[governance] a very grounded and divergent perspective on Net Neutrality

[Parminder]

> > 1.      In terms of ownership - it is public

> >

> 

> Asserting this ignores the basic reality that most of the components

> of the Internet are owned by private individuals and organisations.

> 

> How would you assert public ownership in light of this?

 

 

McTim,

 

As you would seen from my email from where you extract this quote, the
purpose was to seek out what could be called as the very essential and
defining characteristics of the Internet, which will help us build the
essential public policy principles for it. It is in this regard that the
publicness of the Internet was originally mentioned.

 

One must understand that public is not necessarily, and certainly not in
this context, public authorities. 'Public' is as opposed to 'private', as
used in the term 'public interest', for instance. You may remember that the
WSIS defined the Internet as a global public facility.  

 

We are talking about the 'essential nature' of the Internet. It is a public
network, as opposed to private networks. I think this much is elementary and
universally understood and accepted. It may connect many private networks,
but it itself, in its essential nature, is public. It is like public roads
joining private territories, or perhaps more aptly, the public environment
enveloping the private enclosures. The environment is in its essence public,
and of public ownership. Since Internet is a whole new space and reality,
the environment analogy is perhaps more appropriate. All of these however
are obviously inexact approximations. 

 

To try to keep it simple, we can try to understand the meaning of public as
against private in a different and direct way. 

 

When you think of 'the Internet' do you instinctively feel you have as much
right to it as anyone else? I suspect you, like every one of us, do think
so. Well, then Internet is public. 

 

It is like when you go to a public park or library. You strongly feel you
have an equal right to it as anyone else.  That defines something as public.

 

On the other hand, if you were standing in front of, say, the building of
Microsoft's head office you may still feel you can go in, but inside you'd
really not feel you have every and equal right to be there, as much as
anyone else. This place is private. It is known who has greater rights to
the place than you have. That's true of IT for Change's office too. 

 

It Internet were not public, it has to be private. Are you saying the
Internet is private? If it is private, someone has to own it more than
others. Who is it? Well, it is beginning to happen in the way corporates
have started to skew the basic equal characteristic of the Internet, whereby
we did this campaign for protecting the 'public-ness and the egalitarian'
character of the Internet. However, the Internet is still largely public.
That's the point being made. To say it is not public, is not merely a
semantic haggling. It is playing in the hands of those who are bent on
destroying this equal (egalitarian) and public nature of the Internet. 

 

These distinctions are important, because they can determine what governance
regimes are suitable for the Internet, and which direction will the
development of the Internet take.  

 

Parminder 

 

 

 

 

> -----Original Message-----

> From: McTim [mailto:dogwallah at gmail.com]

> Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 6:52 AM

> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Parminder

> Subject: Re: [governance] a very grounded and divergent perspective on Net

> Neutrality

> 

> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 7:11 AM, Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>

> wrote:

> <snip>

> >

> >

> >

> > 1.      In terms of ownership - it is public

> >

> 

> Asserting this ignores the basic reality that most of the components

> of the Internet are owned by private individuals and organisations.

> 

> How would you assert public ownership in light of this?

> 

> --

> Cheers,

> 

> McTim

> http://stateoftheinternetin.ug

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