon.

Here is a scholarly article on the subject:

http://endnear.com/texts/his.pdf

[Jamastiene]

5. Thanks, I will bookmark it and read it shortly.

I'm doing several things at once. The project is going to kill me, especially when this teacher gets through making all his little red marks on the paper.

Thanks.

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. Your English teacher is a flaming moron...

if he thinks that NETSCAPE 'owns' the Internet. No-one actually OWNS the Internet--and Netscape owns nothing these days...they got bought by AOL quite a while ago, and they were only ever a company making a web browser (note: the Internet was around for a long time before the WWW. The web is NOT the Internet). The Internet is decentralised, and it's not a network...it's more like a network of networks, communicating among one another via a standardised protocol (or more accurately a suite of protocols). And at least one of the reasons for ARPAnet (predecessor to the Internet) was to create a secure network that would allow communications in the event of nuclear war.

[Jamastiene]

7. Thanks, that is exactly what I am finding over and over again.

The deeper I dig, the more I see that no one owns the internet and that the ARPAnet networking technology really was the beginning of what later ended up being used for the internet and www.

Thanks for the info. I didn't think I was going nuts, but with the teacher saying what he said, I was dumbfounded.

[Oeditpus Rex]

8. One thing that completely eludes me:

When you plop down your $25 to register a domain name, who gets the money? :shrug:

[Jamastiene]

10. Good Question.

I heard years ago that there was a centralized place in Quantico, VA where domain names were supposed to come from, but I don't know how much of that was paranoia on my friend's part. He was the one who told me that. He had a thing about trusting anything coming from anywhere near the US government. I wasn't as wise about how our government lies, spies, and defies the Constitution back then. I sure believe him now.

[Omphaloskepsis]

11. Well, you just paid way to much.

The company you registered the domain with gets a chunk. But, you should look into icann.org. The site seems to be down at the moment. For a basic primer you could read http://www.icannwatch.org/icann4beginners.shtml

[Oeditpus Rex]

12. I didn't

I've never registered a domain.

[khashka]

13. The internet, eh?

Originally it was DoD. Then Universities. Then it spread :)

Khash.

[Deja Q]

14. The people who invented it, surely?

Of course, as with everything else, the internet has been globalized. Too late for them to want to take it back.

[Allenberg]

15. Al Gore.

:evilgrin:

[Benfea]

16. Internet --> DARPA; HTML --> CERN; Graphical browser --> Netscape n/t