[governance] Are Internet users powerless or empowered, and how?

[dan at musicunbound.com]

Alx,

A few responses:


>> Nevertheless, the Internet by design has a "global footprint" and thus
>> any
>> "governance" structure set up for it as a whole necessarily *must* be
>> understood as a "global governance" structure in practice.  This is
>> *precisely* the danger we face in the IG endeavor.
>>
>
> "Problem-domain-specific" is not at odds with "global." Proven by IETF and
> ICANN.

Maybe demonstrated in one specific context by IETF, but I'm not so sure
this is "proven" by ICANN, which has a different domain of authority and
structure of regulation.  We have just agreed that we don't want "world
government" -- so are you now amending that to say: "well, world
government is okay as long as it is "problem-domain-specific"?

Ultimately, of course, the real problems are how to define a "specific
problem domain" without spilling over into "non-specific" political
ramifications (more below).


>> There is simply no way to avoid the fact that Internet Governance is
>> either
>> going to spill over into general political World Governance, or else it
>> must formally constrain itself to policy areas of a strictly technical
>> nature without allowing technical policies to pre-empt general
>> non-technical political dynamics and thus political jurisdictions.
>>
>
> Red herring.

I would disagree here.  Let me explain.

ICANN has jurisdiction over gTLDs in DNS among other things. There is
nothing in ICANN's bylaws that suggests that, say, trademark issues or
"morality" regulation should be part of ICANN's "problem-specific" domain.

However, ICANN's authority over DNS regulation, in the form of agreements
with ISPs (whether directly or through registries/registrars) constitutes
a sort of gatekeeper leverage, because these agreements are considered
esential to the operation of an ISP (I'll set aside for now the question
of just how essential they really are).

So, if ICANN decides that "content policy [A]" must be a provision of any
ISP agreement, and that any ISP signing this agreement may not
interconnect with any network that does not adhere to "content policy
[A]", that gives ICANN a de facto leverage over essentially any "content
policies" that it wants to promulgate, regardless of whether they are
directly related to its problem-specific mandate.  It can simply proclaim
that "content policy [A]" is "significantly related" to its mandate for
"problem-specific domain" and suck it into its realm of authority without
further explanation or defense.

Bottom line:  "problem domain specificity" is ultimately too fungible to
be well-defined, and that is exactly where the danger lies in unchecked
expansion of domain of authority.

So if you have a global footprint, and no well-defined constraints on the
de facto political reach of "problem domain" then you have a de facto
world government, which we both want to avoid (either de facto or de
juris, right?).  So I would say this is not a red herring.


>> This proceeds from the understanding that there is overlap between some
>> technical issues and some general political issues.  There are: (a)
>> purely
>> technical issues, (b) purely non-technical general political issues, and
>> (c) issues that are both technical and generally political.
...
>> So, I don't yet have an opinion on how this translates into specific
>> relationships of ALAC and NCUC within ICANN, for example (ICANN's domain
>> of
>> jurisdiction has something to do with this, of course).  But I do think
>> that it is probably the case that ultimately the stakeholders for an
>> increasing number of issues that are being addressed in IG venues must
>> include the broadest definition of the general public, one way or
>> another,
>> and with some effective manner of representation.
...
>> ">> ... Secondary effects in society can be profound (such as
>>>> whether non-users even have the chance to become users in the future,
>>>> and
>>>> whether it might be good for society for increasing numbers of people
>>>> to be
>>>> able to register their own domain names, and thus have more power to
>>>> choose
>>>> among competing service providers in the market)."
>>
>
> No contest, but how do you bring these people into the decision-making
> structure? Many of us have jumped through hoops to try to attract people
> to domain-name issues, for example, and after a decade we know for sure
> that dear few will come.

What "attraction" are you talking about?  Direct participation, or direct
choice in representation by direct paarticipants?  Also, there may well be
intrinsic attraction that is opposed by transaction costs of
participation, thus working against that inherent attraction.  Remove the
obstacles to participation, or representation, and that inherent interest
may well emerge more than in the past.

Granted, this must be tested explicitly, but without a test we are both
merely making untested claims.

In any case, this is precisely the quesiton.  I don't pretend I have the
final answer, but I do suggest we must find a productive answer in order
to yield a just result.


> Karl will argue that by campaigning for elections this can be done. I
> dispute the assertion if it is to relate to learning about the policy
> matters at hand and providing meaningful input.

