[governance] Internet as a commons/ public good

Tue Apr 16 12:28:55 EDT 2013

Milton,

In the interests of giving discredit where it is due, If anyone should get credit for giving credit to the "discredited" I guess it should be me.. 

And in that context I pointed to the discussion around these related issues by Inge Kaul and Joseph Steiglitz in the UNDP Human Development Index supported effort to re-awaken/redefine issues concerning "public goods" and take them out of the dessicated hands/minds of the professional classical (read ideologically Friedmanian) economists/public policy geeks/academics. And to recreate these notions as a tool to support those looking to protect the public interest from the onslaught of those who would destroy thist at the altar of universalized Hobbesian privatized interests. 

And to my mind if there is a suitable candidate for the type of redifinition in which they are/were engaged "the Internet" is surely one, and rather than defining the Internet in such a way as to obviate the possibility of it being understood as a global public good, perhaps better to understand how the definiition of the Internet should be recognized as one that at a minimum accommodates such notions.

And finally for accuracy, perhaps in the future you might want to put brackets/fright marks around the terms "theoretically" and "scientifically" in your highly tendentious (dare I say ideologically driven) disquitions on these issues.

M

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Milton L Mueller
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 8:25 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; parminder
Subject: RE: [governance] Internet as a commons/ public good

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. 

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of parminder
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2013 12:51 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: [governance] Internet as a commons/ public good; was, Conflicts in Internet Governance

Anriette/ All

I find this posting, and later ones in the thread very interesting. Indeed a good amount of confusion in this group's internal interactions owe to the fact that while we have some broad process rules, we have very little in terms of substance that we can take as a starting point for our political/ advocacy work. Recognising the Internet as a commons/ public good, and seeking that its basic governance principles flow from such a basic understanding of the Internet, is good and useful basic agreement to try to reach for this group, 

I propose that the caucus adopts this as a/ the basic principle for IGC's political/ advocacy work.

I propose that we even go beyond and adopt a working definition of the Internet, absence of which itself has been identified as a major problem that renders many of our discussions/ positions here unclear. Avri proposes the following definition, which I find very encouraging....

"Internet as an emergent, and emerging, reality consisting of hardware, protocols and software, and human intentionality brought together by a common set of design principles and constrained by policies fashioned by the stakeholders."

I propose small modifications to it 

"Internet as an emergent, and emerging, reality consisting of hardware, protocols and software, human intentionality, and a new kind of social spatiality, brought together by a common set of design principles and constrained by policies fashioned by due democratic processes."

So what I propose for this caucus to adopt is as follows

"We recognise the Internet as an emergent, and emerging, reality consisting of hardware, protocols and software, human intentionality, and a new kind of social spatiality, brought together by a common set of design principles and constrained by policies fashioned by due democratic processes. Accordingly, the Internet is to be considered as a global commons and a global public good. The design principles and policies that constitute the governance of the Internet should must flow from such recognition of the Internet as a commons and a public good."

The text can of course be improved a lot, but I thought it is good to put forward something that the caucus can work upon...

parminder

On Sunday 14 April 2013 10:28 PM, Anriette Esterhuysen wrote:

The question is, what is needed to protect and strengthen the internet
commons?
As Avri points out, governments have assisted the theft of the commons.
I would say that the form that this assistance takes ranges from lack of
the basic regulation that is needed to protect it to active protection
of certain vested interests. That is why the notion of an 'unregulated'
internet is so problematic and why the notion of an open and unregulated
internet can so easily be a contradiction in terms.

There needs to be some basic rules that makes sure that the internet
remains 'open and free' in a broad sense.

The risks, or the challenges related to this is that many governments
approach regulation of the internet not from the perspective of
protecting it as a commons, but from the perspective of enabling them to
exercise more control over internet content and use, and user behaviour.

I remain convinced that one of the difficulties in internet governance
is that there is a conceptual/principle deficit of some kind. Not so
much statement of principles that affirm freedom of expression,
'net-neutrality', etc.. Those are good....

I think they real deficit is in how the internet is defined, or what
kind of entity we understand it to be. 

When the management and supply of water is being regulated there are
also lots of contestation. For example between mines, communities who
live in the catchment area, communities who live downstream subject to
seasonal flooding, cities and commercial farms who need dams, and nature
conservation and reservers, where traditional seasonal flooding is often
essential to the survival of many species.

Policy would generally try to understand and balance all these interests
and will be premised on a common understanding that water is a common
resource. The public interest principles will be fairly easily
understood by most that are involved water policy and regulation. But
there will be lots of argument about how it is managed, and used and
often the wrong decisions will be made.

I just had a glance at the CGI.br principles and the IRP 10 principles
and neither statement contains anything that suggests what the internet
- from the perspective of it being a 'commons' or a public good - is. I
know I have been dwelling on this ONE KEY 'principle' deficit for a
while... but I just can't give thinking it is at the root of the
difficulties we have in addressing the conflicts of interest in internet
governance.

Anriette

On 14/04/2013 02:50, Avri Doria wrote:

All of the Internet, like the land world before it, was once commons. Then, as before, the rich, the powerful and greedy, with the assistance of the governments they bought, and continue to buy, began to misappropriate those commons and called it property.  Each day more of that commons its stolen. Each day more of the linguistic commons is stolen and called intellectual property. The Internet commons is almost gone. This its what government do best - with some very few exceptions - assist in the theft of the commons.

I have no problem with those who create art or new Internet spaces enjoying the fruits of their creativity and inventiveness. A neologism may be owned. A new Internet space may be owned. But the language itself or the Internet should not be.

Diego Rafael Canabarro  <mailto:diegocanabarro at gmail.com> <diegocanabarro at gmail.com> wrote:

At the International Studies Association Annual Convention last week in
San
Francisco, an official from the US Department of State said: "there's
no
commons on cyberspace". That perception is closely related to the
conflict
presented by Mr. Perry bellow in this thread. I'm still struggling with
that assertion.

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Norbert Bollow  <mailto:nb at bollow.ch> <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:

Roland Perry  <mailto:roland at internetpolicyagency.com> <roland at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:

One of the most significant I'm aware of (and I hope this is within
the remit of your question):

It definitely is, and it's a conflict that I have not been

sufficiently

conscious of, so thank you very much for pointing this out!

Greetings,
Norbert

The private sector has built extensive
networks [fixed and mobile] using $billons of investment on which
their shareholders [many of whom are the consumers' pension funds]
expect a return, versus many customers who feel entitled to have
unlimited usage for a relatively trivial monthly payment (which

they

sometimes dress up as "Network Neutrality").

I post this not to support either of the above points of view, but
merely to inform readers of the conflict it unquestionably

represents.

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-- 
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--
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