[IP] Does the Internet Need to be Governed?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 6, 2004 5:17:45 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Does the Internet Need to be Governed?
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Does the Internet Need to be Governed?
By: Vinton Cerf
From CircleID Internet Governance
November 04, 2004
<http://www.circleid.com/article/795_0_1_0_C/>
In its earlier years, the Internet was simply a tool for the research
and education community to explore new ways of sharing computing power,
software, and information by way of electronic mail (which became a
popular application around 1971 on one of the Internet's predecessors,
the ARPANET). The approximately one billion users of the Internet today
have the same range of interests as the general population in most
countries. The side-effect of this wide spread use is that abuses have
arisen that are not unlike the kinds of abuses one finds in other
societal settings. Fraud, misinformation, harassment, illegal
transactions, theft of resources, breaking and entering (hacking into
computers), copyright infringement, and many other exact or approximate
electronic analogs of improper behavior can be found on the Internet.
Such problems plainly raise public policy concerns among governments
and stimulated much interest during the many talks associated with the
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
The term "Internet Governance" has become an area of particular
attention in part as a consequence of widespread recognition that the
Internet represents an important area of national interest for all
countries seeking to participate in the benefits of global electronic
commerce, distance learning, access to the encyclopedic wealth of
information on the Internet, and in the social dimension that the
Internet is creating. From the perspective of governments, the Internet
is simultaneously a technology that promises high economic value for
parties making use of it and a challenge in that it is unlike all other
telecommunications media previously invented.
While traditional telephony, broadcast radio and television and cable
television, as well as satellite communication have tended to evolve in
a regulated setting, the Internet has been a "grass-roots" phenomenon,
operating essentially above the traditional regulated environment.
Internet runs on top of the telephone network, or its underlying
dedicated circuitry. It works on broadcast and point-to-point radio,
point-to-point satellite, optical transmission links and virtually any
other communications medium. It was designed to work that way. As a
consequence, it has had the advantage of rapid innovation by users at
the "edge" of the network, largely without much or any regulatory
interference. Indeed, because much of the flexibility of the Internet
is a consequence of its dependence on software running in devices at
the edge of the network, rather than in systems embedded in the net,
virtually anyone is free to invent new applications and to put them up
for use. The World Wide Web, which entered the Internet picture around
1992, though it was invented a few years earlier, provided a gigantic
opportunity for virtually anyone to share information with everyone
else on the Internet.
These aspects of the Internet have stimulated considerable attention,
especially in the government sector in recent years. Moreover, as the
Internet becomes increasingly accessible around the world, its
applications and uses begin to reflect the interests of the general
population. Where computers and computer-based systems go, networking
is not far behind. This is especially so as wireless technologies make
it less and less expensive to provide connectivity for voice
communications (mobiles) and for data communication ("hot spots" using
wireless local area networks).
In a sense, ICANN has become the only globally visible body charged
with any kind of oversight for the Internet. The scope of this
oversight responsibility was deliberately and intentionally limited in
the process of the creation of ICANN. But as the Internet continues to
grow, as domain names become increasingly visible in the context of the
World Wide Web, and as the so-called "dot.com" bubble expanded between
1998 and early 2000 and then burst, many people with concerns or
complaints about problems associated with the Internet or use uses (and
abuses) have turned to ICANN expecting it to address many of these
issues.
Not surprisingly, ICANN's intentionally limited mandate and limited
resources, did not outfit it with the ability to deal with such
complaints as spam (unsolicited commercial electronic mail), fraud,
theft, pornography, and the long list of other abuses that creative
human beings have invented for the Internet. Though intense discussions
about Internet policy (or "governance") frequently reference ICANN, it
has become apparent that the topic of governance is far more expansive
than the limited role ICANN plays in the operation of the Internet.
These responsibilities of ICANN are often carried out through the
cooperative efforts of other groups such as the system of voluntary
root servers and the work of the Regional Internet address Registries
(RIRs), and domain name registries and registrars around the world.
While these functions appear on the surface to be quite
straightforward, they have policy ramifications that make them more
complex. Who should be assigned the responsibility for operating a top
level domain name service? Which addresses should be placed in the root
zone file? Who should be allowed to register any particular domain name
in a top level domain? Are there any restrictions on registrations? How
can character sets other than simple Latin characters be introduced
into domain names? Where should the root servers be located? What
should be the policy for allocation and assignment of Internet address
space? How should that policy be developed? It is because these
questions are not simple that ICANN has formed a rich system of
supporting organizations and forums in which to air such policy issues
and seek to develop consensus around them.
In the course of the WSIS discussions, the full breadth of the term
"Internet Governance" was sometimes confused with the narrower scope of
ICANN responsibility. During the next phase of WSIS, culminating in
late 2005 in Tunisia, it is vital that the discussion takes into
account that the range of Internet governance questions requires a much
broader system of practices, agreements and policies than are
encompassed in ICANN's mandate. Nor does it seem appropriate to seek to
expand that mandate to accommodate areas that should be the province of
domestic and international governmental concern. The participants in
the WSIS and associated WGIG discussions have a significant task ahead
of them. Dealing with the many public policy interests arising from the
rapid growth of Internet requires that many of the issues lying outside
ICANN's responsibility find venues in which they can be addressed.
Intellectual property protection concerns might be addressed in the
World Intellectual Property Organization and perhaps the World Trade
Organization. Concerns for criminal use of the Internet may be taken up
in organizations such as Interpol among others. Many of the concerns
may be addressed domestically but because of its global nature and
relative insensitivity to national boundaries, resolving these issues
may require cooperation among governments or non-governmental but
international organizations for their solution.
[snip]
Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/