Lessig on Internet Governance

tcd004 writes "Should the United Nations control the Internet? That's the subject of a heated debate slated to take place at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis later this month. The European Union is pressing for a U.N. role in governing the Internet, which is currently in the hands of a U.S. nonprofit. Lawrence Lessig breaks down the debate and offers his views. An interesting point: in order to participate in Summit-related events Lessig had to promise not to talk about intellectual property." From the article: "What people are afraid of is that there will be a split within the single hierarchical system which would result in two different populations of the dot-com domain name system existing out there. Then there would be a real conflict. My view is that if in fact there is a separation like that, there are a lot of incentives for these two separate roots to figure out a way to coexist. There would be lots of anger [when] you realize that you're not getting the IBM.com you expected. But there's no reason why you couldn't have multiple root systems."

Comments

The UN is too indecisive

[9mm Censor]

I think UN control of anything technological will fail. They take far too long to make up their minds, so any technological standards that need to be implemented will be agreed upon when they are obsolete.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[KitesWorld]

Aye, but that might be a good thing in this context.

What we're talking about is control of the TLD's, correct? Well, the US government has already intervened with ICANN's operation of that by vetoing the addition of a .xxx TLD. In theory, there's nothing to stop them exerting greater pressure on other matters, which could result in overseas sites or tld's that the US administration doesn't like simply dissapearing.

Sure, the UN might not get anything done - but that works both ways. They may not advance the tld file - but they're not likely to start ripping it apart either. And even if they did, by the time they got around to it we'd have probably moved on to some other root system anyway.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Anonymous Coward]

I think UN control of anything technological will fail.

Yeah. If you want an example, if it weren't for the ITU then the phone system would have been quite succesful instead of the total failure it has been.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

Exactly. Having things the way they are keeps a lot of the international politics out of the picture. Granted, there are those throughout the world who do not like that the non-profit company happens to be in the U.S., but standards would degrade and become ridiculous if left to an organization who would politicize every aspect of the Internet control. Besides, getting U.N. members even to so much as agree as to the time of day is a challenge in and of itself :-P

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[RexRhino]

Except that telephony is an easily controlled and tracked technology that all central governments aprove of.

Part of the problem that most governments have with the Internet, is that people who connect are anonymous, there is no central way to block access, there is no simple way to carry out spying and survailence. Most countries openly admit that they want to make it easier to block sites, track users, charge taxes etc. They want to make the Internet a carefully government controlled technology LIKE the telephone, television, radio.

U.N. control of the Internet will work effectivly if you want the Internet to be a highly controlled system like telephone... but it will not work if you want the Internet to continue in it's present state of Anarchy.

How you feel about U.N. control of the Internet usually falls in how you feel about government control of the Internet: Thos who want more censorship and control tend to favor U.N. control... those who want less censorship and control tend to be sceptical about the U.N.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

One Word Answer

[xmas2003]

NO!

Re:If it ain't broke....

[craznar]

Well - it is broke.

How would the US feel if China or the EU could turn off www.whitehouse.gov by passing a law ?

Like it or hate it - the internet is now a critical bit of planetary infrastructure.

It needs fixing - but NOT through UN involvement.

Lessig: It's not ICANN...

[rsborg]

From what I read into his comments, he seems to say that the EU has a minor problem with ICANN but a major problem with the fact that ICANN is controlled by a US administration that it does not trust.

Trust is a hard thing to maintain, it took years for the US to get the world to trust it, and now it's all going away. I don't expect much to happen w/r/t this issue today, but the future might hold something much more diverse/complex than today's internet... because the "borderless" nature of the internet wasn't compatible with the differing views on intellectual property of the nations of the world.

enough already.

[CDPatten]

How many times are we going to discuss this topic? I mean I get posting it again IF there were some new/significant developments, but there aren't. Enough already.

Yet we see nothing about Riots in France, International Lawsuits against Apple over the IPod, Sony announcing no X-Box live-style servers, Meryl Lynch's analysis on how MUCH the PS3 is going to cost Sony, and the list goes on and on and on. There is some NEW news, its just we are getting it on Slashdot.

Does anyone else feel this way? About seeing this post again, and not getting to see other news that is worthy of discussion?

Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[cryptochrome]

Any Internet governance system that gives up the current free and open nature of the internet (courtesy USA) in favor of a body that may contemplate censorship for any reason is unacceptable. In the case of the UN, the behavior of numerous member states with regard to regulating internet use has been unacceptable (including but not limited to France, Germany, and especially China), and therefore the UN cannot be trusted with this duty either.

