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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."
Khaaaan!
There, now that I got that out of the way we can have a decent discussion here!
And yet despite hundreds of hours of talks, three preparatory meetings and a world summit, there is only one thing that the world's governments can agree on:
That the governments of the world have the least knowledge in how to save anything, and the World Government is even worse.
the internet is five days away from total collapse as governments are finally forced into a corner and told to agree on a framework for future Internet governance.
Bull. Shit.
The Internet is not one procedure to distribute information. It is HTML, DNS, BitTorrent, even Real Audio. None of these standards are government regulated, they're free market regulated. The users, en masse, decide what format will succeed. The only change government entices is when a popular company gets sued out of sight (Grokster, etc).
Standards will rise and fall faster than any government can rule on changes. Old standards literally DIE. Old laws come back to be unearthed by future tyrants
there is a very real risk that an enormous political argument resulting in lifelong ill-will centred around the internet could developed unchecked at the WSIS Summit.
Good. Nothing makes me happier than multiple governments grabbing the rulers, dropping their pants, and realizing none have anything to measure.
how the world will deal with issues such as spam and cybercrime.
Let every ISP decide. The competition will allow the creation of new ways to excel.
Masood Khan has turned what could easily have become a bar-room brawl into a gradual formation of agreement.
One politician breathing hot air to others, putting all into a head nodding "we can all control our citizens equally" concert.
Having chaired dozens of meetings as a careful and unthreatening facilitator, Mr Khan saw his chance and went for it.
"We are from the government and we're here to help you."
"The question of a future mechanism, the question of oversight, and the paradigm of co-operation amongst all stakeholders."
"We will share in the control of deviants. The word 'deviant' can be redefined at any member's whim."
If there is a split, it will not make the final agreement. Where there is no agreement, the effort will have to be to convince each other."
Meaning that they will generalize everything in vague definitions easily adjusted to their situation.
Four hours later they came back to the official meetings with nothing. Khan suspended the meeting and told them to go back and do it again.
True of any governing body. They have no clue what to control next, but surely there must be more taxes, regulations and restrictions added to the lawbooks. None to help their crony friends either, I'm sure.
Twice, governments tried to stall the whole approach by asking what official standing the document they were creating would have - an age-old diplomatic trick. Mr Khan brushed it aside: "Just wait."
"Why do you have to probe my ass, officer?"
"Just wait."
It is far from over but when the agreed text on how the internet should be run and by whom appears in front of the World Summit and is approved on Friday, it most certainly won't be perfect
And this is what we need? Imperfection in an international law? I'd rather see imperfection in thousands of ISPs and be able to choose what is least perfect to me.
The U.N. is the worst government in the world, so large that no one is safe, so large that no one has a voice and so large that revolt and rebuilding is impossible.
Strangely, this Google search generates hits.
Why dont we just call the man who created it. Al Gore. I hear he lives in the woods somewhere with a scruffy beard and a heart of gold, just waiting for the world to call on him to save the day!
I don't even understand why we're still debating about this. I'm not trying to be pro-american here, but we did technically make it, so why can't we govern it? There's no problems with the way everything is set up now, so why even screw it up? I see this as every country just wanting a piece of their small pie, slowly trying to take away the U.S. control of the DNS or whatnots. It seems like it's all a game to all the other countries as to see who can 'win' the biggest control of this.
What about the internet needs saving? It seems to be working fine for me thank you very much. Why do we need the UN to come in and "save the internet". Giving their track record with the Oil for food program and peace keepers raping innocent Africans, I don't want the UN anywhere near the net.
No Sigs!
"Internet Governance" is what will kill the internet.
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1. The word "stakeholder" is a euphemism for "special interests". If one looks carefully how it is used both in the WSIS and ICANN, the word "stakeholder" tends to encompass selected groups, most often groups who make money from the internet, and never includes individual users of the net.
In other words, under both the WSIS and ICANN rubric, individual users of the internet are not "stakeholders" and thus have neither right nor ability under WSIS or ICANN to express their interests, much less have an ability to vote on how those interests and concerns are handled.
