[governance] Blogpost: Gmail Hell Day 4: Dealing with the Borg (Or “Being Evil” Without Really Thinking About It

[Norbert Bollow]

McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:

> what action and by whom?

I have in recent postings suggested two possible strategies for
addressing the kind of problem that Mike had with Gmail, together
with actors able to take such action:

a) The problem could be addressed by empowering end users to switch
email service providers without changing their email addresses. I
suggested that CCTLD operators would be able to make a category of
inexpensive third-level domain names available for this.

b) The problem could be addressed by creating a standards-track RFC
that promotes better behavior by specifying MUSTs and SHOULDs that
will, when followed by companies like Google, resolve the problem.
This would obviously be an action to be taken at IETF. (If contrary to
my expectations, a good RFC is created but not followed, I said the
issue could still be escalated by submitting the RFC to ISO/IEC and
then legislative action to declare conformance to the resulting
legally required for a category of companies.)

> IF (and it's pretty big IF IMHO) email is a public utility

This is a question of definition of the term "public utility" to a
large extent -- email and any other service that can without
fundamental problem be provided from anywhere in the world (provided
there is good Internet Protocol transport layer connectivity) should
certainly economically and legally be considered to be not in the same
category of public utilities as traditional public utilities like 
the provision of water, electricity and traditional telephone service
that involve digging ditches or hanging wires on poles to connect
end users to the service.

> then surely it should be regulated/provided by states, no?  This is
> a can of worms I would certainly want to avoid.

Absolutely! I'd be willing to accept "regulation by states" only if
it is based on a reasonable standard that has been created by an
Internet governance organization of worldwide scope, by means of a
reasonable consensus-oriented process in which everyone is welcome to
participate as long as they're willing and able to participate
constructively. Only after this consensus process has concluded would
states maybe decide to make conformance to the standard legally
required for some category of companies. That way we wouldn't be at
risk of getting different requirements in various countries, some of
them incompatible with requirements elsewhere on the net, some of them
in fact violating human rights, some of them not even making sense
technically, etc.

Greetings,
Norbert

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