[governance] Need Help - History of Internet Governance

[Ronda Hauben]

Hi Laina

I thought there was a real problem not only with the Magaziner activity
in 1998 but with the pre 1998 activity like gTLD-MoU which the ITU and
others were involved with in 1997 or so - where it was a closed meeting
that came up with some proposal, something also not in line with the
history of the development of the Internet. The privatization of the US
portion of the Internet and the pressure on other countries to privatize
their Internet connections was a time when the problems were raised.

After that it was a situation of fighting among different entities.


On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, laina at getit-multimedia.com wrote:

>
>
> Ronda, very interesting reading indeed your articles. Just curious why 
> you did not describe the process from 1996 to 1998 before ICANN was 
> formed i.e. from the Postel draft, IAHC, CORE, the IFWP process, and the 
> 4 models proposed, etc. I believe the domain handbook and the cookl 
> report does describe this process as well. It was the early days when 
> there was genuine interest from the US to "internationalise" Internet 
> Governance to an "international not-for-profit organisation". That whole

What "international not-for-profit" organization? What are you referring
to? There were struggles during this period between Postel's IANA
and Network Solutions (NSI) over who controlled the root server 
system. The impression I had from this fight was that Postel was
threatened at some point by Magaziner with criminal charges for his
efforts to keep NSI from controlling the root server system and
Postel basically then let the lawyers that came into the situation do
whatever they would do. (I thought the lawyers were originally brought
in on the guise of being there to defend Postel, but the situation
became the lawyers becoming an entity drafting ICANN.)

>From 1992 or so on, the US model became a privatized Internet.

Gordon Cook in the Cook Report did complain about this process, as did the
the US Inspector General.

None of that had any effect on the rush to privatize the public wealth
that the US government at the time was involved with, probably under
pressure from business interests.

> process and what IRa Magaziner did before he caved in to political and 
> business interests, is very similar to what we are going through now 
> (except now it is driven by the others countries whilst the later was 
> driven by the US gov).

It seemed, to the contrary, that the problem originated from the way
the US rushed to privatize the US portion of the Internet in a way
that was also contrary to the US constitution. The US constitution
requires that there be public discussion before the US Congress can
give away US public property to a private entity.

There was some footnote in one of the US government reports about this
requirement.

So I suggest it is important to look back at the Internet development
before the privatization activity the US government embarked on.
Once it was on that path, it was a slippery slop.

There is a rather long article about the problems of the privatization
in Netizens - that speaks of the debate online over the situation.
Its online at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x14

Also there is a chapter there about the privatization of the US
portion of the Internet.

What's your sense of what is needed to deal with the current impasse?

>
> Just thought this would be also an important part of history to be 
> remembered as well in any DVD or otherwise materials to help put things 
> in some perspective of how ICANN started out broke.
>

best wishes

Ronda

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