The Net is a co-operative venture and no-one has the "right" to write rules that are universally binding. Obviously, without a common modus operandi, the system would collapse, so rather than writing "laws", people publish documents and ask for comments.

Some of them detail the fundamental working of the Net and are universally accepted; breaking them would seriously damage the network (e.g. those on DNS) or disrupt data exchange (MIME standards). At the other end, some are trivial or even humorous. In between, there are those that are advisory e.g. Netiquette.

For a full list of all published RFCs see ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/mirrors/internic/rfc

For further details, together with other technical information on the workings of the Internet, see http://library.albany.edu/internet/reference/faqs.html