AW: [governance] People's Daily of China: US must hand over Internet control to the world
Riaz K Tayob
riaz.tayob at gmail.com
Tue Aug 21 07:19:21 EDT 2012
Great that some of myths of "control" are dispelled. But in short, still
an argument at an essentialist level for Exceptionalism (US good
discretion) and if it ain't broke don't fix it... and here I was waiting
for the techie-challenged single rooters to take their own arguments
seriously and say,"if there is there is a threat to THE root, we have to
deal appropriately with China to save it..."... dare I say it, we are
back to 2003/4... but not quite...
Snips (as legitimate fair use) from the article , with comments appended
prefix with hyphen:
The Internet is increasingly important, but "governance mechanism for
such an important international resource is still dominated by a private
sector organization and a single country." (True, but the Internet is
not worse off for it.)
-- effectiveness is NOT a substitute for legitimacy.
-- this is a judgement call, a fork in the road, and we can agree to
disagree... but whatever rests on this chain/link of the argument then
is also weakened.
The US retains "ultimate control over the global Internet, which enabled
it to unilaterally close the Internet of another country. A suddenly
paralyzed Internet would definitely cause huge social and economic
losses to the country." (Theoretically true, but completely implausible.)
-- Theoretically there should not be wars of aggression without UN
Security Council mandate. Practically implausible. Opinion not fact.
"The United States has taken advantage of its controlover the Internet
to launch an invisible war against disobedient countries and to
intimidate and threaten other countries." (Not true.)
-- Cuba, Iraq? Enhanced cooperation failures?
"Ultimate control over the Internet has been an important tool for the
United States to promote its power politics and hegemony worldwide, and
any other country may fall victim to this." (Again, the US doesn't
actually exercise ultimate control over the Internet. If it did, then
China wouldn't be able to censor the web so effectively.)
-- which puts into doubt the fact that national level controls do not
already exist in the framing of the argument... i.e. nationalisation of
control.
"As a big country on the Internet, China opposes the U.S. unreasonable
and unilateral management of the Internet, and seeks to work with the
international community to build a new international Internet governance
system." (The US has not behaved unreasonably in the past. As is
evident from China and Russia's proposal for an Internatioal Code of
Conduct for Information Security, China's idea of an "international
Internet governance system" would be one where countries would agree,
per para. 3 of the Code, to cooperate to curb the dissemination of
information undermining "other countries' political, economic and social
stability, as well as their spiritual and cultural environment." Hello,
censorship.
-- Bye Bye Wikileaks?
-- Not so clear, is enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights
(including on domain names) not a form of censorship (albeit not
conventionally defined)? After all Intel Prop is national not global...
perhaps we can see what happens with counterfeiting issue at ICANN...
and check if there is overreach... and blowback...
Summing up: some criticism is valid, but there is no better, more
legitimate and more stable alternative than the current system. Most of
the criticism, however, is politically motivated.
-- translation? - legitimacy in governance is not an issue... if it
ain't broke, don't fix it...
-- Translation anti-evolutionary, if there is no concrete alternative
pre-cooked and ready now, the prospect of change cannot even be
considered. Sorry but no thanks. We reserve the right to define the
debate in our own terms. Keep your coins, we want change...
As Internet architecture expert Wolfgang Kleinwächter pointed out there
are now more than 150 anycast root server which makes the root server
system much more reliable and have greatly reduced what the article
calls the US hegemony.
-- Apologies but this is a point that can be made BOTH for and against
change...
Importantly, there has also been a "moment of truth" as far as the
control of the US government regarding publication of TLD zone files is
concerned: the .xxx case. The US goverment was opposed to the
publication and could have - theoretically - stopped it. But they didn't.
-- Examples of good governance merely reiterate a point, restatement or
overstatement is not an argument when dealing with issues of legitimacy...
-- Framing the debate in terms of pure cases simplifies too much. There
can be "incremental debasement" of rhetorically stated values. This
point is ill-considered. Nothing stops abuses on a case by case basis. I
hope to be wrong, but the intellectual property frontier is predictably
the next one that would put paid to this view...
ICANN will never and can never meet the legitimacy requirements of a
nation state. Because it is no nation state it shouldn't have to. Its
role in Internet Governance can be legitimated through other avenues of
legitimacy, including input, throughput and output legitimacy.
-- The changes to GAC representation show some seek to be more Catholic
than the Pope... apologies for re-using this refrain, but it is so apt.
-- Perhaps I am dumb but how can you say can't say there can't be
change, and that there can be other avenues for legitimacy - unless of
course a much reduced notion of legitimacy is envisaged...
-- Any way Rosa Parks said she was tired and would not move. And MLK had
a dream.
Rather calling for an "internationalization" of DNS and root server
management, we should use a functional approach that first asks what
exactly the function of the regime needs to be (ensuring Internet
integrity, stability and functionality in a process coherenent with (and
outputs consoncant with) the Internet's core values, including the
protection of human rights).
-- selectively taking on evolutionary arguments (like structure follows
function) in this manner shows resistance to change rather than
adaptation. You can have any car you want, as long as it is black...
-- effectively protection of human rights here would de facto mean a
hierarchy of rights with US jurisprudence being favoured explicitly.
Here I am decidedly a universalist.
