Internet governance

[Adrian II]

Over the past three days, the World Summit on the Information Society has been taking place in Tunis, the capital of Tunesia.

Okay, so the venue is a joke. Tunesia is a sick dictatorship where professors and their students get 13-year jail sentences for merely opening a 'forbidden' website. If anything, the summit has served to highlight the repressive nature of the Tunesian regime. Those who want to have a good laugh at the sorry buggers should read this article in The Guardian about their failed attempts to stifle ngo's.

However, the most important issue debated at the conference is essential for the future of Internet freedom and it concerns us all. The summit is supposed to decide on a plan for the future governance of the Net. At issue is the technical management of the core resources of the Net: Domain Names, IP addresses, Internet Protocols and the Root Server System. Some of the following information is borrowed from the paper Beyond ICANN vs. ITU? (2004) by Wolfgang Kleinwächter.

The US and the EU, supported by the private industry, have long argued that the American private firm Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) with its narrowly defined technical mandate should continue to be the leading organisation.

Other governments, led by China and members of the G20 group like Brazil, South Africa and India, based their arguments on a broader definition. Their understanding of “Internet Governance” included not only domain names and root servers but also other Internet related issues like spam and illegal content. They wanted to move the whole Internet management system under the umbrella of an intergovernmental organisation of the United Nations, notably the “International Telecommunication Union” (ITU), which hosted the first phase of the WSIS.

Ngo's critical of both governments and ICANN did not support an “intergovernmental solution” but argued in favour of a “decentralized mechanism” with different organisations with different core responsibilities.

In October 2005, the EU announced that it would support plans to end the US government's unilateral control of the Internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium. The reason given by British Commissioner Henson was that last June, the American Department of Commerce (DoC) announced that although ICANN would continue to run the Internet Top Level, the DoC itself would retain "indefinite" overall control over the root servers, i.e. the basic directory for the Net.

The U.S. government would thus be able to keep the upper hand in all Internet-arguments about intellectual property rights, national security, violation of individual privacy, preservation of cultural values and protection from so-called unwanted content. Although content restraints are most powerful and pervasive in non-democratic regimes, many democratic countries including the U.S. are also seeking to police the Internet.

If this is to be the case "indefinitely", the EU wants to exert its own control over its own portion of the Net. Hence the EU proposal to move the Top Level management of the Internet to an intergovernmental organisation of the United Nations, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

What do you guys think? Should the Intetnet ultimately be controlled by faceless bureaucrats serving U.S. economic and national security interests, or by a bunch of faceless bureaucrats representing some of the world's worst dictatorships?

Is there a way out of this dilemma, can we secure freedom of expression on the Interet in other ways?

[Xiahou]

Again, the whole notion is ridiculous. The argument that the American government is going to leverage the Internet for its own benefit is nothing more than a boogeyman made up by people who likely want to do the same themselves. The US has engaged in no Internet censorship- hell there are even terrorist websites on the Internet that arent being shutdown.

[Adrian II]

Again, the whole notion is ridiculous. The argument that the American government is going to leverage the Internet for its own benefit is nothing more than a boogeyman made up by people who likely want to do the same themselves. The US has engaged in no Internet censorship- hell there are even terrorist websites on the Internet that arent being shutdown.

It seems your confidence in your government knows no bounds.

[Xiahou]

ICANN has a very narrowly defined role and is largely autonomous of the government. They've kept registration prices cheap and don't censor for content. Do you think an international beaurocracy would do the same? I doubt it.

[Ser Clegane]

For me the current question is - why would we want to change it?

From my (I grant it - limited) POV there are no problems that would require changes in governance.

In this case I would say "if it ain't broken, don't try to fix (or meddle with) it"

[Watchman]

Faceless bureaucrats have their good sides too.

[Lemur]

For a much more broad essay about where the Internet might be headed, give this a gander. It's long, but very well thought out.

[BDC]

The current status quo must be maintained. The prospect of an internet ruled by unelected beurocrats sent forward by unelected governments is horrific. At least at the moment it is run fairly well and freely, this is something that won't continue if the UN gets its hands on it.

So either the status quo remains, else the west is going to have to create some new version entirely of its own, again managed properly. Which won't help the poorer nations, stuck with an easily censored and useless old internet.

[Kanamori]

Make your own internet if you don't want ours. These pro-censorship countries aren't adding anything significant to the internet anyways. I would be interested in seeing one example of our government denying someone the ability to put something on the internet because of the speech it was.

Edit: Roger, we have .org members who contribute to our very forums, cancel that thought

[doc_bean]

Free speech must remain, however, policing things like child pornography wouldn't seem like a bad evolution.
In the end intergouvernemental (sp?) organization end up virtually powerless (look at the UN) so they might be that might be the best option if ICANN loses control.

I still prefer the current system by a large margin though.

[Kaiser of Arabia]

We inevented it. It's ours. Get the ********************************************************************************** off of it. Bloody globalists...

[Adrian II]

We inevented it.

Nah, Jules Verne invented it.

Anyway, the Tunis summit has folded without anyone wresting control of the Internet from ICANN or the United States Department of Commerce.

