[governance] Rhonda:

[Milton Mueller]

Rhonda:
I could explain at greater length: 

If we had convened the ITU in 1991 and tried to pass a resolution
authorizing any operator in the world to offer a global information
service that competed with domestic newspapers, broadcasters and
telephone companies and contained politically challenging, pornographic
or otehrwise unrestricted information content the answer would have been
a resounding NO.

Internet globally was built around the liberalization of "value-added
services". Governments liberalized that market because it was considered
(and at the time, was) small and insiginifcant in terms of revenue and
effect on vested interests. Less than 1% of the telecom market at the
time. Through that "stealth" mechanism, and through the liberalization
of leased circuits, budding ISPs were able to form and interconnect. The
unanticipated and (at the time) completely unregulated addition of WWW
and html and browsers to the system around 1993. 

Govts had no official control of domain name or address allocation;
they did not even succeed in asserting power over ccTLD assignments
until after 2000.  

You could say that the US government policy of promoting free trade in
interntional telecom services contributed to the development of the
internet. But the US govt had no idea that it was preparing the way for
the internet when it did that, it was more interested in managed
informatikon services of the sort offered by AT&T, and in traditional
voice telecom. 
 
Governments as a collectivity had no specific regulatory powers over
the international aspects of the Internet, and they still don't except
for ICANN. The US govt promoted and subsidized the internet as a tiny
closed network for academics and researchers. The agency that made the
decision to open it to the public was not an official policy making
organ of the US government but a research foundation and an informal
committee of network users within the Federal government. It's mutation
into a public mass medium was largely "accidental" and serendipitous.

>>> ronda at panix.com 12/7/2006 6:56:56 AM >>>

On 12/4/06, Milton Mueller <Mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

>We need a new global governance regime and in entering into it we
must
>as a principle be deeply aware of the fact that the Internet's growth
>and much of its value came from the fact that govts had no regulation
or
>control over how it initially evolved.

The myth that government had no regulation or control over how the 
Internet initially evolved is important to put to rest.

The Internet was built under a good form of government leadership.

The problem of the myth is that instead of building on the actual model

that made it possible to create the Internet, the actual practice is 
thrown out the window and models are created that have no basis for
being 
with regard to the Internet.

Instead of paying serious attention to the history and practice of how
the 
Internet was built, there is the fallacious effort to invent something

that has no connection to the Internet and its origin.

This is what ICANN has done and unfortunately the efforts to challenge

ICANN fall into this same mode. It would be more helpful for those 
offering such a challenge to be studying the history fo how the
Internet 
was developed and considering the implications of this development
toward 
its future. Following was a talk I gave toward beginning this process:


The International Origins of the Internet
and the Impact of this Framework on its Future

http://ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/nov4talk2.doc 

best wishes

Ronda


Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook 
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