[governance] U.S. - Japan Policy Cooperation Dialogue on the Internet Economy

[Paul Lehto]

On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 1:25 PM, David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:

> On Oct 26, 2012, at 9:43 AM, Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But if one asks a more specific question, (others could surely phrase a
> better example here) like "Do you support a free, open internet with *consistent
> worldwide laws* and rules instead of a patchwork, fragmented internet?"
> the vast majority would say Yes.
>
>
> I believe the vast majority want "consistent worldwide laws" to not
> promulgate content they personally deem "socially damaging" and they most
> definitely do not want someone from "over there" (including the UN) to
> define what "socially damaging" means.
>

I believe there are clearly some - a minority overall - that want that, and
the intensity of their desire for it can make it seem like they are more
like a majority.  But what right does a minority have to rule a majority,
and what right do dissenters have to ignore something that is truly the
desire of the majority?

A right in the nature of a constitutional right can overrule a majority,
but not a super-majority necessary to amend the constitution. (Only
inalienable rights survive super-majorities but those are most often
ignored or dismissed by those in power, but at least this leaves those
asserting inalienable rights a cause based on rights, as opposed to being
mere violators of laws without a defense or a cause to protect them at all)

Here again, you are giving an example of people taking positions that you
don't like, and as a consequence dropping support for the political systems
giving those people voice.  Such an attitude, while understandable, leads
to shopping around for whatever political system seems to give the best
chance of enacting the rules and regulations one personally desires.  This
is, among other things, unprincipled, and leads to forms of governance that
have no recognizable moral/political foundation.  This is unstable to say
the least.

Given a "constitutional" level discussion, what one usually sees happen is
that people are willing to give up their desires in terms of what content
they might wish to censor in order to keep the content they like free, and
vice versa.  In other words, the Golden Rule comes into play and I am
willing to grant freedom to others on the grounds that they are granting
that same freedom to me, and if some content in some situations really
needs to be censored (such as with young children) then this can be handled
privately via filters and net nanny programs and the like.

Absent a strong foundation, one might think that a relatively
foundation-less system of multiple stakeholders without elections might
handle things suitably FOR NOW, but in the long run such a system, without
the protections of rights arising out of democratic constitutional-style
discussions, ends up relatively quickly being what it has been all along,
the control of the internet by the powerful at the expense of the
relatively powerless.  We are already seeing this regularly as private
companies like Verizon and others take private action to limit content and
because they are "not the government" in the USA there is a paucity of
legal remedies to correct such private censorship.

There is no intrinsic reason why the more powerful business interests
should be permanently aligned with a free internet.  The very same people
that you see strongly pushing for content control at a governmental level
can exert parallel control via boycotts and so forth to persuade an
internet business to adopt parallel types of censorship.  Certainly no
business will understand why it must provide a forum or allow its resources
to be utilized to criticize the business itself, and they will act to
squash such criticism.

So the same problems occur in the private sector as in the public sector.
But in the private sector there is usually not even the pretense of
accountability, nor any prospect of removing business officials who act
poorly.  In the public sector, while such prospects may often be either
remote or difficult to accomplish, at least they exist.  I think as
problematic as democratically elected governments can be, private sector
government via MS governance or other systems have all the same general
problems, and more, in the long run.

The reality is that globally consistent laws (at least not laws defined by
'others') on the Internet is _not_ what people want.

The reality in terms of governance is that there will always be power
players who move into the vacuum created by the absence of government.
These players are even more "other" than governments are, and they can,
will, and already have created de facto laws that negatively impact other
people and the internet.

You correctly observe that people usually don't want consistent laws
DEFINED BY OTHERS.  But they will want to see a "good" law given full,
often global, application...  If we don't have majority rule systems where
the minority has to live with the fact that they lost a vote, the
minorities never accept their defeats or the laws enacted and it is little
more than a perpetual power struggle, with the minority more or less
correctly pointing out that they are being undemocratically oppressed
without legitimacy, while at the same time looking the other way at the
legitimacy issue when they are on the winning side and their favorite
policies are being enforced.

*It's not a question of IF there will be worldwide government/governance,
but a question of WHO will be the government/governors*.  The global nature
of the structure of the internet guarantees that.Technical-level isolation
such as countries sealing themselves off from the worldwide internet are
attempts based on sovereignty concerns (even if misguided) to replace the
complex of mostly business interests that rule the internet with the local
dictatorship or democracy, as the case may be.  Those who keep saying "no
worldwide government" ignore or conceal the fact that there already exists
nascent worldwide government it is just somewhat fractured and disguised as
"governance" - but it is the same thing.  And there are no guarantees that
this governance structure will remain in any way loyal to whatever we feel
are right principles even if it seems to be largely supporting those right
principles at the present time.

-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4965 (cell)
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