Vint Cerf on Internet Governance and Beyond

scebo writes "With the first phase of United Nations World Summit (WSIS) held in Dec of 2003 and the next phase to be held in 2005, there have been extensive debates regarding Internet Governance. Can it be governed? Who should govern it? What is Internet governance? Vint Cerf has offered his own opinion on the subject over at CircleID which attempts to answer some of the key questions raised: 'It has been suggested by some participants in the WSIS discussions that the role of ICANN might be undertaken by the traditional International Telecommunications Union (ITU). While the ITU has served the world as the international forum for the handling of many international issues associated with traditional tele-communications, the Internet has disrupted the neat categorization of various telecommunications media. It is the potential bearer of every form of communication. ICANN has evolved international processes and structures over the last six years to cope with a limited set of issues associated with this rich, complex and rapidly evolving infrastructure. The world needs an effective and well-supported ICANN but the participants in the World Summit on the Information Society and the Working Group on Internet Governance now need to turn their attention to the full panoply of public policy issues that, as discussed above, lie outside the mandate of ICANN. These need a thorough and open airing in this next phase of the World Summit on the Information Society.'"

Comments

Lenin on taking over the government

[mi]

Begin with Telephone, Telegraph, Railroads.

In the 21st century, he would've added "root-zone Name Servers".

That was long.

[Anonymous Coward]

It had big words. Now I'm sleepy.

And since I'm not a reader. Let's pick a Texas company at random and make them wholly responsible, and we'll give them a blank check. And when we learn about the inevitable graft and pending implosion, we can say, "It's hard work. I'm working hard! I'm going to take half of July off with my normal August vacation. Which is hard."

Governed?

[Anonymous Coward]

No way, man. The internet should be free, man. Information wants to be free, man. You want the truth? YOU WANT THE TRUTH? You need the Internet. Cause when you reach over that hill and your inbox is a pile of spam, it's Chinatown baby.

Lennon on taking over the government.

[AtariAmarok]

"Begin with Telephone, Telegraph, Railroads. "

Imagine there's no telco.

It's easy if you try.

No voice mail, no phone lines.

Above us only sky.

No need

[bludstone]

Governance is needed to establish and eforce rules so that the general public, ie, society, can operate.

On the internet, these rules are already agreed to. TCP/IP, FTP, HTTP, and other wonderful acronyms.

The things that are illegal online are also illegal irl. If you enforce the general societal rules already on the books, then there is no need for a Internet government.

At least, in my opinion.

Re:No need

[renehollan]

Ever see a mob (like, say, strikers on a picket line) outside a store preventing customers from entering? Or someone inundated with hate mail or a petition?

Re:No need

[3StrangeAllies]

I agree that most of the IT infractions are already on the books IRL. Nonetheless, they are mostly local books, not international books. After working with comp. forensics, I can tell that even if it is technically doable (read my lips, I didn't say easy...), IT law enforcement is a heck of a mess when several physical locations are involved (hosting, ISP, attacking computer, attacked computer...)

On the specific IT crimes, computer intrusion has been on the books since the late 80s, at least in France, and the CyberCrime convention started a global movement towards procedural agreement.

That being said, the use of a third-party arbitration might not be a bad idea, most of all because they might be among the few case-law renderers to actually know soemthing about what they're talking about (cf. the Yahoo! Auction case in France and the (not-so) clever Juge Gomez) [

Re:No need

[Fnkmaster]

For the most part, I don't think the status quo is too bad, at least with respect to web content. The relevant laws are pretty much determined by where you host and serve content from, so if that copyrighted material is out of copyright in Australia, and hosted in Australia, then there's no obligation by the Australians to prevent Americans from downloading it, though those Americans are still bound by American laws once they have it.

Likewise for eBay et. al. - if it's hosted in America, and legal in America, but the French try to buy it from America, then that's their problem. If they want to make it illegal to buy nazi memorabilia from abroad, let them, but don't try to enforce your laws on somebody else's content.

