Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Ownership Of The Internet And The World Wide Web In Vermont, Ida Kubiszewski

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

The internet is an interesting case, since it was created entirely with taxpayer's money by DARPA, while the world wide web was created at CERN in Switzerland and placed into the public domain voluntarily in 1993. The internet and web have many features of a commons, and many people refer to the "internet commons". Kubiszewski (pronounced cube- ih-shefski) explores the intricacies of the internet and world wide web to determine if internet companies are extracting economic rent from the public and how it could be recovered. She finds that companies are making a substantial profit by utilizing a resource that …