[governance] Who owns the Internet?

[Ian Peter]

Relating Wolfgang's comments to Annan's question -

I am going to agree with the statement that no single person or entity owns
the Internet. I would go further and say I don't think there is even
collective ownership by all of us, although all of us might claim some
ownership of small parts of it (particularly bits of content, or in some
cases pipes and servers). But the whole here is much greater than the sum of
its parts so I find collective ownership difficult as well.

Which does not mean there is no need for governance. We don’t own rivers or
oceans or air or land either (apologies to any nation states or humans
arrogant enough to feel they own these things). But we do need to regulate
their use in various ways and have in place protective measures to ensure
they are available in a healthy state and an equitable manner for all of us.

And I think the Internet is like that - we do need to regulate and manage
for its overall health and its equitable availability. I think the ICANNs
and IANA agreements and other such early governance structures need to be
evaluated against basic principles like this for their current value in a
regulatory structure for Internet protection.



Ian Peter
PO Box 429
Bangalow NSW 2479
Australia
Tel (+614) 1966 7772 or (+612) 6687 0773
www.ianpeter.com
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"
> [mailto:wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de]
> Sent: 21 March 2009 00:21
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Annan Ebenezer; governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: AW: RE: [governance] Who owns the Internet?
> 
> There was a GAO Report from the year 2000 which touched the issues of
> ownership and property of the Internet, in particular the status of the
> "control of the authoritative root server". The GAO ist the US Congress
> oversight body over the US government. It this paper
> http://www.icann.org/en/general/gao-report-07jul00.pdf the GAO analyzes
> whther the US Department of Commerce did have a right to delegate
> responsibilities to ICANN via the MoU from Ocgober 1998.
> 
> The key passge of the report is below in full text::
> 
> " The question of whether the Department has the authority to transfer
> control of the authoritative root server to ICANN is a difficult one to
> answer. Although control over the authoritative root server is not based
> on any statute or ternational agreement, the government has long been
> instrumental in supporting and developing the Internet and the domain name
> system. The Department has no specific statutory obligations to manage the
> domain name system or to control the authoritative root server. It is
> uncertain whether transferring control would also include transfer of
> government property to a private entity. Determining whether there is
> government property may be difficult. To the extent that transition of the
> management control to a private entity would involve the transfer of
> government property, it is unclear if the Department has the requisite
> authority to effect such a transfer. Since the Department states that it
> has no plans to transfer the root server system, it has not examined these
> issues. Currently, under the cooperative agreement with Network Solutions,
> the Department has reserved final policy control over the authoritative
> root server."
> 
> The situation is rather unchanged today. If the DOC should plan to
> terminate the JPA in October 2009 this would not mean that the control
> over the root server system would be transfered. This control is subject
> of the IANA contract and the USG has made clear several times (in
> particular in its statement with the four principles from July 2005) that
> it does not intend to delegate this authority to anybody.
> 
> 
> 
> Wolfgang
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> Von: Annan Ebenezer [mailto:siliconvalley2005 at yahoo.com]
> Gesendet: Fr 20.03.2009 14:03
> An: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Betreff: Re: RE: [governance] Who owns the Internet?
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   was it the US that brought the internet?
> 
> ebenezer
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