2. Much of the discussion in WSIS (and ICANN) is like a fight over a toy steering wheel in an automobile. ICANN and WSIS wrongly equate regulation of the business of selling domain names with control of the internet.
In other words, they are arguing over something that is so divorced from technical reality of the net that the outcome, whatever it may be, will provide no assurance that the internet retains its ability to move packets from source IP address to destination IP address with dispatch and reasonable (but neither perfect nor guaranteed) reliability. The outcome will almost certainly be only about the handling of business practices in the business of selling domain names.
Do not expect WSIS or ICANN to comprehend that the real goal of internet governance is the preservation of the end-to-end principle for the benefit of internet users.
Listening to the tone of this article you'd think the USA had installed Pat Robertson as ICANN chief or something and now a politcian who has no qualms about drawing a filthy lucre from a Us-sponsored military dictatorship named Pakistan is going to save it from nothing. I can see the need for the internet to be saved if root entries were being removed for political reasons or what not but there's no problems with the current situation. I don't really see the imminent collapse the article mentions, the current system is here to stay, if people don't like it they can form their own and whatever happens will happen. Nothings broken and the internet is running fine under USA with no government interference of ICANN so there's nothing that needs to be changed.
In only the broadest sense of the term does the U.S. control the internet. They are certainly the country with the most influence, but they have little control over the inner workings. The U.N. might as well be asking the U.S. to relinquish control over the Coca Cola Corporation*.
Also as the recent spats between Tier 1s have shown us, the internet is vulnerable but highly adaptive. Connections were impacted for only a brief time and no long term damage was done. It's not perfect by any means but the U.N. isn't providing any solutions besides "Once we run things it will be better".
*Side note* reading up a little on the relationship between then government and Coca Cola Inc is loads of fun, political intrique, espionage, and killing communism oh my.
It STARTS with DNS root files.
Then it moves on to what countries get which websites because y'know China gets ticked off that their people can see that free speech type stuff and the US gets ticked that people can see boobies.
Then it becomes a controlling system...y'know to "protect" us from spam and worms and horrible criminal violations like sharing that intellectual property, but not missiles and weapons type intellectual property (because governments are free to do that...) just stuff like movies and tv shows.
Then you begin restricting what you can be POSTED onto the internet... because we certainly can't have hate speech in cyberspace!
Want a good model? Look at the game ratings sysstem.
The government demanded it (under threat of making one themselves and imposing it by law) while at the same time saying they didn't want to restrict purchases or violate free speech rights. They just wanted to give parents a *choice*.
10 years later and now if you sell an M rated game to a minor you can go to jail.
It's NOT a simple administrative matter.
What we need is an Internet Bill of Rights to guarantee several conditions of the Internet as it exists today. The Internet today only enjoys things like freedom of speech and freedom from taxation because that is the current policy of the U.S. -- but who knows when that could change? I'm not giving disrespect to how the U.S. currently runs the Internet; rather, I think some of the U.S.'s policies of Internet governance need to be codefied into international law. Then and only then should we even consider handing the Internet over to the U.N.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
"I would encourage you all not to focus on general themes of internet governance but instead go to the heart of the matter"
Okay.
Fascist states are pissed that they don't get to regulate the content on the internet, because it hinders their ability to feed their population piles of political bullshit.
What do I get? Is the problem solved yet?
Seriously. The only correct theme here is the "general" one -- freedom is linked to prosperity.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Don't you think it is more than a little deceptive to take a quote like "the internet is five days away from total collapse as governments are finally forced into a corner and told to agree on a framework for future Internet governance." completely out of its context? The original quote from the article is, "If a certain US senator and a certain EU commissioner are to be believed, the internet is five days away from total collapse..." To take a quote like that and crop out the fact that it is qualified with a statement that it is propaganda from two particular individuals and try to pass it off as a premise of this article is wholly dishonest.
The rest of your post is either poorly informed and considered garbage, or an attempt to troll. Just a few choice samples:
Let every ISP decide. The competition will allow the creation of new ways to excel.
