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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 190
Netizens-Digest Saturday, October 24 1998 Volume 01 : Number 190
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] Re: CPT Comments
[netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: Sources of Authority and the Role of NTIA (long)
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Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 12:38:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: CPT Comments
In article <19981023024207.AAD9659@LOCALNAME> kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca wrote:
>What do you think the *commercial* point of 'portals' is, then?
Again, using the radio/TV analogy, the commercial point of portals is
to deliver web surfers to advertisers by creating content that is
likely to interest the web surfers. The advertising pays the
salaries, etc. for the people who run the portals, while also
providing the web surfers the ability to buy (or at least browse)
products and services online.
No demographic data is collected from anyone who does not wish to
release it. Companies who run portals use focus groups and other
types of surveys to get demographic data on web surfers.
There are some proposals in the works for enabling web browser
software to provide demographic data. However, the proposals also
call for the data only to be released at the user's discretion.
You can read more about this at the WWW consortium site (www.w3.org).
>Domain names are all I'm addressing, on the simple basis that they could
>meet a clear need for *degrees of confidence* independent of what sites
>"say about themselves" *after* you've stepped into the parlor. This
>does not, in any way whatsoever, interfere with anyone's { deciding
>for oneself if the site offers something of interest.{ Given the
>historical moment, why shouldn't this be considered within the scope
>of administrative proposals? Do you forsee a better time or place?
Again, this goes beyond the scope of the IFWP's goals. There are
other groups within the IETF and IAB who are working on complete
redesigns of the Internet (including DNS). Check their web sites for
more information.
- --gregbo
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Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 10:10:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: Sources of Authority and the Role of NTIA (long)
I am sending this response to the Netizens list as well as the IFWP
list because this discussion of Internet history and future needs
the social perspective that those who have joined the netizens
list have tried to figure out, and it is impossible to understand
by taking only the commercial perspective which is all that
is allowed to be discussed on the IFWP list.
Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz> , responding to
At 11:31 AM 10/23/98,Harold Feld wrote:
><snip>
Both of these characterizations are vast misrepresentations of *how*
the Internet has been and is being built. They are also gross
misrepresentations of those on this IFWP mailing list who are
promothing the privatization of significantly important
public resources.
>>But the greatest fundamental difference lies in the view of community. To
>>the Internet community school, the Internet community is real and defined
>>by a town hall, village elders, and personal ties. The Community has a
>>moral mission to unify mankind through a universal communications medium
>transcending national boarders.
There is *no* town hall or community school and there is no view
of any universal communications media by folks who are promoting
the privatization of the domain name system and other vital
Internet functions. No one who had any view of community or
public purpose would be encouraging the U.S. govt to put such
significant Internet functions into the control of a private
organization where they can be milked for private purposes.
Those who have built the Internet, and who act as netizens are those
who work to contribute to and spread the Internet, *not* those
who work to put the public resources into the private sector so
they can be abused.
There are Netizens. These are folks who take on to act as citizens
of the Net. This means they are contributors to, not those trying
to get the public resources into private hands.
Also it is becoming clear to me that there is a relationship between
being a netizen and being a citizen. That it is also important
to act as a citizen of one's country to act as a netizen online.
This means that one will not encourage one's government to support
any effort to put the public resources of the Internet into the
private sector or into private hands.
One cannot be a citizen of a private corporation.
One's government derives its soverignty from the citizens of
its country.
Thus one has to fight with one's government to do what is in
the interests of the citizens, not in the interests of those
trying to usurp public power and public property.
>> To the Government Contractor school, the
>>"Internet community" is defined by a commonality of interest in the use and
>>exploitation of an increasingly vital economic resource for the benefit of
>>the public and private sectors.
I don't see any effort to benefit the public sector in anything going
on on this IFWP list. So again this characterization of some of
the people on this list is inaccurate.
There is an important distinction that has to be made between
doing something for the benefit of the public and private sectors.
The Internet has been developed by the public sector and via the
protection of the public sector from commercial pressures. Once
the commercial pressures have been allowed to function, the
public resources and power that are needed to keep the Internet
and Internet that is freely available and spreading around the
world, these are becoming more and more limited, and a very
different kind of network, a commercenet is making its effort
to replace the Internet.
With government protection and support for the Internet, for
the public network of networks, it would be possible to have
both an Internet as the bigger network of networks that includes
university networks, and library networks, and public school
networks, and government networks, and scientific networks, and
hobbyist networks, and even business networks where the network
is being used for communication. But without government protection
and support for the Internet all these communication networks
will be overcome by a single domineering commercenet that is
out to exploit the publicly funded and developed Internet technology
to make one grand, but single commercenet that ousts the
Internet and replaces it with a buying and selling, tv like,
commerce network that will be of little interest or value to
anyone except the few large corporate entity that are making
their money by selling their canned content and other products
to those limited number of folks around the world who are
willing to waste their computer resources to access it.
