[governance] The ITU/WCIT: Thinking About Internet Regulatory Policy From An LDC Perspective?

Fri Oct 12 03:11:32 EDT 2012

Michael,

brief in order to be quick (& viceversa):

I think evidence is accumulating for a regime based on a combination of market/opening/deregulation and state intervention in developing countries, combinations that are specific to each country to a significant extent.

Thus you see successful (metric to follow) state interventions in countries like Colombia in which a market supplies connectivity and higher-layer Internet services to a larga part of the population and the state comes in for the poorest or most disadvantaged, especially in the lower layers. Connectivity and access tend to be Layer 1-Layer 2 issues, need significant investments, and naturally allow few players.

Internet-based benefits beyond pure connectivity accrue in many ways, are more anecdotal, and have not yet widely been assessed from an economic-theory point of view. Children and teenagers in schools are effective intermediaries for the more marginalized populations's access to the **benefits** of Internet access. They carry home back from schools in rural or urban-disadvantaged areas knowledge and action (from MP3 videos on portable devices for their illiterate grandmothers to explore themselves against breast cancer to actual red-tape before development banks.)

In higher layers like intellectual property a combination of institutional, private, and small-scale/dispersed efforts are bringing access to knowledge to the masses. In Mexico opening up the sound archives (Fonoteca Nacional, with music, speech, radio programs, and even environmental sounds "intangible heritage") is one example of this. The struggle against ACTA and worse also plays a role here.

This is far more active than trickle-down theory, as well as not waiting for an approach you can first neatly pigeon-hole theoretically.

Another example of fast-changing paradigm which defies the neat structures you and Milton are discussing is in a new breed of IXPs which are now becoming attractive as seats for CDNs as well. So, state pushed or not, small IXPs begin at Layer 1/2 and suddenly attract content distribution, lowering entry barriers for users and producers of all kinds. Regulated? NOT, no,  thank you!!

Atop all this often state actors and large-telco reps continue to grab at straws and look to oracles while the Internet continues to dissolve the neatness of their paradigms, rents, and the axles of their revolving-door collusions.

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty

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________________________________
Desde: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] en nombre de michael gurstein [gurstein at gmail.com]
Enviado el: viernes, 12 de octubre de 2012 01:46
Hasta: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; 'Milton L Mueller'
Asunto: RE: [governance] The ITU/WCIT: Thinking About Internet Regulatory Policy From An LDC Perspective?

Thanks Milton for your comments and few back to you as well…

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Milton L Mueller
Sent:

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org> [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of michael gurstein
I should say that both of these reports are very interesting and contain a wealth of good information, however, the problem that I have with them and particularly the second report is that it so clearly starts off with its policy conclusion and builds a case to support this.

[Milton L Mueller] moan. Yes, indeed. This is a commissioned study, by a consultancy that is in the business of serving the interests of its clients. The substance of the study is not terrible, it makes the standard case for the Internet model as we know it. But still, as someone who does real scholarly studies, I am always irritated by the fact that these kinds of paid-for pieces get 1,000 times more attention than an honest, objective scholarly study, and that even purportedly critical scholars such as yourself seem to take them more seriously than real research simply because it’s easier to read and because it arrives on your virtual doorstep so easily and quickly via a publicity machine that generates “buzz”

[MG>] Well yes, except that my intention was not "academic" or "scholarly" but rather to make a critical comment on a "politically" significant document--i.e. one that will likely (and certainly was intented to)  be read by political/policy influentials who are very unlikely to come across a scholarly piece however well structured its methodology or execution. The point wasn't that it was bad "research" but rather it was ideology purporting to be research.

>From what I am seeing (and Kende's report is as good a signal as any) the Internet biggies are running a bit scared (the term "moral panic" comes to mind) as to what "madness" might come out of the WCIT meeting that the ITU is hosting in December in Dubai.
[Milton L Mueller] As I have argued elsewhere, it is a bit of a panic, and one that has succeeded in stampeding a lot of public interest groups into it as well.