It did adopt the so-called 'Tunis Commitment' in which signatories pledge to 'build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society so that people everywhere can create access, utilise and share information and knowledge'. The Commitment stresses that 'freedom of expression and the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge are essential for the Information Society and development'.

Sounds fair enough. Certainly for Tunesia...

[Watchman]

But then again, aren't statements like that issued pretty much out of rote memory about all but clearly failed meetings ?

[Goofball]

Again, the whole notion is ridiculous. The argument that the American government is going to leverage the Internet for its own benefit is nothing more than a boogeyman made up by people who likely want to do the same themselves.

"Boogeyman," eh?

Aren't you the guy who objects to gun registration because you believe it is the first step to the government confiscating your guns?

How come you are so willing to trust your government on this issue, but not on the other?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

It seems your confidence in your government knows no bounds.

The government doesn't control the internet, a private company does (ICANN). If anyone else wants to set up there own tld system they can and I'm sure ISP's would add the servers to the DNS list.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.

.

[Ser Clegane]

We inevented it.

Kind of reminds me of the "We are Pope" statement the German yellowpress made after Ratzinger became Pope

[Papewaio]

There is something like 13 different sets of root servers, each one looked after by a different organistation. Each of these organisations has multiple sites around the world... more or less according to where the traffic is... and each of these sites would typically be a cluster of servers.

So the root servers is something like 13+*10+*2+ or about 300+ servers as a guestimate.

Control of the internet is much like control of air traffic towers. Some countries have deals that allow them far harsher internal controls and even custom made search engines... ie China. What ICANN and DoC can do if they wished is lock out a country, a business, The Org... but typically the way it would be done is either a legal action against the ISP (the people who host the site) or an illegal denial of service attack on the ISP (where someone just fires so many connection attempts at the site it becomes unavialable... it is like phoning a company with so many phones that all the phone lines are used up and no customers can call in... in call centers we typically have a set of lines that can only be dialed out on to deny such an attack from blacking out communications).

Read up about Al Jezeera and you will find that it has had its website attacked by both methods. I do believe that governments around the world will shutdown opposition.

We need to keep the ICANN and go for a less government controlled option. If it came down to the EU then it would be a step backwards not forwards.

[Adrian II]

We need to keep the ICANN and go for a less government controlled option.

Why does nobody address the article linked by Lemurmania? Has anybody read it?

Are you ready to see the Net privatized from the bottom to the top? Are you ready to see the Net's free and open marketplace sucked into a pit of pipes built and fitted by the phone and cable companies and run according to rules lobbied by the carrier and content industries?

Do you believe a free and open market should be "Your choice of walled garden" or "Your choice of silo"? That's what the big carrier and content companies believe. That's why they're getting ready to fence off the frontiers.

[Papewaio]

Don't assume that by having less government control that I mean privatise it. I mean don't let the governments bind it with laws and then implement it wholly themselves, let the governments protect the users allow companies to use it as a tool, but allow an independent organisation to run it day to day.

Org = ?

====

Adding value to the Internet Lowers its Value.

Sounds screwy, but it's true. If you optimize a network for one type of application, you de-optimize it for others. For example, if you let the network give priority to voice or video data on the grounds that they need to arrive faster, you are telling other applications that they will have to wait. And as soon as you do that, you have turned the Net from something simple for everybody into something complicated for just one purpose. It isn't the Internet anymore.

Kind of true, manily incorrect though in practice.

For VoIP to work you typically purchase your own pipe and then put QoS on it, you cannot and should not rely on the general infrasturcture. VoIP is a separate beast which is far more time dependent then say email. As such if the internet is the information superhighway, VoIP are the jets and as such need a different set of priorities. But the companies in the whole should be paying for their own private setups... and they do if they want commerical quality infrastructure.

VoIP = Voice over IP
QoS = Quality of Service (this is part of the thing that says Voice has priority over data on the same route).

[bmolsson]

Internet belongs to noone. That is the whole point with it......

[Divinus Arma]

I'll come out from lurking for this one.

It is ours. We did invent it. If you don't like the way it is administered, then you can form your own seperate internet. Then link your internet to our internet if you want to view our content. It is an intellectual-technical entity devised in the U.S., grown in the U.S., and made successful first in the U.S.

Nuff said. I'll go back to my ban now.

[Ice]

I'll come out from lurking for this one.

It is ours. We did invent it. If you don't like the way it is administered, then you can form your own seperate internet. Then link your internet to our internet if you want to view our content. It is an intellectual-technical entity devised in the U.S., grown in the U.S., and made successful first in the U.S.

Nuff said. I'll go back to my ban now.

[PanzerJaeger]

I'll come out from lurking for this one.

It is ours. We did invent it. If you don't like the way it is administered, then you can form your own seperate internet. Then link your internet to our internet if you want to view our content. It is an intellectual-technical entity devised in the U.S., grown in the U.S., and made successful first in the U.S.

Nuff said. I'll go back to my ban now.

Its all a European ego trip anyway.

The only reason this issue has gotten any attention is because the Europeans joined forces - yet again - with the totalitarian nations, who have always called for this type of thing.

[Xiahou]

Why does nobody address the article linked by Lemurmania? Has anybody read it?

I started to read it, but I couldnt finish because my eyes kept rolling uncontrollably.