Yes, that creates free-for-all zones on the web in countries that don't really enforce any of their own laws when it comes to online content. If you don't want to accidentally stumble on that stuff, it's not too hard to block content from China, for example, just like they do from us.

The real remaining problems then are things like spam. Yes, you can change the rules as you describe them by amending SMTP, POP, etc. to prevent these problems, and that's going on, but ultimately spam is a social problem, not a purely technical one. Expecting a perfect technical solution seems unreasonable to me, since the solutions all seem to introduce substantial costs into the usage equation, for every degree of protection you get, you seem to lose some of the usefulness and beauty of it too.

Additionally, transnational fraud is at an all-time high. It's easy for 419 scammers from Africa to defraud dumb Americans and Europeans (no, it's not just Americans that get taken in these scams) - and there's no legal recourse when the government in question doesn't enforce its own laws, or the government is in bed with the perpetrators of the fraud. You can't deny that the Internet made this kind of fraud accessible, while before it would have been effectively impossible to pull this off from five thousand miles away.

If what you're saying is "the government of Nigeria needs to enforce its laws", then yes, I agree with you. That would probably solve this problem, at least if every country complied. But without anybody forcing them to, there's no way to effectively do this. Hell, you can blackhole all IP traffic from the non-compliant country, and it won't help, because they'll use freemail servers in other countries that don't block them.

Likewise with cracking/site defacement/electronic breaking and entering. Also illegal in many places, unenforceable in many of those, and unregulated in some countries still, and it's impossible to prevent entirely through technological means. Again, what's the mechanism for forcing rogue countries to enforce their laws or pass laws against this?

I think it can probably be done without an international oversight body per se - if the US and EU got together and told Russia, Nigeria, etc. they better start enforcing laws against this stuff or face sanctions, there would probably be some action. For some reason, the US government seems far more interested in getting other countries to buy into its MPAA/RIAA/Disney copyright protection regime and patent insanity than protecting its citizens from fraud or giving its business and net community at large legal recourse for electronic vandalism. God forbid our government do something for anybody other than a special interest group. And something that it would be hard for people to whine about too, since it really would help everybody out, not just us. Hard to argue that spam, fraud and electronic vandalism are somehow culturally relative values we'd be imposing on the world.

As for the rest of the problems Vint cites - misinformation, harrassment, illegal transactions, I think those are overstated. The information on the Internet is fundamentally only as trustworthy as the person who put it there, harrassment across country borders isn't a huge problem as far as I know, and illegal transactions are ... well, only illegal because one of the countries involved says its illegal. In which case they are free to enforce their laws already. :)

Re:No need

[pgnas]

I agree, I also belive that one of the primary motivating factors for regulation is to somehow squeeze money out of the MILLIONS of people using the Internet.

"oh no, they can't do that the Internet is a global entity"

If you beleive this, you are dreaming

The Internet is not tied to the US, however, that wouldn't stop the government entities from imposing taxes on it. How bad do you think politicians are salavating at the chance to get a piece of that action?

The Internet has grown due to the fact that it has NOT been restrained by government, Governing the Internet will surly hinder the growth.

Re:No need

[Lodragandraoidh]

I believe what he meant to say was 'If you enforce the local general societal rules already on the books, then there is no need for a global Internet Government'

What he is saying is that any 'government' on an internet-wide standpoint needs to stick to technical communication interconnection specifications - leave the policing to the police in the respective nations.

There are already organizations - such as INTERPOL - for coordinating police forces internationally. Use what we already have more effectively IMHO.

I couldn't help but notice...

[Anonymous Coward]

all of those end in vowels....

What about the USPS. For a bunch of grouchy people who seem to get a lot of rest in while most of the traffic finds its destination, and abhores change like nature does a vacuume, it's hard to do better.

Hey Everyone! We Need Government!

[freality]

LOL! That was funny..

Oh wait, they're serious?!

The net is a virtual reality.. it certainly has real world effects, but let's not get over-zealous here.. I vote for an unruly cyber-mob over state-controlled media outlet.