These corporate monguls may include access to email as long
as you are willing to read their commercials. And they may
include web discussions as long as you use your computer
to let them spread their logos.
But that is the Network that Newco will be creating and
spreading. And no one who cares about the Internet or
about spreading the Internet would be helpfing to create
the new private corporation that the U.S. government is
making up to give away the key functions of the Internet
to.
These key functions need to be protected.
My letter to the head of the Commerce Committee in the
U.S. House of Representations pointed out some of what
I learned from reading the Inspector General's Report
of the NSF which was issued Feb. 7, 1997.
It pointed out that there are 4.3 billion IP numbers.
Over 2 billion have been allocated. If there is a charge
of $50 a year that a private corporation decides to charge,
then that yields the private corporation $100 billion.
And this is only one of the many valuable resources that
is being given away free to this private organization.
The NSF Inspector General's Report noted that the NSF should
not be giving away resources built at the public expense
(U.S. public) to some private entity.
And the NSF Inspector General noted that this ability to
make so much money should not be given over to the private
sector, but that government had the obligation to protect
these resources, and to protect the public's use and
continuing ability to use the Internet.
This is the kind of thing that government should be doing,
not doing what Ira Magaziner and the NTIA are doing,
in creating a private corporation to give these public resources
to.
>> The Internet Community School believes
>>they have a sacred public trust to administer the resoruce wisely and not
>>for personal gain, and that those who dispute this sacred mission are
>>attempting to advance personal agendas based on self-interest and greed.
If anyone on the IFWP list felt this way, they would be opposing
the U.S. government's plan to give these vital Internet resources
away to any private sector organization.
>>The Government Contractor school thinks that this is a pious
>>rationalization for maintaining ironclad control over an increasingly vital
>>resource, and that, at any rate, the public interest is better served by
>>open competition and enleightened self-interest than by administration by
>>unaccountable village elders who, as economists, lawyers, and public
>>planners, make damn fine engineers.
The Internet was created by protection from "competition" and "self
interest" so if anyone cared about the further use and growth
and development of the Internet, or about the public interest, they
would be opposing this giveaway by the U.S. govt.
><snip>
>Thank you Harold, for that effort.
>You are writing history here.
No the above gross misrepresentations was only an effort to justify
the giveaway of the public treasure of the Internet. It was
in *no* way history.
If anyone is interested in the history of the Internet, the work
done gathering that history and putting it online and in book
form is available at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook
That is the history of the Netizens and the important role
that government, especially the U.S. government has played in
the building of the Internet. And the book also documents the
change in that role of government with the secret and closed
way that the NSF backbone was first commercialized and then privatized.
That history is also included in our book "Netizens: On the History
and Impact of Usenet and the Internet" published by the
IEEE Computer Society Press in 1997.
>Yet, there is more to this debate than just these two schools of thought.
As I pointed out these were not two schools of thought, but the
rationale to cover the effort to privatize important public
resources. The whole experience and contribution of Netizens
and their work and successful spread of the Internet is
ignored by this phony rendition of the history of the Internet.
>Many of the participants of this list alone, who must spend several hours a
>day just to read it all before they can even contribute a thought, must
>place themselves outside these two camps.
Yes this list is almost impossible to participate in.
And the two camps mentioned are a very minimum number of people
and are *not* in any way anything that reflects the Internet community.
>How about yourself, Harold?
>There is another dichotomy at play as well: The top-down school and the
>bottom-up school.
>Many in the government contractor school and the internet old-boy school
>must find common ground in the top-down philosophy.
>Protectors of public resources have this tendency and engineers who have
>the "power" over the routers and servers even more.
>Hierarchy is almost built into traditional computing. I remember early DOS
>programs like Framework that even forced your thinking into hierarchical
>moulds.
But hierarchy is *not* built into the Internet.
And the U.S. governments and other governments around the world
supported and made possible to development of a global Internet.
This was by supporting what government can support, which is
a broader means of access and participation.
There is a serious difference between what in the U.S. is the
public sphere (I realize that in other countries the word "public"
may have different meanings.)
A public sphere, however, is open to all and all can participate.
That is how the Internet has been built from the earliest days
of the ARPANET and early Usenet.
That is *not* what the private sector makes possible.
The private sector makes possible ownership, and control, and
the most powerful dominating everything.
That is why it is crucial that these key functions of the Internet
remain in the public sector, and not be transferred to the
private sector.
My proposal provides a way to do that, building on the collaborative
relationships of governments in building the Internet.
But in any case, none of the corporate modeled "private" sector
proposals provide any ability to maintain the Internet or to
protect the public's ability to use and develop the Internet.
>Backbone, gateways, servers, TLD's everywhere is a position of- and an
>opportunity for "control".
But only if the governments of the U.S. and other countries allow
this to happen, which is unfortunately what the U.S. government
privatization plan is asking to happen.
>At the apex of it all, IANA.
No at the apex has been the U.S. government protecting IANA.
