|
who owns the internet....
I just wanted to know who "owns" the internet. I want to claim a domain (my name) which no one has bought or uses yet, but every time i look into it through google they say "buy this domain" or "this domain is not taken yet buy it!" who the hell has a monopoly over the internet isn't it supposed to be open territory... seriously it's equivalent to someone owning all of earth..... is there a way around it?? for me to get the website which i believe should be mine since its MY NAME??
[ ]
Want to answer more questions in the Technology category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Internet & Web Design?
Every device on the Internet has an IP address, which looks like this:
209.85.171.100
You and every website you visit has an IP address. You could visit any websites by using just the address. If you typed 209.85.171.100 into your address bar, you'd end up at Google.
Since those numbers are impossible to memorize and occasionally change, the domain name system was set up. The DNS translates a domain name into the proper IP address. When you type google.com into your browser, your browser asks ICANN's rootservers what the IP address for COM is. With that information, your browser then asks COM's nameservers what the IP address is for GOOGLE. Then you can connect to Google.
To translate your request into an IP address, it must pass through a number of servers. These servers require expensive maintenance, power, and bandwidth. That's why you have to pay a small fee to register a domain name.
You could start your own Domain Name System with your own rootservers, but you'd have to get every computer/browser/DNS manufacturer to include the IP address of your rootservers built in, so that the domain name lookup process could be started. It's not feasible.
More info:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
ICANN assigns IP addresses to every device in the world, they have ultimate authority over the DNS, and they assign AS numbers to ISPs (which ISPs need to use the BGP). ICANN is the closest thing to the "owner of the Internet".
]
No one actually owns the Internet, and no single person or organization controls the whole internet.
There are organizations that standardize and register domain names. Without these rules and standard procedures, our computers wouldn't be able to understand each other and 'surfing' would be impossible.
It's like the telephone system: Nobody owns the whole thing, but many people own part of it. You own your phone, maybe your state owns the telephone wires but the company you pay actually owns the satellites and stations that they give you access too… Just because someone is selling you service and assigning you a phone number, doesn't mean they own the whole system.
You need to pay a company for internet access... and a similar thing needs to happen when you want to purchase a web address.
There is company called The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It’s a non-for-profit corporation that oversees the registration of domain names (website addresses). But you don’t need to deal directly with ICCAN, there are lots of smaller companies that have relationships with ICCAN and will ‘sell’ you domain names that ICCAN tells them are available.
So you need to pay one of these registers to get a domain name and they do all the work with ICCAN to make it yours, for a while. Most of them require you to renew your domain name every few years. And it’s pretty cheep, less then $20 normally, to register.
HOWEVER, to actually build a website, you need to have a server. That is a place to store the information on your website and that costs more money. The more information you want to have, the more expensive it will be to be ‘hosted’ on a server. For example, advicenators will pay a lot more for all the space it’s information will take up on a server, then someone’s own personal website will pay. But you aren’t paying them because they ‘own’ the internet. You are paying because they own a server where parts of the information that makes up the internet is stored, and you need s place to store your little part: your website.
I hope that makes more sense now. The two things you need to pay are 1.) The registration of your domain name and 2.) the space on someone’s sever that the information for your site takes up.
]
The internet is a network. A network is not a physical thing, but data, and the data is owned by the people sending and receiving it.
Domains are a place to host a page of data for other people to volunteer to receive by looking at the page.
The network is made up of servers and users. You are a user, and the server communicates with other servers, in order to retrieve data from other users, that you request.
The reason you have to "buy" a domain name, is that it doesn't exist at the moment. The way to make it exist in relation to other users is to register it with a server, so that other servers are notified of it, and find it when users search for it. The server wants money for that.
You need to look up servers, and investigate paying them to host your domain name. You are not paying for the name, you are paying them for the service of directing people to your webpage, when other servers ask about it. They will also charge you for the data that people download from your website, and possibly data you upload to it, or changes you make to it will cost too.
Alternative:
There are some software packages around the place that will allow you to run a server from your home computer, using your personal internet connection. Any traffic on your web-page would be going through your modem/router, so it would affect your ability to use the internet. Generally that kind of software is only used for testing web-pages, but some people host small personal webpages on a permanent basis.
-K
]
The internet isn't really owned by anybody. There are a few major companies that have some control over it, though. Websites like Google control alot of the internet, because their rankings determine how many people visit a website.
*
No one owns your domain name...including you. To legally own your name as a website, you have to buy it. I know it seems stupid, but for all you know there could be someone else in the world woth the same name as you, wondering the same thing as you. You can't both own the domain name because you both have that name~~it's just not possible. So whoever buys it first will legally own it.
*
If you have anymore questions you can privately ask me.
I hope this helps, though!
xx
]
More Questions: |