I went to www.askjeeves.com, typed in "Who owns the Internet?" and a page of responses appeared. Below is one of the responses. At the very bottom is a link to the page.

Nobody "owns" the Internet -- everybody owns their piece of the Internet.

The Internet backbone is "owned" by the National Science Foundation.

It is currently run under contract by Merit, a joint venture between IBM and MCI.

Registration services are provided by AT&T under contract with the NSF.

The leased lines that hook most of the network together are owned by the regional Bell operating companies and the long distance carriers such as MCI, AT&T, Sprint and WilTel.

http://web.ask.com/web?q=Who+owns+the+Internet%3F&qsrc=0&o=0