And that is what is changing. And that is what is disastrous.
>At the other end of the divide stands the powerless connectee, hanging
>utterly dependent at the end of a dialup connection. Millions of people
>with similar concerns and interests.
Not powerless at all as long as the U.S. government protects IANA
and other governments help.
But that is why people have created governments, because otherwise
they end up with Kings.
>Here is where Patrick O'Brien finds his "freedom fighters", the people who
>are afraid of benevolent but unaccountable switchmasters who have started
>to assert their power by summarily disconnecting those who did not pay up.
>The great Domain Name money grab.
And this is only the very beginning of what we will see if the
U.S. government is allowed to go ahead with its great giveaway
and put IANA into the hands of a private sector corporation.
>It is not that these people just want to have a free lunch. They can
>probably live with the charges as they are today, but they see the
>potential for tyranny on the horizon.
No the charges are already excluding many of the people whose tax
payer money built the Internet.
>This is why they call for various forms of self-government.
Who is calling for so called "self-government"? I can only see
the hands of those who want to be the beneficiaries of grabbing
a piece of the greatest public treasure of our time for their
own private advantage.
>Most of them are realistic enough to know that calling the politicians or
>international bureaucrats in is likely to make their position even worse so
>they spend their precious time drafting and thinking of new structures.
But the kind of self interest and lack of concern for the public
interest that has been going on on this list is worse than any
politicians or international organization representatives could ever
be.
Most of the people on this list are trying to remove any public control
or public benefit from the Internet.
This is the nature of putting the key functions of the Internet into
the private sector.
It may be that some government officials who are involved with
what is happening don't understand Internet technology.
But many on this list have some background in Internet technology
and as engineers have ethical obligations to not abuse their
background and technical knowledge by harming the public.
Though the real problem is that this list and IFWP situation has
been developed by the U.S. government, those engineers or other
folks who have technical knowledge should be making clear that
there are public concerns and obligations that the engineering
community is responsible to uphold.
Why is none of that happening here?
>The top-down people call them deluded.
>The visionary amongst them think of the 'net itself as a liberating
>technology, making a global direct participation possible, hitherto
>unthinkable.
No global direct participation is possible under the ownership
and control of any private organization.
I have had experience on both private and publicly owned and controlled
networks.
As soon as a network is privately owned, it is the owners who one
must defer to for the decision about what will happen.
But on public networks the users themselves can and will discuss
the problems and they can determine how to solve them.
This is demonstrated in two papers I have written, one about
early MsgGroup mailing list, and another about early Usenet.
On both of these the users were able to determine what should
happen.
On the private bbs's I have been on or on prodigy's network,
those who own the network have control over what happens
and folks soon realize that and stop trying to participate.
User participation in the decisions that are needed to figure
out the way forward is only possible on a public network.
And the lesson from the development of the ARPANET and the
Internet is that government needs to be involved and playing
the good role that it has learned to play to make it possible
for the Internet to continue to be a public network where
there can be the needed participation by users to solve
the problems of network growth and development.
That has broken down with this IFWP process because the issue
of privatization chased out the users who had a public concern
and interest and thus this is a process that is doomed to
fail in any attempt to contribute to the further growth and
development of the Internet.
>They see the ifwp process on this list as one continuous meeting, with the
>minutes being archived.
>The physical meetings that have taken place are only sideshows for them.
>How many of them feel that they need to board a plane, when they can
>participate and contribute on-line?
But they don't ever take up any public concerns or consider the
long or even short term interests of the Internet.
>Can the top down school and the bottom-up grassroots movement also find
>neutral ground with NTIA?
That is irrevelant. The NTIA has been created to deregulate
telecommunications around the world.
Thus it is *not* a government agency with the expertise to
contribute to the healthy growth and development of the Internet.
The Internet was created under U.S. government protection and
support, the opposite of deregulation.
Early Usenet was the result of much contribution from folks at
Bell Labs and early Usenet contributed in a significant way
to opening up the ARPANET to others.
The telecommunications deregulation that the NTIA has promoted
is what has gotten rid of Bell Labs.
Just as there is *no* longer Bell Labs (where the transistor, the
laser, and other technical and scientific achievements that have
changed our society for the better were created), so the
Internet is now being threatened by the deregulatory fever that
the NTIA is the proponent of.
Thus the NTIA is *not* in any way capable of being anything that
can help or understand the Internet.
They may be able to create a government subsidized and spread
Commercenet to spread the wares and commercials of the largest
U.S. corporate entities around the world, but they are *not*
an agency that has the expertise or the interest in helping
to solve any of the problems of Internet growth and development.
>Or is each side already preparing to route around it?
Wouldn't it be more fruitful to try to figure out what is
in the long term best interests for the Internet and how
to work toward that happening?
But is it impossible for folks who put their commercial interests
before their social interests to contribute in any way
to such a conversation?
>--Joop--
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
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End of Netizens-Digest V1 #190
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