On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Alison M. Wheeler <wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com> wrote:

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gordon Joly" <gordon.joly@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/youtube-hijacking-a-ripe-ncc-ris-case-study).

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