Who controlls the Internet?

Sun Jul 25 13:42:10 UTC 2010

On Sun, 25 Jul 2010, Tarig Yassin wrote:

> I want to show you some obstacles that some countries face them every day.
>
> For example when users from Sudan trying to access some web site they 
> will get a *Forbidden Access Error* message.
>
> And some messages say: you are forbidden to access this web site 
> because your IP address appears form country black listed due to USA 
> government policy.
>
> I would like to issue a question here, who controls this Internet?

No one person or entity controls "the Internet", which itself is just a 
large collection of interconnected public and private networks that use 
the same protocols to communicate with each other.  Many government 
entities exert some degree of control over the connectivity to, from, 
and within their contries.  This ranges from overt restriction of 
access to certain sites, to overt/covert monitoring of user activity. 
Numerous examples have been discussed here over the years (China, Pakistan,
Iran, Burma/Myanmar, Australia, India... the list goes on and on).
Discussions related to the political reasons for such control are likely 
off topic for this list.

In the case of certain websites in the USA being forbidden from IP 
addresses listed as being registered to a Sudanese entity, that is the 
result either of a choice not to accept connections from Sudanese IP 
blocks (to the extent that they can be identified) or the site has content 
and is within the sphere of influence of the US government, which 
maintains a list of contries with whom they either do not have direct 
diplomatic relations (Iran, North Korea) or they keep at arms' length for 
other reasons (Syria, Sudan, Somalia, etc).

jms