can the Internet be brought under governance of a single body or bodies?

You only have to look at how organized crime organizations operate and communicate to see that: a) internet cannot be brought down to a single entity, and b) alternative data transfer protocols are in use.

Jean -

What issue or problem do you feel this would solve?

One of the benefits of the Internet has been that it has a distributed governance model which creates resilience and enables greater levels of innovation.

Private B2B intranets are one example of a more tightly governed approach. These exist in specific industries to enable collaboration between companies in that industry without having their data exposed to the entire world. The Darknet is another such example. Both piggyback on top of the Internet but are sheltered.

At this point, for any company or even group of companies to create a separate tightly governed equivalent of the internet would be both cost prohibitive and it is questionable how much uptake it would get from users.

Kiron

Hi Stephane can you please explain and give examples of alternative data transfer protocols apart from UDP and TCP? Tah. Jean

The internet is both a distributed system (many operations going on independently in many places and then interconnected) and a System of Systems (many systems contributing to create solutions but not centrally controlled).

A system that is not centrally controlled, and can operate anywhere simply by adding another node onto the self adjusting network is impossible to govern absolutely.

Many other technologies could be used, such as laying thousands of miles of dedicated undersea cables, bouncing individual peer to peer messages off satellites, carrier pigeons... History has many examples.

None so far are as broadly accessible, as easy use, nor as economical to transfer large volumes of data to practically anywhere instantly. It's like the invention of steam locomotives. Yes you had alternatives. They were generally much more labor intensive.

I think it is possible to have alternatives. However, all of them will be governed and controlled as a weapon/tools by countries and companies.

I was not using "protocol" in that sense, Jean. I was thinking more in line with Keith: paper exchanges, mouth-to-ear...

Of course, the dark web piggybacks on legal servers to "communicate and collaborate".