[governance] For you as an Internet user, what is a "Critical Internet resource"?

[Milton L Mueller]

Paul:
Critical internet resources are the virtual resources required to maintain the Internet's connectivity: IP addresses, domain names, routing tables. The term derives from the Tunis Agenda. 

(Arguably, one could include bandwidth and the relevant interconnection arrangements, but little is to be gained by lumping bandwidth, which falls under a completely different business and governance regime, with addressing resources. imho this is a result of sloppy thinking, which the Tunis Agenda often contains.) 

I must challenge your approach to this question. You are Director General of an organization that allocates and assigns internet resources (IP addresses). The commercial Internet service providers who join your organization and pay rather substantial membership fees to do so, no doubt think these resources are critical. 

Are you really telling us that you do not know what we mean by "critical internet resources"? Or are you trying to suggest that the resources you allocate are not critical compared to others? 

If it is the latter, I can see no purpose to this question other than an attempt to divert attention away from your own policy domain and move it into others. And I think that's wrong. 

Certainly telecom access and electrical power, as some other messages have suggested, is critical to development and to the Internet, in any country. Neither are "critical Internet resource" of the type invoked by the Tunis Agenda. 

If you start talking about what environmental factors are important to the internet, then no doubt literacy would be critical. But Paul, civil society didn't put you on a critical internet resources panel to discuss power grids or literacy. You have no expertise on that, and the UN Internet Governance Forum is not the appropriate place to discuss policies related to that. 

So my advice to you is, stick to your knitting. Be prepared to discuss how the policies YOU make at APNIC affect users, and how those policies might be improved. Don't seek excuses from users for not addressing those issues. 



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