JUST SAY NO.

I don't think it can be done at all

[Anonymous Coward]

After seeing legislation such as the Patriot Act and the DMCA, I could never trust the United States to govern the Internet. In fact, I don't think it is governable at all. You'd have to have 100% agreement from all countries in order to govern it. It's almost impossible to get countries to agree on anything at all let alone something that could be as challenging as the Internet. I mean dictators would want to keep out subversive material and free speechers would want the opposite.

He lists pornography as an "abuse." What?

[jayerandom]

Cerf writes

"...spam (unsolicited commercial electronic mail), fraud, theft, pornography, and the long list of other abuses that creative human beings have invented for the Internet."

Spam, fraud, and theft are all wrongs done by one person to another.

Pornography per se, assuming that the producers and consumers are all consenting adults, should not be grouped in with them as an "abuse" of the Internet.

I have a great idea!

[winkydink]

Let's let the UN run the Internet! I mean, their track record at running things is so awesome.

Sheesh. The UN couldn't manage a two car parade, let alone Internet governance.

what IS internet governance?

[Qzukk]

I am of the belief that if there is any internet governance, it should restrict itself to functions that affect the actual interoperation of the networks involved. Enforcing individual geopolitical issues should be left to that country to do so as it sees fit.

The job of such a governing agency, if one existed, would be limited to policing and correcting traffic flow issues and mandating the use of egress filters at an ISP level in order to block spoofed packets from the ISP's lusers.

Not much funding would be needed for such a minimalistic organization, making the "who the heck would pay for this" issue much smaller.

In a perfect world...

[lothar97]

We'd have what we really need: an independent group that has oversight of the few things the Internet relies upon- DNS, domain registration, etc. I'm not even talking WWW compliance and the like. This group would have representatives from the different regions of the world, and include education, corporate, and government entities. It would not be under control of any one entity.

That said, this whole scenario is about as likely as Kerry actually winning Ohio and becoming president. The US will never cede control of DARPA's "baby" in the interest of "national security" and "national pride." Look at all the problems with trying to divest control from the US government- Verisign/Net Sol and ICANN come to mind. A UN body might work, but I don't see that happening.

the potential bearer of every form of commucation

[Sai Babu]

"It is the potential bearer of every form of communication"

I get the feeling this refers to access and content, not protocol. There is something inherently evil in the concept that communication must be governed.

The internet represents global free press and a global means for people to assemble. The calls for 'protection from bits' is a smokescreen. We should all be thinking, 'who behind that screen will benefit from governance?' I doubt it's a friendly fat wizard.

follow the leader

[spoonyfork]

If the leader of the free world believes there should be less government in our world then let's follow his example. Ban internet governance.

Unless of course you're a young woman who's been raped and wants an abortion. Need more government there. Oh, and hot man-on-man monogamy needs more government too. Did I forget steam cell research? Yes, I did. Need more government there as well.

Porn == Abuse?

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I stopped reading halfway down where Mr. Cerf made reference to:

"...pornography, and the long list of other abuses that creative human beings have invented for the Internet..."

That's ridiculous. If we treat porn as, by definition, an abuse of the net then the floodgates open for all sorts of draconian content control. As legal experience in the U.S. has shown, the word "pornography" can be stretched far too broadly far too easily.

Leave the porn alone, Vinnie. You don't know what you're messin' with. Set up an effective way to police porn on the net and about a zillion geeks are gonna be gunnin' for ya.

Not to mention that pesky ol' "freedom of speech" thing.

Hold on a tick....

[Kenja]

"...pornography, and the long list of other abuses that creative human beings have invented for the Internet..."

While I could be wrong, I seem to recal pronography existing prior to the Internet.

Re:Hold on a tick....

[Zareste]

Good to know the internet and everything we say and see will be controlled people who know their facts, and not just a bunch of mindless fundamentalists who would gladly own us as slaves, isn't it?

So the world government starts via the internet. I feel kinda stupid for not seeing that coming.

