[governance] Another Immovable Legal Object Meeting An Irresistable Internet Force (this time it ain't Taipei...

[Paul Lehto]

Daniel Kalchev's point, in a nutshell, appears to be that the
'internet is too big to regulate by any single democratic entity.' He
challenges me to point to an example. My point is that the internet
does not have a credible 'anarchy option', and it relies upon legal
frameworks of DEMOCRATICALLY determined laws to operate, even when a
hands off, laissez faire policy is pursued by governments. Thus, we
only have a choice of regulation in pursuit of the public interest via
democratic laws, or regulation by private interests via contracts and
the like. Both public and private regulation outcomes rely on
democratically passed laws for their very existence. The internet does
not and cannot run in a legal black hole of zero law.

Whatever problems may exist in the challenges of global internet
policy in terms of democratically passed laws having sufficient global
reach to satisfy Mr. Kalchev personally APPLY EQUALLY to the 'hands
off' approach of laissez faire, which still relies upon a huge number
of laws from numerous countries. That's a primary reason why internet
lawyers do business, and a lot of it, around the world. Thus, Mr.
Kalchev's basic point also argues, if its premise that democratic laws
for the internet demand global reach to be workable has any merit,
just as strongly against the so-called anti-government policy position
that nevertheless uses much democratically derived law to operate how
rights and such are allocated on the internet.

It's fairly simple at bottom: Shall we choose democracy, or something
else for internet governance?? The plus for democracy is that we can
still choose laissez faire policy after appropriate debate and vote,
and reverse that choice later on, if desired. On the other hand,
giving up on democracy as unworkable is a revolutionary coup d'etat,
with yet another revolution needed to get democratic power back.

It sure seems that the collective argument on this list, even if not
voiced by one single person overall, is that global democratic legal
reach doesn't currently exist, and 'fragmented' regulation by many
countries or even cities is inefficient or crazy, so therefore lets
get democracy in governmental form off the internet.  But internet
with hands off government still has such 'fragmented' laws of
commercial contracting that vary all over the world. I sit here in one
place and contract with websites whose contracts recite in one that
US-California law applies, another says New York law, a third Japanese
law and a fourth may demand Chinese law. Even lawyers don't know what
these all mean, even if they know a couple.  Where's the cry over this
rampant fragmentation of law, or the claim that if I can't point to a
contract law (derived, of course, from democratic procedures) that we
will need to abandon contract law as a workable vehicle for the
newness that is the internet??

Mr. Kalchev's point regarding lack of global democratic reach is not
well taken. Nor are most complaints about fragmentation, once you
consider how hyper-fragmented the laws are that form the very
foundation of the internet outside its phsical/electronic parts. The
law, under Any system of government constitutes another kind of
'operating system' without which no one would have felt safe enough to
privately invest in the internet at the levels seen in the last few
decades.


On 8/18/11, Daniel Kalchev <daniel at digsys.bg> wrote:
>
>
> On 18.08.11 11:10, Roland Perry wrote:
>> In message <4E4CC4C4.2040409 at digsys.bg>, at 10:52:36 on Thu, 18 Aug
>> 2011, Daniel Kalchev <daniel at digsys.bg> writes
>>>> Make your mind up, was it regulated by the ITU, or by the operators?
>>>
>>> What was regulated by ITU?
>>
>> Much that made the telephone system end-to-end (I don't accept most of
>> the criticisms you make about shortcomings in that regard - it wasn't
>> perfect but neither was it as proprietary as you claim).
>
> You didn't live where I do. Nor did I live where you do. We have
> different perspective and I do not expect you have ever heard of most of
> what I have witnessed. There are no doubt others, with different
> experiences.
>
> Still, the phone network was pretty much different everywhere.
> The end-user had absolutely no choice.
>
> Not so with Internet.
>
>>
>> >You remember the e-mail "standard", X.400.
>>
>> Yes, but that's neither a telephone nor the Internet.
>
> Yes, but it was product of the ITU. Especially the bilateral contract
> requirement.
> There were/are a lot other products of the ITU, based on the same paradigm.
> Everyone should be thankful ITU does not govern the Internet!
>
> Daniel
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-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
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