The recent decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to delay deciding whether to approve the .xxx top-level domain signals what could be yet another debate about “indecency” over communication networks. This time, it’s about the structure and content of the Internet, not the broadcast airwaves. And because it’s the Internet that will be impacted by debate concerning “indecent” content, international sovereignty and cultural integrity is at stake. The fear is that supposedly independent technical standards bodies will be hijacked by governments wanting to restrict the free flow of content.
But the U.S. is not alone in its apprehension over what it considers to be illegitimate content. Brazil and France were worried about a .xxx TLD. Indeed, Internet communications spill over national borders, connecting and uniting people everywhere. Other countries fear that cultural fragmentation and the violation of national sovereignty will result from increased interconnection.
The World Society of the Information Summit (WSIS – pronounced Wiss Iss) will hold a meeting this November. And on the verge of it governance policy issues are heating up, and as I say in my recent C:\Spin policy article, ICANN and other Internet governance bodies should have accountability, but not necessarily political accountability to the U.S. or UN. These organizations have a role in deciding on the technical specifications that will encourage the free exchange of information, not limit it.
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Yesterday’s news that IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo got me all sentimental. I worked at IBM’s PC support headquarters in Research Triangle Park, NC for a bit about ten years ago, back when IBM was going through some turbulent times. The future of the mainframe business was definitely looking grim, but its PC division – the future of computing – had already lost its dominance in the PC market and was struggling to sell its OS/2 operating system. And I remember some jaded folks there that blamed IBM’s fall (at least partly) on an obscure proprietary technical feature called MicroChannel (MCA) – an example of how a closed standard can be bad for business.
IBM had reached 40% market share by 1985. But its open (non-IP protected) architecture meant that the PC was easily “cloned.” According to this site, Compaq was “the first with an 80386-based machine in 1986. IBM attempted to re-establish control over the PC platform in 1987 with a homegrown replacement for the DOS operating system, OS/2, and the introduction of the PS/2 based on the proprietary MicroChannel architecture. Neither had the desired effect. By 1995, IBM’s share had fallen to 7.3% behind Compaq at 10.5%, and in 2003, IBM (6%) was a distant third behind Dell (16.3%) and HP (16.9%).” What is a bus? (interface between a computer’s CPU and its expansion cards and their associated devices – MCA was 32 bit, ISA was 16 bit).
The problem, as this site documents, was that MCA, while technologically superior to the industry standard ISA bus, was not what the market demanded.
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It’s essential to understand that the Internet is an agreement among users. That can be a little mind-blowing to everyone who thinks that it is a thing requiring some form of external, top-down, public-law-style regulation.
Here’s an anonymous post inspired by the ICANN meeting now underway, obviously by someone who gets it. There are details on which I differ (like the ITU), but on the whole it’s good enough to declare twangily: “Wish I’da Wrote This.”
“The internet is 200,000 private networks linked by private agreement.”
These are the words of ICANN chief executive Paul Twomey, according to a story in Australian News Interactive.
Most people working on “Internet governance” probably don’t realize the profundity of this statement. It’s a message to governments – all governments: “Hands Off!”
I, for one, look forward to the day when “Internet governance” is recognized as an oxymoron.
Now, governments can be extremely sticky. Even the U.S. government, which is one of the better ones, got its mitts on the Internet by just sort of declaring its right to assign governance to ICANN. If Twomey knows the consequence of his statement, he’s setting up a battle with the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2006. A victory there would be good, so long as all other pretenders to the mantle of Internet governor can be fended off, too.
The U.N.’s Working Group on Internet Governance is the careful effort of overpaid international bureaucrats to seize control of the Internet on behalf of have-not countries and drive it into the ground – er, I mean, to create an “open and inclusive” process and “a mechanism for the full and active participation of governments, the private sector and civil society from both developing and developed countries, involving relevant intergovernmental and international organizations and forums.” Or something.
Look through the list of countries represented in the working group, announced today and listed at the bottom of this page. Sure enough, it’s larded up with academics and bureaucrats from backwater foreign countries like Mauritius, China, Kenya, and Rhode Island. In July 2005, they will assuredly report back to the U.N. Secretary-General that international bureaucratic control of the Internet is needed.
Which raises the crucial question about Internet Governance: If the report of a U.N. Working Group is totally irrelevant, does the U.N. Working Group actually exist?
Much as we complain about government interference in the Internet here at home, its sobering to take a look at what’s happening abroad–most notably in China. Heritage last week released a Backgrounder by research fellow John Tkacik on “China’s Orwellian Internet,” outlining the situation there. According to the paper:
“The Internet once promised to be a conduit for uncensored information from beyond China’s borders, and for a brief, shining instant in modern Chinese history, it was a potential catalyst for political and human rights reform in China. However, for China’s 79 million Web surfers–the most educated and prosperous segment of the country’s population–the Internet is now a tool of police surveillance and official disinformation”.
It’s worth a look. And, if you missed it, you also should take a look at Adam’s excellent post on China the other day.
According to this AP report, Chinese officials are now encouraging the entire population to rat each other out to stamp out online porn.
“Some 445 people have been arrested and 1,125 Web sites shut down with the help of public tips since July,” the story notes. The Ministry of Public Security gives people rewards of $60 to $240 for becoming good little servants of the state and infomring on their fellow citizens.
It’s all quite sad, but also somewhat silly. How far can this approach really take them? As many authors noted in the last book I co-edited, Who Rules the Net? Internet Governance and Jurisdiction, these geographic-based cyber-regulatory regimes are doomed to fail in the long-run. Barring a government mandate requiring all Net traffic to flow through centralized state servers (which is the approach Saudia Arabia has adopted), there’s no way to entirely bottle up the free flow of information (especially porn!) As wireless & satellite technologies proliferate, this will certainly be the case. But even in a predominately wireline world, the censors will have their hands full.
CEI filed comments today in response to a Federal Trade Commission request for comment about email authentication. The FTC will be holding a summit on November 9-10 about what authentication schemes will help the spam problem. The FTC, in its Federal Register notice, characterizes the summit as a “first step” towards “an active role in spurring the market’s development, testing, evaluation, and deployment” of authentication systems. Of course, what the FTC is really saying is that industry better play a card or else the government will force its hand.
I’m worried about the FTC role here. This summit is a foray into the technical standards setting process, which to me seems like it goes beyond the FTC’s consumer protection and antitrust mission.
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Last Friday George Mason University Law School held a symposium called “The Economics of Self-Help and Self-Defense in Cyberspace.” It was an excellent event with a cutting-edge topic – technological self-help – that deserves more study. Self-help dominates our entire legal system, as influenced by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Self-help arrangements, either contractual or self-defense – occur everday. Society permits, even encourages, self-help when the legal remedy is less available or less efficient. But what about a virtual “repo man“?
I immediately hit Richard Epstein with the direct question of whether digital media copyright holders should be able to engage in self-help by invading computers and searching for pirated media (as in the Berman bill, or more perniciously, when Sen. Hatch actually said that he favors using technology to remotely destroy the computers of those who illegally download music on the net.). He indicated that any regime of self-help, as opposed to legal help through the courts or law enforcement, must have net positive benefits to society.
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Last week, I published a short article that used the birthday of the Internet as a hook for saying that 35 years may seem old, but the Internet is still young. Regulators need to remember that internet applications are still developing, and shouldn’t be treated as “mature” akin to a public utility (see VoIP, censorship, etc.). I received some feedback saying that September 2 was really the birthday for ARPANET, created by the United States Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) that in 1969 linked universities and research centers. So was I wrong about the birthday?
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.