If the UN ever adopts a satisfactory doctrine of human rights (including freedom of speech) AND enforces it amongst its member states on pain of expulsion, then I might reconsider. But as is realpolitik, not principles (never mind humanist ones), rules the day at the UN.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[dgatwood]

Like the U.S. governance has been free and open? The right wing zealots don't want a .xxx because "Oh horror, everyone would know where to find porn." (Despite the fact that this would make it far easier to avoid accidental exposure to kids.)

Or how about the abusive enforcement of trademarks against people on the 'net who are not even doing COMMERCE, much less doing so in a confusing way? For example, randomhouse.org, various lawsuits over [company name]sucks.com, etc. I'm sure you can think of many domains whose freedom of speech has been squashed under the current internet governance.

The U.S. hasn't been great on human rights, either---internment camps during WWII, Guantanamo Bay, prisoner abuse in Iraq, frequent reports of secret American torture locations in eastern Europe, etc. And the U.S. maintains strong relations with other countries who have repeatedly violated basic human rights, including China, several countries in the Persian Gulf, Singapore, and so on. The U.S. government may be better than some countries in terms of its human rights record, but it is by no means the paragon of virtue that you make it out to be.

The reality of the matter is, as long as it is possible or practical for government to interfere in the freedom grantedd to us by the Internet, they will try to do so. The U.S. government is no different, and anybody who says otherwise has been living under a rock for at least the last five years.

We need to design a replacement for the domain name system based on a combination of DNS service discovery and in-browser filters. You give your site a name, and if there are multiple sites with the same name, you see a browser-generated disambiguation page that allows you to filter the request further. Is that Ace (hardware) or Ace (playing cards)?

The notion of static DNS is so last century.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Kaa]

Yep, that's right. Just get rid of the whole TLD structure and make people go to .NN where NN is the country code. Let each country control their own country code. There would be .com.NN for the old .com, .org.NN for old .org, .net.NN for old .net, etc.

That's not really getting rid of the TLD structure -- it's just that your new TLDs are country codes.

However there are a number of problems with this obvious idea. Say, I want to go to the main Perl site. Which address should I type into my browser? Is it perl.org.us? Why? Am I supposed to know who Larry Wall is and that he is an American?

This idea tends to come from registrars who would be overjoyed to have to register every trademarked company name in every .cc domain...

Re:Internet Success

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

"...nothing gives USA any rights to decide for the rest of the world, not even on the Internet of which the majority of users and cabling is OUTSIDE USA"

the Internet was developed in the U.S. originally by the U.S. Armed Forces. Americans thought of it first, developed it, and shared the technology. If other countries don't like that, then they are free to develop thier own world wide network.

Re:Internet Success

[1001011010110101]

Dont forget that most of the worldwide infrastructure of the network was payed by the rest of the world, not by the US. And that's more than pocket change.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[RexRhino]

If the U.S. shut out Chinese websites, all China would have to do is set up their own internal DNS server to server their government sites (I suspect this is what they probably do already for government sites), and there is no way the U.S. could restrict access.

And China and EU CAN shut off www.whitehouse.gov, at least to their own citizens, by passing a law. They would just have to reconfigure their DNS servers. I suspect that they do this already, although not with www.whitehouse.gov.

Re:From TFA

[Hatta]

It's a political term for "trump card" or "Ace". It's the last stand if you will that either makes it or breaks the deal.

Yes, I understand that. And that use applies that it's acceptable to use the nuclear option. "trump card" would be great. But this just dilutes the shock that people should feel when we talk about the real "nuclear option"

Re:If it ain't broke....

[rs79]

It's broken.

It was stolen by intellectual property attornies working for primarily three letter multinationals, mostly US based. They outspent everybody and captured the root zone via the DoC. You have no idea of tens if not hundred by now of millions or dolars they spent to do this.

Just out of curiosity why the gag order on Lessig about IP rights? Cough.

If you primary the root zone for yourself, this governance quesiton is not an issue.

Re:Internet Success

[smoker2]

the Internet was developed in the U.S. originally by the U.S. Armed Forces. Americans thought of it first, developed it, and shared the technology. If other countries don't like that, then they are free to develop thier own world wide network.

Ugg called, he wants his wheel back .

Re:Internet Success

[gb506]

These days the internet is vital as air, so nobody should have CONTROL of it. It's truly obvious that any decision regarding root servers should be taken in a recognized entity like UN.

Vital, huh? Maybe you and your non-US brethren should have pondered the consequences of allowing the Internet to become "vital" to you when you knew all along that you and your non-US brethren didn't control it. Now that you've become addicted to it, the US has to give some grubby, corrupt, half-witted nutjobs from Albania, Zimbabwe, and El Salvador the control? Give me a flippin' break.

The premise in the article is way off.

