HSPC1004 Introduction to Science Policy

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HSPC1004 Introduction to Science Policy

• Week 10 Slot 1
• Choosing Internets

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Who governs the internet?

• 1) Growth of the internet
• NCP (Network Control Protocol) for 1960s ARPANET
• TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
  Protocol) in 1970s
• At the code level, the Internet is a commons
  (Lawrence Lessig)

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ARPANET 1970
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(No Transcript)
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Who governs the internet?

• 2) Self-governing culture?
• LambdaMOO vs. Mr. Bungle (read Goldsmith and Wu,
  pp.14-17)
• What happened?
• What lessons were drawn?
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
• Declaration of Cyberspace Independence (1996)
  (Read Goldsmith and Wu, pp.17-22)

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A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
by John Perry Barlow ltbarlow_at_eff.orggt

• Governments of the Industrial World, you weary
  giants of flesh and steel, I come from
  Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of
  the future, I ask you of the past to leave us
  alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no
  sovereignty where we gather.
• We have no elected government, nor are we likely
  to have one, so I address you with no greater
  authority than that with which liberty itself
  always speaks. I declare the global social space
  we are building to be naturally independent of
  the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have
  no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any
  methods of enforcement we have true reason to
  fear.
• Governments derive their just powers from the
  consent of the governed. You have neither
  solicited nor received ours. We did not invite
  you. You do not know us, nor do you know our
  world. Cyberspace does not lie within your
  borders. Do not think that you can build it, as
  though it were a public construction project. You
  cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows
  itself through our collective actions.
• We will create a civilization of the Mind in
  Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than
  the world your governments have made before.
• Davos, Switzerland February 8, 1996

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Who governs the internet?

• 3) Who should control the allocation of domain
  names and IP addresses?
• Engineers, such as Jon Postel?
• United States governmental bodies, such as
  Department of Defense?
• Private businesses, such as Network Solutions,
  Inc?
• International intergovernmental multi-stakeholder
  bodies, such as ICANN?

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• Date Wed, 28 Jan 1998 170411-0800
• From postel_at_ISI.EDU
• Subject Root zone secondary service
• Hello.
• As the Internet develops there are transitions
  in the management arrangements. The time has come
  to take a small step in one of those transitions.
  At some point on down the road it will be
  appropriate for the root domain to be edited and
  published directly by the IANA.
• As a small step in this direction we would like
  to have the secondaries for the root domain pull
  the root zone (by zone transfer) directly from
  IANA's own name server.
• This is "DNSROOT.IANA.ORG" with address
  198.32.1.98.
• The data in this root zone will be an exact copy
  of the root zone currently available on the
  A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET machine. There is no change
  being made at this time in the policies or
  procedures for making changes to the root zone.
• This applies to the root zone only. If you
  provide secomdary service for any other zones,
  including TLD zones, you should continue to
  obtain those zones in the way and from the
  sources you have been.
• - --jon.
• Jon Postel Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
  c/o USC - ISI, Suite 1001 4676 Admiralty Way
  Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695 Talk
  1-310-822-1511 Fax [phone] EMail
  IANA_at_ISI.EDU

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• Moral?
• Internet is under national control in the
  important senses of the term

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Who Governs the Internet?

• 3) Yahoo from resisting national control to
  working with it
• Yahoo vs. France Nazi memorabilia trial (2000)
• Yahoo vs China
• Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese
  Internet Industry (2002)
• The Yahoo story encapsulates the Internets
  transformation from a technology that resists
  territorial law to one that facilitates its
  enforcement (Goldsmith and Wu, p.10)

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• the Internet enjoyed in the West is a choice
  not fate, not destiny, and not natural law
• (Goldsmith and Wu, p.90)

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Who Governs the Internet?

• 4) What are the factors that point towards a
  nationalization of the net?
• Language
• Geo-ID
• Companies wanting to profile customers better
• From community governance to rule of law
• eBay

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• The community really is no longer the way it
  was in the early days. My philosophy then was,
  let the community govern itself. That philosophy
  didnt really scale up
• (Pierre Omidyar, eBay founder, quoted in
  Goldsmith and Wu, p.135)

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Who Governs the Internet?

• 5) Control of intermediaries as the focus of
  control
• The fate of Sealand haven experiment
• Source Intermediaries - Targets

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Who Governs the Internet?

• 5) Control of intermediaries as the focus of
  control
• The fate of Sealand haven experiment
• Source Intermediaries Targets
• (Read Goldsmith and Wu, Chapter 5)