[governance] Internet as a commons/ public good

[Norbert Bollow]

While specific pieces of equipment (e.g. routers, strands of fibre,
etc) do not qualify as public goods, I would assert that the Internet
epiphenomenon as a whole is neither rival in consumption nor (in the
absence of bad changes e.g. to the legal framework) excludable.

That said, that economic definition of public goods may not be the
most relevant one here, in fact it had been proposed to explicitly
reference a different conception of "public goods". (I'm not sure why
the footnote concerning that has been dropped from the current version
of the draft text.)

Greetings,
Norbert


Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

> Parminder:
> Are you again floating the discredited and theoretically inaccurate
> notion that something called “the Internet” is a “commons” and
> “public good?” These claims are just wrong, and have been dealt with
> years ago. If interested I can direct you to the scientific
> literature on this.
> 
> The Internet _standards_ are open and non-proprietary, and thus can
> accurately be called the basis of a commons and a public good.
> Internet services, web sites, etc. are private goods; they are both
> rival in consumption and excludable. Internet access facilities are
> private goods. There is no meaningful debate about this; either you
> understand the definition of public goods and commons and the
> economic characteristics of these resources or you don’t.
> 
> Our research on IP addressing discusses the status of IP addresses as
> common pool resources. Likewise, other work addresses the status of
> domain names. Both IP addresses and domain names are private goods
> but may be regulated in a common pool fashion, or not, depending on
> what works best. I presume you know what common pool governance is.
> 
> It seems to make many people feel good to claim that certain things
> are commons or public goods. There seems to be no other reason why
> the claim is so persistent, despite being completely out of line with
> facts and the economic realities of internet resources. But wishing
> doesn’t make it so, and false application of concepts can only lead
> to disastrous policy. These are precise terms with important policy
> implications. One should respect facts and the basic scientific
> principles of political economy and derive public policy from that,
> not the other way around.

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