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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."
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The internet succeeded because of the lack of regulation. This was a tradeoff. The incredible value of not having to sign contracts to do everything, be able to innovate much more freely etc. The downside, piracy, websites that spew hate and all the rest.
I'm just curious if some group on the UN level asserts much stronger control over the net, it is such an obvious place to control things, could see a ton of impacts. Connect with WTO as a natural partner in the fight and voila.
Pointing to a non-profit with broad representation (oh, wait, less broad than it used to be, isn't it?) on the board looks like a PR whitewash once we realize how easily the organization gets bullied around by financial stakeholders - it doesn't have a war chest or a strong organization behind it. Since the US government supports the status quo, I'm left with little option than to believe that Uncle Sam likes the way Verisign is currently running things. I'm not comforted.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
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.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of The Internet
Senator Wants to Keep U.N. Away From the Internet
EU Claims Internet Could Fall Apart Next Month
Internet Power Struggle Reaching Climax
EU, UN to Wrestle Internet Control From US
U.S. Insists On Keeping Control Of Internet
Why Talk About Internet Governance?
Behind the Fight to Control the Internet
And I wonder if we didn't discuss it enough ?
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.
.cc domain...
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
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
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.
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.
Need Mercedes parts ?
This is not about Internet Governance. It is about how the DNS root file and TLD's are managed. ICANN is not free and open. CAn you elect a member to the role of director? No.
.xxx refused? By what OPEN process?
When ICANN has SOME elected directors why did one of those elected directors have to sue to see finacial information regarding ICANN.?
Why was the TLD
Why would you or I have to pay ICANN 50K to only APPLY to run a Top Level Domain.
Why has ICANN released so few TLD's over the years since 1998 when before 1998 IANA was poised to allow hundreds of new TLD's.
Why do you think the UN is a monlitic organization, where in fact UN organization such as the ITU have functioned as PART of the UN and the international phone system and standards?
Has China via the ITU ever caused problems with phone numbers of political organization in the US?
Are you aware that it would be doubtful that CHina or any country would have veto over the ussuing of a TLD, even though today the US has de facto vetoed a new TLD (.xxx).
What has enforcement of human rights got to do with an open process to manage the TLD root file?
Have you any clue how ICANN actually works?
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
This isn't true. Take the example of high-tech automobile headlamps. The UN body responsible for global headlamp regulations (GRE) is very close to finishing rules that will allow for LED headlamps. NHTSA, which does the same thing in the US has completely given up on making _any_ LED regulations for the forseable future because it's so hard to get safety related stuff through congress. In this case the UN is far ahead of the US in technical rule-making and you can see evidence of this in the relative technology contents of a typical American vehicle and a typical European vehicle.
-Pinkoir
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.
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