Who Controls The Internet? The Truth Behind It

Have you ever thought about who runs the internet? Who controls the internet world wide? May be you think that the internet provider companies control the internet. But that’s not true. Because, if one company stops providing it, there are other companies present. 

Now you can think that the government controls it. But that’s also not true. The government may remove 2-3 Facebook posts or block websites, but they can easily be bypassed. Now you may also think that, companies like google, Facebook and YouTube control it, because they have the most data. But that also isn’t true because you can create your own website, right? Here the question arises that, if you are creating your own website, who is giving you the authority to create that website? Is there an authority to authorize you to create that website? Can that authority has the power to tell you that, you can create that website or not? 

We all need to know where the internet comes from and who has control over it. Because, the internet is an important tool in maintaining freedom and democracy. 

If you want to make your own website then you must buy a domain name which no one uses. There are some websites who has the authority to sell this domain name. For example GoDaddy.com. Here again the question arises that, who authorizes this website to sale such domain names? Is this website is the solely owner or there is something else? The answer is, such websites are not the owners of the internet. There is another authority named ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). This is a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles. You can say that this is the top level authority regarding internet. It has the power to authorize websites like GoDaddy.com to sell domain names. This is the authority that decides upon which websites can sell domain names. This is the top level authority that decides upon which domain names can actually exists. There could be .com, .in, .info or .gov. all of these decided by the ICANN. 

So, is ICANN is the boss of the internet? This cannot be said because the internet is a very decentralized network. You can consider the internet as a net. All the mobile phones and computers are connected to the internet, make up the internet. You can call it a “server”. Your mobile phone and computers are the data centers and serves that are connected to each other through wires. Huge under water cables have been laid worldwide across the continent that connects the computers worldwide to one to another. 

Now you may think that you mobile are not connected to any cables. But that’s not true. Mobile phones operate through mobile towers. And the towers are connected with those cables. 

Now you have to understand what an IP address is. Just like every mobile phone has a number from which you can call another mobile phone, similarly every device which is connected to the internet has an IP address. Every website that we brows has also an IP address. So, whenever we brows a website from a browser it is connected through IP addresses. Now you may think that, you write only the domain names to brows a website, then how it is connected through IP address? Here you need to know that, the domain names are connected with the IP addresses. Actually humans cannot read the IP addresses because it is written in digits and numbers. So the domain names are a human readable form of an IP address. 

So, after all these the question still remains that, who owns the internet. The correct answer to this would be that it belongs to nobody and also belongs to everybody. Because the internet can only be run when it is a decentralized system. And if you wish to buy a part of the internet, if you wish to own it, you can only do that by building a website of your own. To build such website you have to buy a domain name from websites like GoDaddy.com and a server from the authorities like google or amazon. Then you have to link that domain name to your server and publish your website. 

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