I guess our fifteen minutes of freedom went out the window once CEOs took over the internet anyway. No surprise really.

It's governed by US government.

[glrotate]

Uncle Sam controls the root servers, and it's not giving them up. End of story.

information superhighway needs a highway dept.

[museumpeace]

not traffic cops. just keep the infrastructure working guys. when somebody breaks a law using the roadways, the same cops go after them that would chase the crook who walked away from the bank. The blurring of borders is a byproduct of transportaion as much as of information flow. That blurring is a problem for the cops...they need to reach the level of agreement that the worlds telco's and backbones already achieve and stay the heck out of technology questions.

Rediculous moderation

[Syncdata]

I guess someone in a particular, large building in NYC reads slashdot. Flamebait indeed.

Why should the internet have a international government? Does the international phone system?

If the nation of chad wants to block web access to foo, let them implement the filters to do so, on computers that reside under their national boundries.

Do YOU look forward to the day when you get a cease and decist order from the UN, or uniTelcomgov, or whatever, because something you put on your webpage is offensive to someone in Tehran? Maybe you won't get a cease and desist. Maybe your ISP will be threatened to have their "internet supplier" permit revoked if they don't take said content down immediatley?

If you don't think that's a likely scenario, you're not thinking the issue through. There are any number of regimes that would be pleased as punch to go about blocking access to information by making you take it offline, rather than have to worry about firewalls, filters, and stopping proxies. Doing stuff is hard. Complaining about it to a central authority is easy.

But hey, in the name of getting rid of junk mail, lets all cede our national and individual sovereignity to foreign bodies!

Re:He lists pornography as an "abuse." What?

[sandwiches]

I don't know about you, but I never feel abused after looking at some pron.

If the model(s), photographer, and viewer are all consenting people of legal age, then, there's no abuse whatsoever.

Re:He lists pornography as an "abuse." What?

[bastard42]

Pornography ... should not be grouped in with them as an "abuse" of the Internet.

Yes, it fact it is part of the reason the internet is popular. If it weren't for the infringing of pop music and hollywood, all traffic would be pr0n. (OK couple of percent email and http software downloads, plus some small percentage of "informational" web sites (pr0n reviews and such)). Doesn't everyone remember the first pr0n search you did. "HOLY F**K, that's a lot of naked pictures. And all I got to do is pretend the internet is useful??? Hell ya!"

Isn't there a saying that no medium will be popular w/o porn (think cable and VCRs). I would bet that the second guy after Guttenberg printed porn, not the bible. I'd look it up, but it might slow down this damn interesting mpeg file I'm downloading.

Of course some people, like Cerf, might try to do real things, like communicate, with this network of autonomous networks. Thanks for letting us pretend, though.

"This here InterWEB is making me sore."

Re:Lawbreakings

[dgatwood]

I think we can pretty much all (spammers and scammers notwithstanding) agree to:

I am root. Thou shalt create no other root before me.
Thou shalt not steal,
Thou shalt not kill (other people's servers),
Thou shalt not copy thy neighbor's files, and
Honor thy name server and thy router.

Beyond that, all bets are off.

Arggggg.....

[WindowLicker916]

Why does EVERYONE feel like EVERYTHING has to be regulated and governed!? Sure there is spam, sure there are preditors, sure it's full of stolen movies and music, and you can't forget the porn....but so is life!! And we already regulate the hell out of it and that doesn't even work too well. So tax payers should pay for this governance why? It will do nothen but restrict our freedom. Increase cost to run a website, a ebusiness, pretty much to do anything. I feel this is just another attempt by rich business men to hog tie the internet for their pure profit. They dont want competition and they dont want people sharing information on that dasterdly deeds them and the politicians do. If we govern the internet and regulate it too much it's not going to be the internet we know and love. and yes, I realize this topic is more deeper then I have touched on...but I have better things to do then research it all up. So keep that in mind when you respond. I know how you /.`ers get...

Re:Lawbreakings

[lachlan76]

Thou shalt not kill (other people's servers),

Well, it's been good while it lasted