[governance] Conflicts in Internet Governance

[Kerry Brown]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-
> request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Roland Perry
> Sent: April-17-13 4:24 AM
> To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> Subject: Re: [governance] Conflicts in Internet Governance
> 
> In message
> <A0615421071EDD4A9F851117D67D538A8239C9AE at EXCH01.KDBSystems.loc
> al>, 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.
> 

I misunderstood the question then. I wish everything to be devoid of government control. This is not possible with everything but it is something we should strive to get as close to as we can. Regarding Internet governance, governments are one stakeholder, one voice of many. I don't believe any one entity can control the Internet even if they wanted to. They may be able to carve out a portion that they exert a lot of influence over but that is about the extent of their powers.

> >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 disagree with this. Whatever you believe about generic strings, commons or public good cannot be controlled. Regulations, governance, etc. does not imply control. Governance can be used to try to control something but I don't believe that is useful or wanted in the case of the Internet. Regulations on how something can be used need not amount to controlling something.

> >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.
> 

Equal in potential to communicate does not imply equal in cost of communicating.

The ability to register a name has nothing to do with the ability for endpoints to talk to one another. A name does not define an endpoint. Using the current DNS naming model as long as all the other endpoints have the ability to potentially communicate with whatever names you can choose from then it doesn't matter if some names are not available for your use.

> 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).

This is the heart of governance. The Internet requires the ability of all endpoints to talk to one another. It does not mean that any given endpoint has to accept communication from any other endpoint. The ability to do something does not necessarily mean that you must do something. Each endpoint has the ability to decide what communications they will accept.

> 
> >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.
> 

No I am not. I am in favour of governments regulating things like taxes, possibly rates for Internet access, etc. within their countries. As long as they don't restrict the ability of one endpoint to communicate with any other endpoint they can regulate whatever they what within their country. Note that not allowing a person or organisation to use an endpoint for certain purposes in no way implies that they also restrict the ability of one endpoint to communicate with other endpoints. That is restricting someone from using the ability to communicate. I believe this is wrong and will fight to stop it where I can but that is not an Internet issue. It is a freedom of expression or human rights issue.

> >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".
> 

I am not in favour of preventing communications in any way. Preventing communications is the decision of each endpoint, not some group, or entity.

I have a fairly narrow definition of the Internet. Many people would like to expand the definition of the Internet to include content. I believe content is separate from the communication medium that is the Internet. Conflating content with the medium itself is at the root of many misunderstandings. They need to be dealt with separately while at the same time recognising that how you govern one will affect the other. Content is currently mostly a sovereign issue that will be increasingly hard to regulate because of the fact that the content is communicated via the Internet. Regulating the communications medium to attempt to solve the issues caused by wanting to control content is not useful and won't work.

Kerry Brown

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