Meet the Man Who Will Save the Internet

UltimaGuy writes to tell us The Register is running an interesting piece about Masood Khan, chairman of the sub-committee that is takling many of the difficult questions about internet governance. Mr. Khan has been able to draw enormous respect for many of the participatory nations and seems to have a very direct style of management. From the article: "I would encourage you all not to focus on general themes of internet governance but instead go to the heart of the matter," were Khan's opening words. And then he listed them. "The question of a future mechanism, the question of oversight, and the paradigm of co-operation amongst all stakeholders."

Comments

Re:The UN is not a government.

[aaronl]

I'd agree with you that the free market might have done it, but that it would have taken a long time. You'd have private charities start up for humanitarian causes, etc, that sprouted from various countries as their respective standard of living rose. Again, this would take a long time. Since the UN did not use force to accomplish those various goals, it is acceptable. Nations volunteer aid as money, product, or personnel.

You did mention a few reasons why the UN shouldn't be involved in this, though. First, they aren't a representative government, so there is no way to directly influence their decisions. Second, they don't actually run any other infrastructure, and have no real authority to do so. As you mentioned, they are mostly a diplomatic body for discussion, not a ruling or lawmaking body.

In the case of the Internet, it really is a market driven medium, market supported, and market paid medium and not a public resource. We get the benefit of the network as is made available by the companies that keep it running. We have very successful international working groups that ratify standards and discuss problems and fixes. The market has already taken care of broad international groups separate from governments for most of the Internet.

The only things that are still tied to any particular government are DNS and IP addressing. IP addressing is broken apart into different geographic regions, so it's largely outside of government control. The only one that they are really discussing is DNS.

It would definitely be better to get it out from under US control, but giving it to another set of governments isn't going to make it any better. We should be striving for cooperative control of the root zone by independent private groups rather than any government control at all.

Re:Save the internet?

[Alsee]

Or George Bush. I hear he lives in an oil industry boardroom somewhere with a cocaine-seared nose and a heart of darkness, just waiting for God to call on him to save the day again!

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