On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Alison M. Wheeler <
wikimedia(a)alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gordon Joly"
<gordon.joly(a)pobox.com>
So who owns the Internet? Who has ultimate authority over DNS?
A very good question indeed ;-P
And the answer, of course, is it depends on who you are talking to. Even
though it shouldn't. And the people in one country disagree with the rest
of the world.
Well, who does and who should is two different matters....
Currently the Root DNS servers are supervised by IANA, who in turn has to
get permission from the US Department of Commerce if they want to change
any of the root servers which hold the records for the TLDs, which then
point to the nameservers for each different domain (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server#Root_server_supervision and
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd197427(WS.10).aspx)
As well as this potential area of influence for the US to control the DNS
queries of the world, due to the whole nature of the internet, local
networks can change/pollute DNS or network records on their networks (like
the Youtube incident -
http://www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/news/industry-developments/youtub…
).
All in all there are many different areas and ways that
any organisation (be it a government, organisation via court
orders/injuctions or just IP networks making accidents) can interfer with
the internet as it is.
Regards,
Mark