[128156] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Who controlls the Internet?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Justin M. Streiner)
Sun Jul 25 13:41:14 2010
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:42:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Justin M. Streiner" <streiner@cluebyfour.org>
To: nanog <nanog@nanog.org>
In-Reply-To: <SNT137-w5651FB6513D82C6116EFC4BBA50@phx.gbl>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
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