[MG>] Yes, but likely  something of some sort will happen or be made to attempt to happen at WCIT and it is useful to have some insight into what the various players might be thinking (although if one assumes the necessary irrationality of any position that doesn't start from a total and religious commitment to ubiquitous "free competitive markets") there probably isn't any point…

And they are pulling out all the stops in trying to derail any real discussion on how the costs and benefits might be allocated of improving/extending Internet access in and into LDC's and within LDC's to the other 99% or so in those countries who currently have no possible means of access. This is of course because the ITU as the traditional venue for global telecom "governance" includes among its 195 or so Member States a very goodly proportion, probably a majority, who are currently experiencing net costs (including many regimes who see these costs in terms of lost political control) from Internet access and paticularly if attempts at extending access to rural and maginalized populations are taken into consideration, rather than net benefits and not surprisingly they are looking at ways of righting that balance.

[Milton L Mueller] The problem with your perspective, Michael, is that it does indeed represent the classic telecom monopoly perspective which is often held by the governmental Ministries and national telecom monopolies in LDCs. Basically they see international traffic not as an industry that supplies goods and services that benefit the consumers who pay for them, but as a source of monopoly rents that can be soaked to “distribute” wealth to their favored businesses and political causes. This concern with “equitable distribution” inevitably ends up both being massively inefficient and thus stifling growth, while not even achieving equity either, because it will always be a few privileged, well-connected businesses and politicians who benefit from setting up the national toll booths.

[MG>] I know that is your position Milton, which at that level of ideological pandering/name calling is no different from Kende's argument and we hear it often enough.  What I would very much like to see though, is some evidence to back it up. What I'm curious to see, and that was the point of my original note, is some research/analysis which starts not from a definition of "benefits" as dictated by Google, Microsoft, and Uncle Tom digerati and all but rather one which starts from the quite specific policy contexts and dilemmas of the folks in LDC's who seem to be bearing a rather large amount of short term cost in the service of purported long term benefit (and not incidentally alongside rather significant short term benefits adhering to already extremely well provided for DC beneficiaries). And if they don't publicly object I will,  not all of those folks or dare I say even most (countering again some ideological and even should  I say xenophobic posturing rather than systematic analysis and research on your part) are as you imply, corrupt and despotic.

I myself am of two minds on this issue.  I well recognize the value/benefits that could flow from Internet access even to the poorest of the poor and the overwhelming benefits that Internet access provides to those for example in civil society who can take advantage of its more or less unlimited free flow of communications and information (including through undermining various repressive political regimes). On the other hand, the unlimited unregulated policy environment advocated by reports like that of Kende and others of that ideological ilk would I think, lead almost directly to a further enrichment of the already stupendously wealthy and overall a signifcant transfer of wealth and benefit from those with the least to those with the most.
[Milton L Mueller] I am glad you are honest about this two-mindedness. Factually, there is just no way around it. The liberalization and deregulation of telecommunications has massively increased access, decreased costs, increased diversity and innovation.

[MG>] For some certainly, but I'm wondering who have been the net beneficiaries and whether those who haven't benefited directly have in fact borne some of the cost of those benefits… I don't know, maybe they have, maybe they haven't but neither Kende or you have offered much beyond ideology and bluster in that regard.

The internet never would have happened without it. I know it provides cognitive dissonance for some people, but all you have to do is compare the penetration and price of ICTs before and after liberalization and the contrast will be very, very stark. True, there have been pitfalls here and there, usually due to remnants of monopoly power or not handling the complex transition from monopoly to competition properly, but on the whole the progress has been revolutionary.

[MG>] You are probably right but I would like a bit more evidence than your assertion and I would also like some analysis of the costs involved and also an analysis of how those costs (and benefits) have been and are being distributed and then an analysis of what might be required to ensure that there has been some benefits distributed beyond the usual cast of characters.  I know that you and I have benefited but I'm rather less sure about the folks living in Khayalitcha and even less for the cattle herders in Burkina Faso and I mean now not in a never never land future. And as an outcome I'ld like to see an analysis which isn't zero sum (regulation or no regulation) as you seem to suggest is necessary. Rather the question shoud be what sort of regime (without regulation and or with what type of regulation of what elements of the overall Internet technical ecology).

Mike

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