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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