[128166] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Who controlls the Internet?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Conrad)
Sun Jul 25 15:17:35 2010
From: David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org>
In-Reply-To: <SNT137-w18F639E6F4AB8F18DBF884BBA50@phx.gbl>
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:17:17 +0200
To: Tarig Yassin <tariq198487@hotmail.com>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Jul 25, 2010, at 8:05 PM, Tarig Yassin wrote:
> probabaly every web server in USA e.g. Google, Verisign and =
sourceforge.
ALL companies that operate in the US are bound by law to abide by =
restrictions that are defined at =
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/ and elsewhere. Failure =
to abide by those laws can result in criminal sanctions (that is, being =
thrown in jail for years). =20
However, the US is not the only country that restricts who does business =
with whom. I suspect you'll find pretty much every country in the world =
has a similar list in one form or another. In many cases, and depending =
on context, companies can obtain licenses that permit the provision of =
content and services to countries and people that are under sanction, =
but those companies have to do the work and I suspect most find it isn't =
worth the effort.
In addition, Intellectual Property owners may decide that they want to =
deny access to content for arbitrary reasons. Examples of this outside =
of the Internet are region encoded DVDs. These restrictions are =
determined by business models.=20
The issue isn't that the US has these restrictions, rather it is that =
there is a lot of useful content that is generated in and/or distributed =
from the US. One could argue that this encourages creation of and =
distribution channels for useful content outside the US...
> What if a large orginization which has an infrstructure in many =
countires, in which regulations the will comply, in terms to ban other =
countries accessing to thier Internet resources.
As has been pointed out, the Internet is a set of interconnected public =
and private networks. Each of those networks has their own rules about =
who they'll grant access and what resources they'll make available. =20
Regards,
-drc
