[governance] Rhonda:

[William Drake]

Hi Lee,

On 12/9/06 5:33 AM, "Lee McKnight" <LMcKnigh at syr.edu> wrote:

> Hi Ronda, Milton, everyone,
> 
> I'll agree and disagree with both of you to help clear things up : )

Sounds like fun, can I play too? I agree with you and Milton that there was
an integral link between the treatment of leased circuits and VANs on the
one hand and the commercial blossoming of the net on the other.  Where these
were tightly regulated and highly priced in line with the ITU telecom
regime, early net development was comparatively stifled.  With the spread of
liberalization in the 90s the asymmetry was progressively reduced.  Where
I'd disagree with Professor Mueller's history is the assertion that leased
circuits and VANs were liberalized because governments thought they were
insignificant and ergo the Trojan Horse just walked in unnoticed.  In fact
corporate networking was not at all insignificant, and there was an ongoing
struggle over this in the ITU from 1927 to 1991 and in US bilateral and
plurilateral negotiations from the early 1980s.  Governments and PTOs
recognized the threat to the old order that was posed by corporate nets and
later by the public Internet, and liberalization was the hard fought result
of specific power games.

This historical arcana aside, Milton's broader point about mythologies is
indisputable.  Government and corporate decisions in the international
telecom policy space directly impacted the net's development pro and con,
and emerging developments therein probably will as well.

Cheers,

Bill 


 
> 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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*******************************************************
William J. Drake  drake at hei.unige.ch
Director, Project on the Information
  Revolution and Global Governance/PSIO
  Graduate Institute for International Studies
  Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.cpsr.org/Members/wdrake
*******************************************************



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