[governance] Internet as a commons/ public good

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 24/04/2013, at 8:02 AM, Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:

> IP. My somewhat reduced version would then be
>  
> We recognise the Internet to be a global network of networks comprised of computing devices and processes, and an emergent and emerging social reality. In that sense, it is an intricate combination of hardware, software, protocols, and human intentionality enabling new kinds of social interactions and transactions, brought together by a common set of design principles. The design principles and policies that constitute its governance aim at preserving and enhancing the global commons and global public good character of the Internet the combination of which has made previous innovations possible. Therefore, in the face of the growing danger for the Internet experience to be reduced to closed or proprietary online spaces, we urge the preservation and enhancement of the Internet's global commons and public good dimensions.

Sorry to bring this up late, but I don't like the reductionist definition of Internet governance that is implicit in the mention of its design principles and policies.  The design principles of the Internet have no transcendent moral value of their own, they are just technical choices which do not, in themselves, have any legitimacy that we can convincingly justify.  As Milton pointed out, the IETF is not a democracy, it's a meritocracy.  More broadly, the Internet's design principles are not justifiable as an outcome of any democratic (still less globally democratic) process.

Mostly those choices are favourable for our underlying values such as freedom of expression and (less often) privacy, but sometimes they are not.  So we cannot elevate the design principles of the Internet to such a privileged position, when if different technical choices had been made in the beginning some of the Internet's acknowledged problems that exist today (spam, phishing, etc) could have been less.  The Internet's design principles may be good for advancing particular policies, but they may also be bad, or they may be indifferent.  I don't think that those principles can be said to "aim" at anything in particular, other than technical soundness, nor that they can sensibly be described as a "common set".

-- 
Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Policy Officer
Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers
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