[governance] Conflicts in Internet Governance

[Roland Perry]

In message 
<A0615421071EDD4A9F851117D67D538A8239C9AE at EXCH01.KDBSystems.local>, at 
16:25:02 on Tue, 16 Apr 2013, Kerry Brown <kerry at kdbsystems.com> writes
>> I asked a question of Avri, perhaps you could answer it also.
>
>I believe the question was about what I believe the definition of the 
>Internet is.

I was asking what subset (or superset) of things colloquially called 
"The Internet" you wished to be devoid of government control.

>The discussion since then has moved on to things like commons and 
>public good.

And whether labels like " .book " are either commons or a public good.

Interestingly, it seems as if the most likely way such labels are to be 
prevented from being appropriated by members of the private sector is 
for governments to intervene.

>I believe those types of concepts describe things that may be part of 
>Internet governance but they are not the Internet.

I'm not sure how "Internet Governance" can claim to govern things which 
are not themselves a component of the Internet.

>For me the Internet is a communications medium that allows 
>communications between endpoints with all endpoints being equal in 
>their potential to communicate with all other endpoints.

Presumably you have in mind a form of equality of contactability in the 
end-to-end scenario.

It's quite difficult to conceive of the engineering required to make all 
endpoints equal in terms of available bandwidth and cost per GB. And 
there are various consensus rules that say (for example) that some 
endpoints can justify a greater amount of public IP address space than 
others. There are even rules in some parts of the name space about 
whether endpoints can be labelled with ccTLDs, if they are not within 
the country concerned, have not paid certain fees or passed certain 
regulatory requirements. Similar considerations apply to the ability of 
endpoints to acquire other labels such as .int, .mil. ac, .museum and so 
forth.

The problem of Spam would be even worse if some end points were not 
restricted, in various ways, regarding their qualifications to send bulk 
email (or in some cases, any email at all).

>Currently this is accomplished by interconnected computer networks that 
>use common protocols to communicate between endpoints. In the future 
>this may not be the case. The protocols used and the content of the 
>communications are ephemeral and may change. The concept of 
>communicating with all endpoints being equal is the key. How it is 
>accomplished is important. It requires governance to ensure equality 
>and efficiency.

Which sounds to me as if you are in favour of at least some forms of 
government control.

>Internet governance is the attempt to make sure whatever system is in 
>use at the time achieves the goal of communications as effectively as 
>possible while ensuring all endpoints have equal opportunity to 
>communicate.
>
>Kerry Brown

I think there is also an element of "preventing communications which are 
by consensus regarded as undesirable".

Roland.


>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-
>> request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Roland Perry
>> Sent: April-14-13 9:37 AM
>> To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
>> Subject: Re: [governance] Conflicts in Internet Governance
>>
>> In message
>> <A0615421071EDD4A9F851117D67D538A82398DB3 at EXCH01.KDBSystems.loc
>> al>, at
>> 15:58:23 on Sun, 14 Apr 2013, Kerry Brown <kerry at kdbsystems.com> writes
>> >> The Internet is a collection of routers, cables and peering agreements.
>> >
>> >This is the heart of many debates on Internet governance. If you ask a
>> technologist "What is the Internet?" the above is often their answer. If
>> >you ask an Internet user you will probably get a very different 
>> >answer. It will
>> often be their ISP, the web, Google, Facebook, or something
>> >similar. The technology aspect of how the Internet works is rarely
>> considered by them. Many government officials have a poor understanding
>> of
>> >the issues and are often in the unsophisticated Internet user category and
>> react accordingly. This causes a lot of problems because when people
>> >talk about Internet governance they rarely have the same definition of the
>> Internet. This guarantees there will be conflicts.
>>
>> All of this is true. My day-job is trying to bridge that divide, reduce
>> the conflicts etc.
>>
>> >Managing those conflicts is what the multi-stakeholder model is all about.
>>
>> And briefing the stakeholders is what I'm all about.
>>
>> >Governments have a hard time grasping this concept as they are used to
>> being in charge and don't understand they are merely one party at the
>> >table.
>>
>> (Although most governments do notice there are others at the table).
>>
>> But here, on the IGC list, what I'm attempting to do (for the sake of
>> avoiding any misunderstanding) is discovering what the various
>> correspondents understand to be "the Internet", upon which they wish "no
>> government interference".
>>
>> I asked a question of Avri, perhaps you could answer it also.
>>
>> Then we'll all get on a lot better, rather than talking past one another
>> all the time.
>>
>> ps If anyone knows what the US House of Representative's draftsman means
>> by "the Internet", that would very helpful too.
>> --
>> Roland Perry
>
>
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-- 
Roland Perry

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