Internationalization is not always good. A treaty on DNS issues is not
always the best option. Trust, accountability, rational legitimacy and
distributed decentralized de facto control can serve just as well.
-- legitimacy is ALSO about de jure control. Apologies but the
performative "We" reserve the right to determine the terms of the terms
of the debate.
They don't actually want Internet governance to be internationalized,
but rather nationalized. The UN, where China has a voice (and the
Security Council where it has veto powers) are only means to the end of
increasing control.
-- Double standard. US is in de facto "control" (with all the caveats),
this argument is status quo-ist. And unconvincing, if the US then why
not others? And is felicity to a single root not important anymore?
Rather than calling on the "US [to] hand over Internet control to the
world" what Chinese media should call for is for "China [to] hand over
Internet control to its people."
-- Love this stuff. A clear radical position that lambasts China (in
many instances rightly so) but looses the singular important perspective
of de jure and de facto control currently by the US. Essentially this is
rhetorical flourish, because this is legitimacy argument - the people
are legitimate and the Chinese state is not. Of course, we know the
score, this legitimacy argument is used to stifle the international
legitimacy argument. It remains incoherent and inconsistent no matter
how plausible in some circles.
On 2012/08/21 11:36 AM, Kettemann, Matthias
(matthias.kettemann at uni-graz.at) wrote:
>
> Thanks, Rebecca .. certainly illuminating. What’s really interesting
> is that most calls for “internationalization” of Internet Governance
> issues are actually calls for a re-nationalization via the United
> Nations. It’s a new type of ‘bluewashing’
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluewash> national censorship policies.
> I’ve written an entry in my International Law and the Internet blog on
> some of the dangers of this trend
> <http://internationallawandtheinternet.blogspot.co.at/>.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Matthias
>
> --
>
> Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann, LL.M. (Harvard)
>
> Institute of International Law | University of Graz (Austria)
>
> Mail <mailto:matthias.kettemann at uni-graz.at> | Blog
> <http://internationallawandtheinternet.blogspot.com>| Twitter
> <http://twitter.com/#%21/MCKettemann>| Facebook
> <http://www.facebook.com/matthias.kettemann>| Google+
> <https://plus.google.com/u/0/116310540881122884114/posts>
>
> *Von:*governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
> [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] *Im Auftrag von
> *Rebecca MacKinnon
> *Gesendet:* Dienstag, 21. August 2012 04:53
> *An:* governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> *Betreff:* [governance] People's Daily of China: US must hand over
> Internet control to the world
>
>
> A shot across the bow from China's government mouthpiece...
>
> http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7915248.html
>
>
> (People's Daily Online <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/>
>
>
> )
>
>
> 11:10, August 18, 2012
> <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7915248.html>
>
>
> <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7915248.html>
>
> The Internet has become one of the most important resources in the world in just a fewdecades, but the governance mechanism for such an important international resourceis still dominated by a private sector organization and a single country.
>
>
> The U.S. government said in a statement on July 1,
> 2005 that its CommerceDepartment would continue to support the work of Internet Corporation for AssignedNames and Numbers (ICANN), and indefinitely retain oversight of the Internet’s 13 rootservers.
>
>
> This indicated the U.S. decision to retain ultimate control over the global Internet,which enabled it to unilaterally close the Internet of another country. A suddenlyparalyzed Internet would definitely cause huge social and economic losses to thecountry.
>
>
> More and more countries are beginning to question the U.S. control over the world’s
> Internet as the international resource should be managed and supervised by all
> countries together. However, the United States has conducted a pre-emptive strike,and refused to give up control over the Internet in the name of protecting the resource.The refusal reflects its hegemonic mentality and double standards.
>
>
> The United States controls and owns all cyberspaces in the world, and other countries
> can only lease Internet addresses and domain names from the United States, leadingto the U.S. hegemonic monopoly over the world’s Internet.
>
>
> During the Iraq War, the U.S. government in 2003 asked ICANN to terminate services
> relating to Iraq’s top-level domain name “.iq” and then all websites with the domainname “.iq” disappeared overnight. The United States has taken advantage of its
> control over the Internet to launch an invisible war against disobedient countries and to
> intimidate and threaten other countries.
>
> The United States have repeatedly called for “protecting Internet freedom.”In fact, it is
> only protecting its own “Internet freedom” even at the expense of other countries. Ten
> of the global Internet’s 13 root servers are located in the United States, and the U.S.government can supervise the Internet for national security reasons according to the
> U.S. law. By doing so, the United States actually gains access to all information
> transmitted online, while other countries can do nothing about it.
>
> Ultimate control over the Internet has been an important tool for the United States to
> promote its power politics and hegemony worldwide, and any other country may fallvictim to this. As a big country on the Internet, China opposes the U.S. unreasonable
> and unilateral management of the Internet, and seeks to work with the international
> community to build a new international Internet governance system.
>
> --
> Rebecca MacKinnon
> Author, Consent of the Networked <http://consentofthenetworked.com/>
> Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation
> <http://newamerica.net/user/303>
>
> Co-founder, Global Voices <http://globalvoicesonline.org/>
>
> Twitter: @rmack <http://twitter.com/rmack>
>
> Office: +1-202-596-3343
>
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