My own judgment is that the reality lies somewhere between the extremes. 
It depends on how much one must understand about an issue in order to have
a meaningful opinion on the matter.  I would suggest that it is possible
(and desirable) to have such opinions without full techno-geek
understanding, as long as the parameters of political ramifications can be
fairly and accurately distilled by representatives and/or advocates and/or
others like the fourth estate.  (Yes, this gets politics into the process,
but y'know, that's inevitable.  Get used to it, as politics are already
deeply immersed in the process today.)


> Re choice for domain-name registration, man, with gTLDs and some ccTLDs
> the situation is that of l'embaras du choix, not scarcity of options!

No effect on my argument.  ;-)


>> Bottom line:  Defining who is a deserving stakeholder for any particular
>> policy topic may indeed depend on the *outcome* of the policy-making
>> process itself, *unless* all IG institutions formally and strictly
>> confine
>> themselves to avoiding any policies with any significant non-technical
>> and
>> generally political ramifications.  But is this confinement really even
>> feasible and/or desirable in the first place?
>>
>> This I fairly doubt.  So, what do you suggest doing about it?
>>
>> This is not so much a "controversy" at root (though there certainly is
>> controversy surrounding it), but rather it is a very difficult
>> *conundrum*
>> that deserves to be addressed fully on its own profound terms.
>>
>> I don't have the answer for it, at this point, but I suggest that
>> ultimately we cannot avoid finding a workable answer for it if we hope
>> to
>> do justice.
>>
>> If, as you suggest, we cannot feasibly tackle this comprehensively
>> head-on
>> at this stage, then we ought to keep in mind that separate
>> topic-oriented
>> approaches need to be explicitly, formally, and strictly confined in
>> such a
>> way that they do not spill over into general political ramifications.
>> This
>> would confine ICANN, for example, much more strictly than it has behaved
>> in
>> the past.
>
> I hope this does not mean that you are still buying the story that ICANN
> has ruled on content, e.g. re .xxx - or what confinement are you talking
> about? (hint: a fact-based reply is preferred; if you need to ask
> questions, do, and we might get this cleared finally for good.)

ICANN's proposed gTLD policy from GNSO on the table for the Board (I'm
including this in "past behavior") clearly adresses *semantic
characteristics (trademarks and morality) of TLDs*.  What "problem domain"
under its explicit mandate (i.e., bylaws) can possibly justify this?  And,
once semantic regulation is established as a precedent at ICANN, what is
there to stop regulation from being applied by ICANN to anything else that
has semantic characteristics, such as "content"?  As noted above, as long
as ICANN proclaims that this is "related" to its problem-domain mandate,
it seems that it could include these provisions associated with
enforcement of its direct mandate, practically speaking under current
bylaws.

Answer: No one can really say.  Even the bylaws are ultimately fungible.

So who controls the bylaws and who can change them in the future, and to
whom are they politically accountable?  How can we (or "someone"...)
assure that ICANN cannot decide to apply semantic regulation to content
itself in the future?

This depends on the power of coercion and political authority governing
ICANN's authority of governance, whatever that is.


> (But who is going to do the confining, and who enforces
>> violations of that confinement?  Ultimately a political question,
>> anyway.)
>> But, that may preclude precisely the solutions that might be best for
>> the
>> general public and the world at large.
>>
>> You seem to be saying you want "us" to build this in narrowly-drawn
>> pieces
>> from the bottom up (technically), and I am saying that "we" probably
>> cannot
>> do this effectively without constant appeal to the bird's-eye-view from
>> the
>> top down (politically), if only to determine what policy realms to avoid
>> in
>> the technical policy-making process.
>>
>
> That is not an irresolvable conflict. You can have a broader bird's eye
> view without a confining structure.

I would suggest that without a formal structure to address the bird's eye
view, the bird's eye view is politically without impact.  The point is
that the bird's eye view needs to have political impact, thus the formal
constraints.


> I consider your PS answered above where it says "red herring."

I have responded to your claim of red herring above, so that re-institutes
my PS and so I've included it for reference below.  :-)


>> PS -- One of the positively worst things we could possibly do is "build
>> an
>> overall encompassing, overarching structure for Internet governance"
>> while
>> simultaneously claiming (counter to actual fact) that it is really only
>> a
>> narrowly-drawn institution addressing strictly non-political technical
>> matters.  There are some here who would claim that this is precisely
>> what
>> has already been done, and that is why it presents such a profound
>> institutional threat.  By allowing political criteria to be imposed on
>> technical policy decisions, but then disavowing the political impact, it
>> both cripples possible structures of fully public representation while
>> allowing privileged political forces to establish genuinely political
>> outcomes under the radar.
>>
>> What do we do about the technical/political overlap, which is growing
>> every
>> day?

Best,
Dan


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