[afnog] Re: Request for input: The WorkingGrouponInternetGovernance

[Brian Candler]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 09:44:28AM +0100, Robert.Shaw at itu.int wrote:
> The government policy makers and regulators already have broad 
> jurisdiction

Governments clearly have ultimate jurisdiction over what happens on this
planet. But in some cases they are forced to accept the will of society,
even if it opposes what politicians themselves think.

Take the DNS root, for instance. Now, hardly anyone actually *likes* the
ICANN system (it's expensive and unwieldy), but the Internet community have
accepted it as the best way for continued stability in the DNS, for the time
being at least.

But imagine that ICANN started to mismanage the DNS to the point where it
became untenable for Internet users and operators alike. The operators could
collectively, as a last resort, set up their own DNS root and just use that.
People have set up their own DNS roots before, of course, but those attempts
were driven primarily by a self-interest profit motive, and so the rest of
the Internet rightly did not jump on board.

But ultimately, it could happen; the Internet would function perfectly
happily, and ICANN would become irrelevant. The same would apply if IP
address allocation was broken too. We could just allocate our own numbers,
on an entirely parallel Internet if needs be.

What would happen then? Would governments legislate that you *must* use
ICANN DNS and IP numbers? Would people be sent to jail for pointing their
DNS caches at an alternative root, or for using IP numbers allocated by a
"rogue" registry, or indeed for using a different protocol than IPv4 or
IPv6? If we started building UUCP networks again, would they be outlawed?

I don't think so, because they would be suppressing what is generally
regarded as a basic human right: the right to choose with whom we
communicate and how we do so. Maybe it would happen in a few places (use of
strong crypto is I believe still outlawed in some countries), but I don't
think the Internet would be brought to its knees. There is enough sanity
left in the world, even within governments, for them to realise what was
happening and why.

The governments' main weapon would be that they themselves would not
participate in such alternative networks; they could legislate that if you
want to talk to your government, you have to do it through an official
network. That's fine; proxies and mail gateways will be built. Or people
will just use the paper mail when sending in their tax returns.

I don't think any of the above will actually *happen*, but the point is that
it could; the power to run the network really lies with the network
operators and users.

> but I will be the first to admit that many of you are not receptive to 
> this reality yet so it will take more time ;-)...

I think the ITU is not receptive to the reality that the *perception* it has
in the Internet community is of a dinosaur, desperately attempting to find a
new role before it becomes totally irrelevant and dies.

You can argue as much as you like that the reality is different, but I'm
talking about the *perception*. Commission your own research if you like.
And if the ITU wants to change that perception, then using its government
links to attempt to hijack the existing registry processes is probably not a
good place to start.

Regards,

Other Brian.