IHAVE BEEN THINKING recently about the complementary roles of stewardship and own- ership in the context of the In- ternet. A significant fraction
of the physical infrastructure of the
Internet and the equipment that animates the World Wide Web is privately owned. Some of these components
are “owned” by governments and in
some cases by cooperatives. The owners are usually motivated by the benefits of their ownership whether that
is making a profit, fulfilling government obligations, or producing benefit for the group owners in the case
of a cooperative. There are, of course,
cases in which profit is not a motive
but rather social benefit. Think of
schools, churches, and libraries that
provide access to the Internet freely.
They are the owners of the facilities
and operate them in part to fulfill
their missions. So where does stewardship fit into this picture?
Organizations such as the Regional Internet Registriesa (ARIN, RIPE,
LACNIC, AFRINIC and APNIC) and
the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbersb (ICANN) do not
own the assets they administer. Their
missions are to manage the assignment of these assets to parties who
have the right to use these assets in
exchange for fees paid to maintain
these assignments. In the case of
domain names, the registrars are
often, but not always, for-profit entities that assist users to register and
maintain a record of the assignment.
The domain name registries may
also be for-profit, non-profit, or even
government operated in the case of
the country-code Top Level Domains.
a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Inter-
net_registry
b https://www.icann.org/
Interestingly, in the case of domain
names, the assets (that is, right to
use) is created by the registrant who
can invent new names not previously
registered and register them for use.
In the case of Internet address space,
there is a finite amount of that space
(IPv4 has 32 bits of address space,
IPv6 has 128—a lot!) and the right to
use is meted out by ICANN to the Regional Internet Registries, which is in
turn typically meted out to Internet
service providers who temporarily or
even dynamically allocate addresses
to end users for the purpose of their
gaining access to the Internet and its
many services.
The Regional Internet Registries
and ICANN are stewards of IP address
and domain name spaces. Their role
is, to the best of their abilities, to provide fair access to these assets and
to keep track of these assignments
to ensure parties who do not have a
registered right to use them cannot
falsely claim or hijack them. While
opinions may vary as to the success
of these institutions in carrying out
their missions, it strikes me as very
interesting that the largely private
sector ownership of the physical
Internet (including the hosts and
cloud datacenters) is ultimately dependent on the successful stewardship of a few key non-profit entities
for the useful application of these
physical assets. The Web would
not exist in its present form without domain names. Domain names
would not be useful if they could not
be mapped into IP addresses so the
servers of those domain names could
be reached on the Internet.
Given the understandable eco-
nomic motivations of for-profit in-
stitutions, the fact that the Internet
and the World Wide Web are depen-
dent on the stewardship of a key set of
non-profit institutions strikes me as
quite remarkable. It might easily have
gone the other way. There is a current
trend toward encouraging technology
transfer from government-sponsored
research into the private sector. I
agree with the general premise that
publicly funded research should find
its way into the private sector where
investment and hard work can pro-
duce economic gains, jobs, and use-
ful products and services. It is none-
theless fascinating to me that one
of the largest government-produced
engines of economic growth and in-
novation is so deeply dependent on
the stewardship of the people and
institutions that administer Internet
addresses and domain names.
The Internet Societyc (ISOC) is another non-profit institution, which
houses the Internet Architecture
Boardd (IAB), the Internet Engineering Task Forcee (IETF), and the Internet Research Task Forcef (IRTF).
ISOC benefits directly from its wholly owned, non-profit subsidiary, the
Public Interest Registryg (PIR), which
is the steward of the .org top level
domain. The Internet Society plays
an active role in reminding us of
the importance of stewardship and
the need to heighten awareness that
harmful uses of the Internet threaten its global connectedness and the
safety of its users. We are all in debt
to the stewards of the Internet. Long
may they serve.
c http://www.isoc.org
d http://www.iab.org
e http://www.ietf.org
f http://www.irtf.org
g http://www.pir.org
Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet
Evangelist at Google. He served as ACM president from
2012–2014.
Copyright held by author.
Ownership vs. Stewardship
DOI: 10.1145/3310251 Vinton G. Cerf