[4] The Internet: Public or Private?* *This article first appeared in "Counterpoise" Vol 2 No 4 Oct 1998, published by the Alternatives in Print Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association, which actually appeared in March 1999. [Editor's Note: The following four articles were part of the ongoing battle to challenge the plan of the U.S. government to privatize the essential functions of the Internet. Instead of the U.S. government determining the proper role to play, it is creating a tangle of illegitimate activities. These articles indicate some of the nature of the problems that are being created.] Something important is happening. The cooperative and open processes and culture that make the Internet a public treasure have their enemies. A contest is going on now where the stakes are high. Will the Internet be able to continue as an open, global, internetwork of networks where diversity is encouraged and communication among people of all ages and from a multitude of backgrounds is made possible? Or will the Internet be transformed into the corporate vision of a large arena for buying and selling and other commercial transactions? The Internet vision allows all to coexist, but the commercial vision will exclude anything but the commercial aims and will require fundamental changes in the nature of the Internet itself. The contest now being waged is over the issue of the privatizing of the Domain Name System and other central and controlling functions of the Internet. Several documents follow. They document the recent struggle to maintain an Internet, and to resist the commercial pressure that certain corporate interests are exerting on the U.S. government to turn these essential functions over to the private sector for its benefit. The Internet is a place where there is a diversity of networks, a diversity of computers and a diversity of users. It is an internetwork of networks which fosters the communication among many and they benefit from this diversity. Also the Internet is based on open code and open and cooperative processes. The processes, however, that have been used by the U.S. government to create a new privatized corporation to own, control and administer Internet domain names, numbers, the root server and the protocols for the Internet have been conducted in secret and via exclusive and closed activities. There has been widespread criticism of the way that the bylaws and articles of incorporation have been created by a nonpublic, and secret process, for this new private corporation, and also there has been criticism about how the selection of those who were chosen for the Interim Board of Directors was carried out. In response to such complaints, the U.S. Department of Commerce required that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) hold an open meeting in Boston, on November 14, 1998. About 200 people from the international Internet community attended as did some members of the press. At the meeting there was a wide-ranging set of complaints about how and why ICANN had been created and what they were doing. Several people pointed out that what was needed was an international public utility, rather than a private sector corporation. The newspaper coverage of the meeting was more extensive than had hitherto happened, and many of the press accounts indicated the large amount of dissatisfaction with ICANN's secret origins and nondemocratic practices. Headlines that appeared in the press following the meeting included the following. (I have indicated the URL where possible.) "New Internet Board Hears Plenty of Skepticism", New York Times, Nov. 14, 1998, http://www.nyt.com/ "Internet Governance Board Confronts a Hostile Public" in the New York Times, on November 16, 1998. http://www.nyt.com/ "A Kind of Constitutional Convention for the Internet", Cyberlaw Journal, October 23, 1998, New York Times on the Web. "Top Candidate for Internet Governance Entity Expects Federal Govt. Approval Within Week," BNA, http://www.bna.com/e-law/ "Debate Flares Over Group That Hopes to Over see the Internet", The Chronicle of Higher Education November 27, 1998, p. A21. http://www.chronicle.com/weekly/v45/i14/14a02101.htm Another interesting press account was that in Forbesdigital on November 30 "Who is Running this Joint?" http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/98/nov/1130/feat.htm A transcript of the November 14, 1998 ICANN meeting is online at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/archive. Also comments presented before and after the meeting are online at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/archive/#comments. On November 25, 1998, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN to design and test mechanisms, methods, and procedures to carry out the DNS functions. This MoU is online at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/icann-memorandum.htm. There have been some interests pressuring the U.S. government to carry out a transition immediately to the private sector. Others have proposed reasoned consideration to determine a new management structure. Also there are voices urging the need for a continued U.S. government role in the ownership, management, and control of these important and controlling functions of the Internet. The NTIA-ICANN MoU presents a plan for designing a new structure, while maintaining government participation in the process. Thus the battle over what is happening continues. For now the U.S. government