[governance] Rhonda:

[Lee McKnight]

Hi Ronda, Milton, everyone,

I'll agree and disagree with both of you to help clear things up : )

Yes the ITU (and the EU, and the japanese govt to name a few names)
were not friendly to the early net. The EC only in '95 and Japan in '96
ended policies that were actively hostile to the Internet - and I
suppose actively seeking to stifle it couild be seen as 'regulating' the
net from the start.

But the other elephant in the room is of course the US dept of defense
and the various contracts passed on to NSF before the Dept of Commerce
and ICANN came into the picture. In other words the glorious early
Internet days were brought to you by the same folks who brought us...but
I digress.  And the guy I mean institution who ran the name system out
of his back pocket back then was not 'regulated' by the government.
Rather he was paid (his university) by the USG, which is a type of
involvement ; ).  And everyone loves him RIP, etc, and of course I am
certainly not implying there was anything wrong, just noting the
historical facts.

Final correction is the question of how conscious or unconscious was
the USG and other governments signing on to trade in services and
specifically telecom services  liberalization, as to what that might
mean for the Internet. That did indeed open the door to the Internet
around the world going from a resource only accessible by a few
academics and other net tech players, versus the general service it has
become.  In my opinion and recollection the Clinton/Gore admin knew
exactly what it was doing by promoting a 'global information
infrastructure' starting in 94. Other governments saw what was going on
and wanted to get in the action too. After all they were all using the
net to communicate about all of this - and maybe kinda figured others
would want to be able to do the same as them.

So give governements credit and blame them as you wish, point is life
in the virtual fishbowl was made possible by the folks who created the
tank.

Which gets back to Milton's point in his other note re the framework
convention, and what specifically should be the Internet governance
regime of the future.  Maybe we can refocus on that rather than the
past?  What kind of fishbowl do we want to co--create multistakeholder
style, next?

Lee 

Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile

>>> mueller at syr.edu 12/8/2006 9:32 PM >>>
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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