|
Is political policy fracturing the net? |
|
|
|
|
Written by Ken DiPietro
|
|
Tuesday, 26 July 2005 |
|
One of the incredible things the Internet has clearly demonstrated is its ability to evolve faster than anyone can predict. Naturally, that hasn't prevented people like me from trying.
But what happens if we reach a stage where the international community no longer wants to cooperate? In the last year or two we are now beginning to see some indications that some countries are not satisfied with the Internet being controlled by ICANN and would prefer this authority be shifted to the UN or in the latest proposal to create an independent Internet separated from the current network.
The Public-Root organization is an association that wishes to augment the control ICANN exercises or more correctly create another set of DNS servers that would allow a parallel Internet to coexist with the current one. This article discusses one group in Turkey that is seriously considering creating another network that would operate outside of ICANN's oversight even though interoperability would be maintained.
A Turkish group seeking to improve communications technology is pushing the use of a splinter Internet network that might avoid control by the United States.
The Turkish Informatics Association's recommendation comes as the U.S. Commerce Department has announced it would indefinitely retain oversight of the Internet's main traffic-directing computers, known as root servers.
A federation of independent root operators, The Public-Root, is trying to become an alternative network with 13 root servers in 10 countries, including Turkey.
The Turkish Informatics Association and Amsterdam-based Unified Identity Technology want to use that alternative network to offer Internet addresses that end in a company or individual name--such as "www.yourname"--without ".com" or a country code like ".tr" for Turkey. Incredibly, this was anticipated years ago as you can read here.
Despite its best efforts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has proven overall to be a failed experiment in Internet policy development, implementation, and management. ICANN's lack of meaningful representation, and its continuing pattern of drastic and seemingly arbitrary structural and policy changes (among other shortcomings), have created an unstable and suspicion-ridden environment that is detrimental to the interests of the vast majority of Internet users around the world. The resulting overly politicized situation not only threatens the stability of the Internet itself, but also invites drastic and undesirable interventions by a variety of vested interests.
In November of this year the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will be conducting Phase 2 of their discussions on how Internet governance and financing mechanisms should be operated. The WSIS has published a Declaration of Principles that lays out their position. This document lays out exactly what the WSIS believes and charts a direction for their group to follow.
Will these actions fracture the Internet? What are the possible implications and benefits?
I don't think anyone can fully comprehend what the full effect of this action might be but I do believe that the current system controlled by ICANN is in serious need of restructuring. One of the issues facing many of us is how Domain Names are registered and the pricing that supports this structure. In 2007 Verisign will be up for renewal as the controlling body that oversees .com domain names. Recently, Verisign won the right to continue to oversee the .net domain structure against several competitive bids.
Among some of the questions that have arisen is will Verisign raise the price they charge and if so, by how much? While the price to register a domain name is inexpensive by US standards many places in the world would like to see a reduction in these fees.
In the first quarter of the year, about 6.7 million new domain names were registered worldwide, representing a 36 percent increase from the same period a year earlier and a 4 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2004, VeriSign said.
In total, there were 76.9 million domain names registered at the end of the first quarter of 2005. This is some serious money we are talking about here. More importantly, there are also issues that the current system is faulted by allowing people to tie up domain names purely for speculation by registering them purely for the purpose of resale, a term known as "Domain Squatting." Verisign themselves have also come under fire for "Traffic Squatting" as well as "Typo Squatting" along with Verisign's own version of domain squatting.
These actions have royally pissed people off over the last few years and many have made the decision that the oversight of the top level domain names needs to not only be removed from Verisign (the owners of Network Solutions) but from ICANN and the US government as well.
I don't know if this is necessarily a good or a bad thing but the discontent from the perceived mismanagement is rapidly starting to boil over.
As long as the Internet(s) all agree to exchange information in an open fashion we will not lose the potential benefit of a worldwide communications platform but what happens if this approach isn't taken? Will we lose one of the biggest opportunities we as a group have ever had to work through our problems? What could be the possible benefit for the US to keep control if we lose a huge portion of the world as part of that decision? What about the effect this would have on commerce? I would submit this would also have a chilling effect on science and research of all kinds as the worldwide scientific community (long known for being border agnostic) would lose its most effective tool for sharing and disseminating information.
This also leads me to wonder if we might also be looking at a number of other policy decisions causing the net to fragment in ways we might not even be considering.
Is there a potential for splinter networks to wish to be removed from the greater Internet as a whole? Certainly a coherent argument could be presented that the Supreme Court's latest ruling in the Grokster case might want to motivate people to form their own closed groups so that they can share whatever they choose without fear of retribution. In fact, I would think a case could be made that this would be legal as the sharing of materials between "friends" is perfectly allowable. I am not sure if this could be extended to the entire population of Philadelphia should the city decide to close off their proposed WiFi infrastructure as a privately shared resource between friends.
What does this say about pornography, even the illegal variety? If people set up closed networks where the data doesn't traverse the Internet, how could they be discovered?
What we are seeing here is the presentation of a series of very serious choices. Do we as a nation change the way we are doing things to meet the demands of a significant portion of the rest of the world or do we all become a little poorer? Can we admit that our oversight of Verisign has some serious issues and needs to be changed or will a fair portion of the world walk away from us?
Perhaps the most important question I can ask, what do we as a people envision the Internet to be and where do we want to take this technology? Are we so certain that the decisions we make today are what's best for our country and the world that we are willing to gamble we can continue to run the Internet?
If so, we are about to get a wakeup call that is going to be much harder to rectify than it was to create.
As hard as this may be for many to understand, we are not in control, I am not sure we ever were. Our continued belief that we will shape the future as far as technology and communications go is rapidly becoming a myth.
I believe it is time for us to take our place as partners in this endeavor and step away from the belief we are in the driver's seat. The reality is, we are now on autopilot and we will either go with the flow or be lost on the wayside. |
|
Industry Commentary 
Advanced Search