[Mentorix]

The question isn't "Should the United Nations control the Internet?" but "Should the USA control the Internet?".

It should come as no surprise that nobody wants the USA to control the internet except for some groups in the USA itself. By phrasing the question in a way where you can start summing up all the negatives about the UN trying to control it you are forgetting that there's a whole bunch of other negatives involved by keeping the root name servers under control of some (non-profit) corpation in the USA.

How can anyone expect the rest of the world to keep the USA in control of something as essential for 1st world economies as the internet. With a press of the button the USA could disable a large part of the economy in every first world country they choose, nobody is going to take that chance. The discussion is pointless in my opinion. To the international community there's no convincing reason whatsoever to keep control in one country. The only solution is to put in under control of an international body, the UN is a possibility, maybe a seperate organization is better.

If the USA does not relinquish it's grip on the root nameservers OR another satisfactory solution is found, it's a very very very high probability that alternate roots will come up. In the end it is a national security issue for anyone taking the time to research the ramifications.

Right, and because of that

[Sycraft-fu]

They can do what they want with it. However that still doesn't give them the right to tell the US waht they have to do with their part of it. You can exert control over the part of the Internet you own, but don't presume you have a right to force others to do as you want them to. Thus the answer for those unhappy with the US root system is "make your own" not "the US should give their's up". Remember the roots DNS is largely a US operation. All but two roots are operated and paid for by either us private companies, univerisites or the government, and ICANN itself is a US entity.

I would actually very much like to see an alternate root system. Make it compatible or incompatible with ICANN, doesn't matter, but setup a large scale, credible ICANN alternative, then let people choose. I would say the best way would be to mirror the ICANN space, and then extend it, while of course allowing ICANN to mirror your extensions. I think it would work well to have a number of cooperative roots, each which mirror everything, but are only authoritive for a part of it. Then, if one of the root system had problems, they others could keep mirronring their last current version of their zone so nothing went down.

However it isn't right to demand that the US give up their DNS systems. The "but everyone uses it" argument isn't compelling. Everyone uses Google too, that doesn't mean that they should be forced to give themselves up to the UN.

Absolutely Insane

[fortinbras47]

So basically the European argument is:
1) We hate George Bush
2) We hate the Iraq war
=> France and China should control the Internet.

That above argument seems fairly crazy to me.
I think you can dislike George Bush without wanting the Chinese government to read your e-mail.

Re:Internet Success

[gb506]

Give us a good example of how the US has used the root servers maliciously and you could possibly get someone to listen. But you can't. Don't you understand the type of bureaucratic morass you'd have when every flunky from every backwater hell hole around the globe would want a say in Internet governance? That's a recipe for inaction and breakdown.

censorship and taxes

[zogger]

Correct on censorship and don't forget taxes. The UN REALLY wants the ability to start imposing global taxes on this or that. Give them control of a major part of the net, you'll see taxes and even more corruption, and this time with a body that has NO directly elected members by any "global citizen".

Bad idea. Normally, I think the US fed gov is sort of out to lunch in most matters, but *not* in this instance. The UN can go do something else with their spare time. The address system is working perfectly fine the way it is.

Textbook case of FUD

[blibbler]

This isn't a case of moving control of the TLDs from a completely independent body to China, North Korea or Iran. It is a matter of moving control from a US controlled organization to a truely independent organization. As said in a previous discussion, it would be ludicrous to suggest that UNICEF is controlled by china to deny food to children.

ICANN has done a pretty good job, but the recent .xxx controversy shows that it is not independent from US influence. It is not too much of a stretch to foresee there is a great potential conflict with US foreign policy. Consider the situation where Chinese seat at the UN was held by Taiwan (ROC) until 1971 despite the PRC taking over the entire mainland in 1949. In 1971 the PRC was acknowledged as being the rightful holder of the Chinese seat on the UN over the objections of the US. It is not unreasonable to imaging that if control of the .cn TLD was in dispute, the US might pressure ICANN to refuse to transfer control to the PRC. Even now, although most of Afghanistan is controlled by the Taliban, the .af country code is assigned to the US supported government.
It is certainly true that ROC is a lot nicer than the PRC, but that is besides the point. It is also true that the official UN view of geo-politics is not always completely accurate, but it is closer to the global understanding than the US's.

No .xxx is a GOOD thing.

[Macgruder]

While at first I thought ICANN screwed up by not approving .xxx, I got to thinking and realized that it was a good thing, for exactly the reasons the UN wants to admin TLDs... .xxx is another TLD and whatever is allowed there would be based on US rules and morals, which are quite different than say what's allowed in Japan or Brazil.

It would be better to have a .xxx.us or .xxx.br or .xxx.jp so each country can set the appropriate standards.