[ih] Internet should be in private hands

[Vint Cerf]

good summary, John.
v


On Tue, Dec 6, 2022 at 10:47 PM John Gilmore via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> >>>     I have heard a couple of times that there was a moment in the
> history
> >>> of the Internet where private companies were putting pressure on the
> >>> community indicating that the Internet had to be controlled by a
> private
> >>> company, that it had to be in the hands of someone, not in their free
> >>> will. Is it so?
>
> I recall a time when the Domain Name System top-level domain (TLD) for
> each country had to be handled by a private party, not by the government
> that ran the country.
>
> For example, the .au domain for Australia was originally run by Robert
> Elz at Melbourne University.  By 2001, a private nonprofit called ".au
> Domain Administration" had been organized to run it instead, with the
> "endorsement of the Commonwealth of Australia (the Commonwealth) of auDA
> as the appropriate to hold the delegation of authority by the Internet
> Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for administrative
> authority of the au country code top level domain (ccTLD)".
>
> As a separate response...
>
> The original Internet was operated completely by government contractors
> (like BBN or MERIT).  Eventually, in the early 1990s, private parties
> built their own networks that used the IP protocols.  UUNET was an early
> one, which didn't receive government subsidies, unlike the bloated and
> therefore generally unresponsive NSFnet regional networks like BARRNET.
> The private IP networks were soon gatewayed to each other, and to the
> government-run parts of the Internet, so that it all acted as one big
> Internet.  Then it became possible for both government projects, and
> ordinary companies or people, to just buy Internet service from this new
> concept, an "ISP".
>
> Soon after that, there was a general move on the part of the US
> Government to get out of the business of running operational IP
> networks.  Instead, parts of the government (like the NSF) could just
> fund their grantees to buy Internet access from any commercial provider.
>
> (Even after that, experimental networks such as the Gigabit Internet
> Testbed could be fully funded and operated by government agencies or
> their contractors.)
>
>         John
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
Google, LLC
1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
Reston, VA 20190
+1 (571) 213 1346


until further notice