Ignoring that in the majority of the world, including the US there exist government enforced monopolies on transmission lines, and thus there is no free competition.
putting all into a head nodding "we can all control our citizens equally" concert.
Assigning villainous motives to people trying to decide upon a communication standard between them. It has nothing to do with controlling people, just agreeing on an equitable way to communicate with one another.
Meaning that they will generalize everything in vague definitions easily adjusted to their situation.
Something specifically addressed as false by the article, but which this poster chooses not to address since it is easier to post this FUD.
They have no clue what to control next, but surely there must be more taxes, regulations and restrictions added to the lawbooks.
Crap pulled from his anus. This was about agreeing upon principals of how they will communicate and has nothing to do with taxes.
etc., etc. etc.
This is one of those posts where you wish a "-1 complete lies and fabrications" mod existed.
We all hear people complaining that they don't "control" the internet.
I'm not American. But well Internet works, it is free and I trust more an American administration than a Chinese one at the moment.
So the basic question is: Who force them to stay "inside" the Internet? They have routers, they have servers, uplinks, they can setup their own ICANN server within a day.
If they feel so threatenned by the American institution, why don't they leave it and setup their own?
Do you often surf on their web sites? Personnaly all I receive from China is SPAM.
Let's call it the "Politically correct" Internet. It will under the control of China, Iran, Cuba, Syria, Tunisia and all these fantastic countries we hear complaining. And for the rest of us we keep things as they are.
I don't want to surf all the day on a network partly monitored by non democratic countries. The UN is full of them, I don't want them to control any part of my life, not a single nanosecond, not a single bit.
Olivier
Now, you can be extremely dogmatic and tell me that anything done by anyone that isn't in the name of private enterprise is doomed to fail.
I'm not sure I understand your statement. Is "in the name of private enterprise" synonymous with free enterprise? Because if so, I will be dogmatic and claim that without economic freedom you will never have true liberty, the human being naturally yearns for liberty, and he will eventually fight for it. If you mean "private enterprise" in the sense of The Very Big Corporation of America increasing its earnings projection by eighteen cents, well yeah that's no help when it comes to feeding people with no money or natural resources living under uncaring governments.
But I challenge you to show how private enterprise would have filled all of the vital functions that the aforementioned UN agencies have filled over the last 50 years.
I would claim that private enterprise could have, and could have done a far better job. Not that the UN did a bad job, but the private sector is almost always more efficient and more effective. Almost always. The real problem is that the private sector has no real motivation to invest a ton of money in such an endeavor, and when you hire the work out, you get bloated government contracts that are viewed as "free" money by the private sector, and there's no incentive to be efficient.
And no, this is not a question of 'If you had waited long enough, the market would have done it'.
No, I agree. Markets do not go and liberate people. Democracies do.
Any longer wait and more people would have died of smallpox; any longer wait for refugee camps to be built and people die of cholera. And of course, there's not really any profit to be made in these situations anyway. That's when the international community simply says 'Right, let's solve it'. Consensually.
As it must. I am 100% in favor of free enterprise and capitalism abut there's a problem with free markets: if you don't have any money, the market really isn't concerned with you. That's where governments step in. I don't trust private enterprise to take care of national parks and poverty. I don't trust the government to do it either, but we can vote the government out of power. With the tangled web of corporate cannibalistic ownership, most people have no idea which corporate amalgams they're supporting when they buy any given product.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Including many Americans...
The American government is built on the principle[1] that the government are servants of the people. They are elected by the people and the people are protected from the government through the Constitution and checks and balances. The structure of the American government is one that is untrusting of itself. This is the way it's always been. There's no history of monarchy in American government.
Americans have trouble with organizations like the UN because it exists outside of this world. The UN presupposes trust in government--which Americans simply don't possess.
The idea of turning over control of something as important as the internet to an organization that assumes that government is a trust worthy thing is very contrary to the basis of the American form of government.
It's not because the US doesn't respect the rest of the world or wants to control everything. American's don't trust government. I'm not claiming this is the best system, I'm just attempting to explain the mentality.
[1] You can argue until the cows come home whether this is true in practice but it suffices to say that American's believe this to be mostly true.