Trope-a-Day: Internet Incorporated

Internet Incorporated: Averted in theory: both the Empire’s dataweave and the interstellar extranet are networks of networks, just like the Internet, operating in decentralized fashion, with no central company, organization, government agency, etc., which controls the whole of it. (Except locally in certain repressive polities.)

In practice, well, that being said, Bright Shadow, ICC does own the vast majority of the interstellar communications infrastructure and even a very large part of the local communications infrastructure inside the Core Economic Zone, and a good part of it elsewhere. But it’s not a legal monopoly or a central control – they’re just very, very good at what they do.