StupidScript - 5:54 pm on Oct 31, 2006 (gmt 0)

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn (Americans) worked out the basics (and more) of TCP/IP in the very early 1970's to make the ARPANET (American, circa 1968) more valuable and Mr. Berners-Lee (British, working in Switzerland) based his work (the WWW) on the infrastructure developed in the U.S. by people from a wide array of nations, and added an extreme amount of value to it ...

The point is that no one organization "runs" or "owns" the network or its contents. We all contribute toward making it what it is and will become.

The political squawking is misinformed. Does Japan or the ITU or any other nation/org really think that they have been cut out of anything, other than a few bragging rights? I've never worked in a professional IT environment that did not have many people of different nationalities working together in it, and even working across national boundaries, thanks to a network that WORKs. It'll change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse ... but I've got SHOES older than the Internet, so all of this turmoil is to be expected as our little project grows up.