[governance] What is RPKI and why should you care about it?

Sun Sep 12 16:39:33 EDT 2010

Actually I agree with your basic point, and have made it many times myself. A free society does provide innovators (technological or otherwise) the ability/right to act first and tries to impose rules afterwards - the opposite approach (which seems to be the reflexive response of the EU, which is develop rules first, and then wait for industry and society to develop in a way that conforms to the rules) leads to a lack of vibrancy and innovation. 

My concern with RPKI is not that "law" is behind "technology," it is that policy decisions with law-like implications could be made without our even noticing it, through certain kinds of technical choices being made now. 

There is a difference. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Lehto [mailto:lehto.paul at gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2010 1:33 PM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Milton L Mueller
> Cc: Karl Auerbach
> Subject: Re: [governance] What is RPKI and why should you care about it?
> 
> An observation on the overall framing of Milton Mueller's approach
> follows. I don't claim the following reflects his intent, but it is
> one of the main meanings some people will take away from the way it
> is specifically worded.:
> 
>  LAW will always be "behind" technology in all societies that profess
> freedom of innovation  in the technological sector.  Consequently, if
> someone has a right or freedom to go into business, as with all rights
> the thing is not truly a right unless it may be freely exercised, with
> "punishment" for abuse occurring (if any) later on after the right's
> been exercised...
> 
> As a practical matter, law can not possibly be  "ahead of the curve"
> and therefore anticipate very specific technological developments --
> at least not when freedom of innovation exists. Law can only have
> principles or general laws that then have to be applied to new
> technological contexts.  That's the almost everyday business of law
> and lawyers.
> 
> (My "issue" here is the context or subtext  I felt was underlying the
> opening paragraph, which is consistent with much I hear, that law is
> somehow "behind".  Yes, we can do better and Milton Mueller's efforts
> can be part of that but there's no reason to expect or even to
> necessarily desire that law completely catches up or somehow gets
> ahead of technology, so it should not be faulted for doing so.  Such a
> notion of "fault" falsely reinforces in some readers' minds that
> law/governance is always defective or something like that, and
> therefore promotes laissez faire approaches to internet regulation
> WITHOUT the debate and discussion that is the only way to legitimize
> such approaches.)
> 
> ---Paul Lehto, J.D.
> 
> On 9/12/10, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> > These are good observations, Karl.
> > It is good that you see the relevance of these issues. The IGF itself
> has
> > had a hard time doing that. Note that our workshop is not listed as a
> feeder
> > into the critical internet resources main session. This is not because
> > routing-addressing are not vital to CIR, but because no one in the MAG
> was
> > far sighted enough to view these issues as critical. As usual, they
> will
> > wait until something blows up in their face and it's too late to do
> anything
> > about it before they officially recognize routing as a major issue.
> >
> > The term "system" does not necessarily imply the singularity you are
> > asserting. A system is nothing more than a set of interrelated
> components;
> > one can speak of the "economic system," the "price system" and so on
> without
> > implying any centralization of authority.
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Karl Auerbach [mailto:karl at cavebear.com]
> >> Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2010 8:28 PM
> >> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> >> Subject: Re: [governance] What is RPKI and why should you care about
> it?
> >>
> >> On 09/11/2010 06:14 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> >>
> >> > That's the rationale behind our Workshop on "Routing and Resource
> >> > Certification." It's about the resource public key infrastructure
> >> (RPKI)
> >> > being proposed and implemented to secure the Internet's routing and
> >> > addressing system.
> >>
> >> You are right in saying that those are significant matters - matters
> >> that could give, in the extreme case, the power to turn-off certain
> >> parts of the net (or rather, turn off information needed for packets
> >> flowing *to* certain parts of the net to find their way.)
> >>
> >> You say the Internet's routing and addressing system" - I note the
> use
> >> of the singular form.  In practice there is not a single routing
> system
> >> - there are fairly standard protocols (most particularly BGP) but
> those
> >> are carrier-to-carrier rather than a unified mesh.  And there is an
> >> overlay of unilateral, bi-lateral, and multi-lateral agreements
> (human
> >> agreements turned into router configuration settings) that overlay
> the
> >> information that is moved by things like BGP.  And, of course, we are
> >> seeing a trend in which large content providers (like Google) have
> their
> >> own private networks that they hook directly to large edge network
> >> providers (such as Comcast) thus bypassing intermediate carriers.
> >>
> >> Like fake-source email there is a problem with false or improper
> >> announcements of routing information.  (I'm dealing with that kind of
> >> problem myself - someone to whom I lent some address space some years
> >> ago is refusing to stop advertising his use of the space - that
> suggests
> >> that the issue goes deeper than "false identity" and can reach to
> >> whether the entity announcing routing information is empowered to do
> >> so.)
> >>
> >> Regarding the other use of the singular form to "addressing" - with
> the
> >> increasing use of network address translation (there is even demand
> for
> >> it in IPv6) it is becoming increasingly hard to say which is the dog
> and
> >> which is the tail - is the "public" IP address space becoming merely
> a
> >> means to connect "private" address spaces?
> >>
> >> I ask that latter question with an intent to suggest that we might
> see a
> >> future internet that is more "lumpy" than we see today.  The end-to-
> end
> >> principle may fade and be replaced by an internet in which rather
> than
> >> packets flowing unvexed end-to-end we see certain applications being
> >> bridged across boundaries that vanilla IP packets can not leap.  In
> >> other words the internet may evolve from being a seamless IP packet
> >> transport and become something more like the mobile telephone
> networks -
> >> certain basic features will work across providers but only because
> the
> >> providers build explicit (although often hidden from user view)
> bridges
> >> among themselves.
> >>
> >> I have been slowly writing a note on how our perception of the
> internet
> >> is changing.  We who have been on the net for a long time tend to
> view
> >> it as a means of moving IP packets from one IP address to another.
> Yet
> >> most people who have come to the net since, say 1995, tend to view
> the
> >> net not as a means of packet exchange but, rather, as a platform for
> >> certain applications.
> >>
> >> That shift of perception, from packet-mesh to application-platform,
> >> radically changes our view of what is important to preserve on the
> net
> >> and also changes the points where pressure may be applied for
> purposes
> >> of imposing regulation/governance or creating anti-competitive
> regimes.
> >>
> >> 	--karl--
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> 
> --
> Paul R Lehto, J.D.
> P.O. Box 1
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