Previous Politech messages: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/11/08/us-senator-warns/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/10/19/keep-the-united/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Internet governance and WSIS Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:11:52 -0500 From: Jonathan Zittrain <z@private> To: declan@private some thoughts for politech, if you think them appropriate -- Declan, I confess, I don't get it. Much has been written about the apparent desire by the United Nations, spurred by China, Cuba, and other informationally repressive regimes, to "take control of the Internet." Oddly, the concrete focus of this battle -- now the topic of a Senate resolution! -- is a comparatively trivial if basic part of Net architecture: the domain name system. The spotlight on domain name management is largely a combination of historical accident and the unfortunate assignment of country code domains like .uk and .eu, geographically-grounded codes that give the illusion of government outposts and control in cyberspace. The most important parts of the domain name system are naturally resistant to unwanted control: if Dr. Evil (or the UN, whichever is thought worse) hijacked the precious "root zone" file of the domain name system, the Internet Service Providers of the world wouldn't bat an eye -- any more than the United States would be without its Constitution if the original copy at the National Archives were destroyed, or a 28th Amendment scrawled onto its parchment by a vandal with the expectation that it would thereby become law. Is there a threat of governments, particular repressive ones, ruining the Internet? Absolutely. Controlling the Internet for real means controlling its fundamental protocols -- which is to say, controlling Internet Service Providers around the world, or the manufacturers like Cisco and Juniper who make the hardware that such providers use to bring the Internet to their subscribers. China is hard at work on doing just that, with mixed results, and even the most liberal democracies have digital content or activities that they would like to constrain. The best thing that could come out of something like the World Summit is a commitment to the free exchange of bits, something to be disallowed only on narrowly constrained circumstances. Providers of services on the Internet could benefit from a set of best practices modeled after the Sullivan Principles by which many companies sought to engage with South Africa during Apartheid: principles that would say what limits would be appropriate on Western assistance to Chinese Internet censorship. But as for the cries that the US must maintain control of the domain name system root or face a "digital Munich" -- they are better directed to the many ways, large and small, in which Internet freedom is threatened one access point at a time. Seems to me that it's a benefit when the diplomats and politicians are busy arguing about such an unimportant corner of the digital sand box -- exactly, I think, what some of the technical crew intended when they peeled off domain name management and made ICANN a lightning rod to draw attention away from the real work. ...JZ Jonathan Zittrain Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation Oxford University Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Visiting Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies Harvard Law School <http://www.jz.org> _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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