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

[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]

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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: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 .

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.