[governance] Re: "gentle" governance of internet tech?

[Dan Krimm]

While I generally subscribe to most of Karl's comments, this one perked up
my ears:

At 1:41 PM -0700 9/17/07, Karl Auerbach wrote:
... issues
>such as access might become non issues if we can oversee and gently
>govern a few aspects internet technology (such as end-to-end
>connectivity and service levels) so that it becomes ubiquitous and
>inexpensive.


This seems to discount the efforts by telcos and cable cos in the US
explicitly trying to make Internet access more expensive (by abandoning
open end-to-end and even eroding the market for flat-fee and unlimited-use
service).

How can this fly in the market in the US?  Because broadband ISPs are no
longer governed by open access/interconnection rules in the US (as remain
in place many other places in the EU and elsewhere), and thus broadband ISP
competition in the US is "suggestive" at best.  In the US, the open
access/interconnection policy is determined by the FCC under the authority
of the Telecom Act which has been primed for re-hashing since last year or
earlier.  And the FCC and legislature are heavily lobbied by the ISPs to
influence regulatory policy in this area.

In short, it is hard for me to see how "we" (who is "we" anyway?) could
"oversee and gently govern" anything in the area of end-to-end and service
levels, at least in the US.  There's nothing "gentle" about it whatsoever,
unfortunately.  It's flat-out war.  It was war last fall in the last
congress when the Republicans were in the majority and the net neutrality
movement had to fight Ted Stevens' ("Senator Tubes") bill, and it remains a
fierce struggle this time around because the Democrats have not moved on it
since January (the Senate NN bill has few co-sponsors and remains stuck in
committee, while the House bill hasn't even been introduced as Ed Markey
promised).

FreePress.net is gearing up for a big constituent push for this fall,
because next year is presidential election year and things generally come
to a stop.  It will take the mobilization of a huge, active and vocal grass
roots constituency to get this on the agenda before the end of the year.

IGF in November will be too late to address anything in this cycle.
Besides, what political authority could possibly impact national regulation
of this sort?  Some of these issues cannot wait for a global authority to
emerge, and must be addressed immediately in national or more local
jurisdictions.  Voluntary technical standards can easily be ignored by
private firms.

Remember when Netscape simply built whatever HTML functionality it wanted
into its browsers, W3C and IETF be damned?  When M$FT polluted Java with
proprietary hooks in its mission to undermine the "middleware" threat to
its OS market power?

Now Cisco is building routers for clients who want smart pipes, not for any
standards body that is concerned with open end-to-end dumb pipes.  Whoever
pays the piper calls the tune, unless the law weighs in on it.  Gentle
oversight will be set aside.


Also, "access" requires attention to availability of hardware/software (and
maintenance/upgrade budgets), user training, and locally-relevant content
as a motivation to get over the biggest hurdles at the outset of customer
penetration in tech markets.  Open network standards are necessary but not
sufficient to systematically ensure broad or universal access.  So I don't
think that ensuring end-to-end and reasonable service levels will
automatically ensure "digital inclusion" (as it is referred to in the US
these days, among local advocates for universal access) in a meaningful
way, all by itself.

Oh, I *wish* these could be gentle oversight.  But I don't see anything
gentle about the political wars we are going to continue to have
surrounding Internet architecture and deployment.  The political and
commercial stakes are too high, and the public and commercial powers are
too strong.  They will ignore us or co-opt us, but they will not leave us
alone.


That's it for now.  Since I won't be able to get to Rio myself, I guess
this is my chance to engage the discussion...  ;-)

Dan
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