Who Owns the Internet?

What is the Internet, and who owns it? These are not simple questions; their boundaries are muddy. Most people would agree that the Internet encompasses physical infrastructure and physical networks—the satellites, radio towers, and fiber-optic cables, aboveground and underwater, that connect our devices—but does it not also refer to the content they carry? And how can one meaningfully distinguish between that content and the servers that host it; the software that translates it into legible form; the eyes and ears that consume it; the hands that build and maintain it? US Senator Ted Stevens was once mocked for describing the Internet as “a series of tubes,” but his metaphor was about as accurate as one could hope for in so few words. The only trouble is that it’s hard to say where the tubes begin and end.