is supposed to be maintaining a role in the design and test of a private sector corporate entity to take over these essential functions of the Internet. However, it is unclear what the current U.S. government role is or who to contact in the U.S. government to present complaints to. The U.S. Congress has held hearings about the transfer of these essential Internet functions to the private sector. There is a set of testimony presented to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Subcommittee on Technology and Subcommittee on Basic Research which concerns these issues and this testimony is helpful in identifying some of the different positions and issues taken in considering what the U.S. government should do. The house testimony is online at URL: http://www.house.gov/science/hearing.htm#Basic_Research The hearings were on September 25, 1997, March 31, 1998, and October 7, 1998. The testimony of Robert E. Kahn on March 31, 1998, for example, contains important history about the role played by the U.S. government in the creation and development of the Internet. Kahn played a pioneering role in both the designing and building of the ARPANET, and then in the creation of TCP/IP and in designing and building the Internet. The URL is: http://www.house.gov/science/kahn_03-31.htm The DNS battle has turned into a battle over the soul of the Internet. The Internet makes it possible to have networks communicating and therefore people communicating. It provides for a diversity of computers, a diversity of users, and a diversity of networks. And they are all able to cooperate and collaborate. The current actions of the U.S. government to transfer controlling functions of the Internet to the private sector has raised the issue of who should be making the decisions about what happens in the present and future of the Internet? The earliest networking pioneers welcomed all views and all to participate and discuss the issues. Decisions were made by relevant communities at a grassroots level. It was understood that pro and con ideas were needed to have broad ranging discussion to make reasoned and well founded decisions. The current situation is that the Internet is made up of many different networks. There are, however, certain centralized functions. And there is a need to administer them. To do this, great responsibility and skill are needed. Since the Internet is not anarchic, and there are central points of control, great care and responsibility must be exerted or there is the great possibility of abuse of users. Therefore the question of how to make decisions about the Internet has become an urgent issue to be solved. It requires the consideration of all who value the Internet. There are various models one can use to figure out how to make decisions. However, as the Internet is a unique new medium of worldwide communication, it is important to consider what means have grown up with or as part of the Internet that can be helpful in solving this problem.(1) Commercial pressure to allow some small sector of the corporate world to take control of these essential Internet functions makes it difficult for those who care about the future of the Internet to take the needed care to solve the problem. Recognizing that this kind of problem would develop, farsighted computer pioneers in the 1970s like J.C.R. Licklider and Harold Sackman proposed that the development of a internetwork of networks would catch the public by surprise and that providing for the public interest would provide an important challenge.(2) They proposed there would be the need for determining the kind of regulation needed so that the public interest would be protected. Just as they predicted, the social institutions have lagged behind the current developments. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that those users who are interested in the Internet as a internetwork of networks to be available to all, and to include all the possible diversity of people and computers and networks, take on to learn about this issue and to help spread an understanding of why it is so important. Also the greatest possible participation of the most diverse set of users is needed to determine how to solve the current problems.(3) There is a great need for a broad ranging public discussion on the issues involved in these changes. This is the challenge. The many wonderful experiences and uses of various users around the world who are able to participate online is the gift to be won or lost as a result of the success of this contest. The current battle has made some progress, but battalions of reinforcements are needed to win the war. -------- Notes: (1) See for example the online means of decision making that are described in Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997. A draft is online at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ (2) See The Information Utility and Social Change, edited by H. Sackman and Norman Nie, AFIPS Press, Montvale, N.J., 1970, pg. 71. See also The Internet: A New Communications Paradigm, by Ronda Hauben, http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/internet.txt (3) See http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/talk_governance.txt ------------------------------------------------------------------- Reprinted from the Amateur Computerist Vol 9 No 1 Winter 1998-1999. The whole issue or a subscription are available for free via email. 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