The UN, copyright extremism and you

By: Scott Bradner

Back in September representatives from India, Brazil and South Africa (aks IBSA) got together to talk about the Internet. Their conclusion (http://www.culturalivre.org.br/artigos/IBSA_recommendations_Internet_Governance.pdf) was that the Internet needed help from the United Nations in the areas of developing policies, technical standards, operation, dispute resolution and crises management. The improbable conclusion that UN could actually provide any help in any of these areas has been discussed in various Internet savvy forums and roundly dismissed as a very bad idea but that did not stop India from formally proposing it to the UN on October 26th. Meanwhile the US House is trying its best to come up with an even worse idea for Internet governance.

Fundamentally, the IBSA proposal is to take Internet management away from the motley collection of organizations and companies that have made the Internet a roaring success, now used by billions of people and the mechanism supporting for trillions of dollars of commerce and turn it over to the diplomatic core, a group not noted for its ability to do anything other than talk and obstruct. Or, to put it another way, the IBSA proposal is based on the premise that the Internet is too important to leave to those people who know what they are doing. This would be a good way to ensure that the Internet of the future would not resemble the dynamic and innovative Internet we know today.

Currently the Internet is basically unregulated, from the point of view of traditional telecom regulators. Technical standard for the Internet protocols and applications largely come from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) (http://www.ietf.org), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (http://www.w3.org) and many private companies. The internet runs over new as well as traditional telecommunications standards from organizations such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (http://www.ieee.org) and the UN-based International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (http://www.itu.int).

But there are no meaningful international Internet-specific regulations or policies. The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) (http://www.intgovforum.org) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) (http://www.icann.org) serve as voluntary multi-stakeholder forums for discussion and coordination of Internet policies and operation but have little decisional power (on purpose). Both of these organizations held their meetings last moth in Africa. See the opening remarks from Larry Strickling of the US Department of Commerce (http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/component/content/article/108-transcripts/857-main-session-internet-governance-for-development) for a good description of the multi-stakeholder concept and Kieren McCarthy review of the IBSA proposal (http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/10/27/india-proposes-government-control-internet) for more detain on the IBSA proposal and its impact.

While back in the USA, a similar proposal to destroy the future usability of the Internet has been proposed by some members of the US House. The proposal, (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-3261) with the neat handle of the "E-PARASITE bill" seems to be a conscious effort to make the already awful PROTECT-IP bill and make it worse.

This bill removes any remaining pretence that its House supporters consider the interests of the people that voted for them at all relevant to their existence. It also removes any pretence of due process from the consideration of copyright on the Internet. I will not say that it is copyright extremism at its worst because I expect they will endeavor to make it worse as it proceeds. As you might expect, the Internet technical community thinks these proposals are a very bad idea technically (http://www.circleid.com/pdf/PROTECT-IP-Technical-Whitepaper-Final.pdf) but the bills supporters dismiss information from people who know what they are doing. Copyright is important but the US Constitution balances copyright interest with the interests of society -- these bills do not - the only parasites here are the copyright holders.

Why does this matter to you? The E-PARASITE bill provides your competitor or disgruntled customer endless ways to make your life miserable and even cause your website to disappear altogether without you even being asked for your side of the story). (See http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111027/00083116531/e-parasites-bill-end-internet-as-we-know-it.shtml for details.)

Extremism seems to be a common approach to the world these days and the Internet is just the latest target, both domestically and internationally.

disclaimer: Harvard will find out my opinion when it reads it in Network World and it played no role in developing this semi-extreme view.