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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 218
Netizens-Digest Wednesday, December 2 1998 Volume 01 : Number 218
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
[netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: ICANN representing us "users" (pt 2 of 3)
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Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 10:58:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
Jonathan Zittrain <zittrain@cyber.law.harvard.edu> wrote:
>Despite the impression that may have been left by the article (amazing what
a half-hour discussion with a reporter can boil down to), I don't see ICANN
>as all-powerful. At this point, both structurally and politically it seems
>to me to have a pretty narrow area in which it is to make policies, and as
Jim points out any attempt to radically, particularly damagingly,
>restructure those things that *are* within its purview would be well
>buffered. (Someone creating the bills for a widely-relied-upon private
>scrip would be similarly bound by circumstance.)
That is good to conjecture about. However, look at the damage done
to the Net by NSF allowing NSI to charge its fees.
Lots of junk email and Usenet postings have flooded the Net ever since
the change from NSI more carefully giving out domain names, before
they were allowed to profit from it, to once they knew that just
granting any names requested would yield them their profits.
The abuse of the domain name system is now rampant.
People can get domain names without giving legitimate names or
phone numbers so they can't be traced when they abuse the Net,
people are hoarding domain names in expectation someone with
so called "deep pockets" will want the names they are hoarding,
others are hoarding them for various other reasons, etc.
The serious problems that have arisen have to do with allowing
NSI to turn their profits at the expense of the integrity of the Net.
So great damage can be done just with regard to the domain name
system, and it is not only the domain name system that is
set to be transferred but also the root server system and IP
numbers and protocols etc.
I asked someone who wrote me if he wondered what kind of damage
could be done by this, he answered that it wasn't hard to imagine,
just take for example is there is a decision to charge for every
domain name lookup.
Far fetched? Not at all, as it isn't any more far fetched than
the U.S. government announcing by fiat that it would turn these
cooperative and public resources over to some private sector
(whatever that is).
The Office of Inspector General of the NSF alerted me to the
power and riches that the IP numbers hold for some private
entity.
In their report of Feb. 7, 1997 (and the head of the office who
issued the report is no longer there, so one wonders what happened
in that situation), they comment about how there is an obligation
to oversee and be responsible about the great deal of tax money
that has been used to build the Internet and to make sure that
the public's interest and use of the Net is protected.
Also they point out that the IP numbers alone represent a
very great power as no one can send email, etc. without
an IP number. So if someone chooses to withhold IP numbers,
to make them very expensive, etc. then that significantly
changes the access to the Net for many people.
There is a copy of the OIG NSF report online. I'll try to get
the URL if anyone is interested.
So there is very great power and wealth attached to the ownership
and control of these essential functions and it is not a
responsible treatment of them to announce that they will just
be turned over to some private entity.
The present and the future of the Internet is intimately connected
with who owns, controls and benefits from these cooperative
public resources. To even propose to give them away to some so
called "private sector" demonstrates either a lack of understanding
of their importance to the Internet, or a lack of concern for
the Internet. In either case, it is a serious abuse of the
responsiblity that goes with the protection of the public
interest with regard to the Internet.
>I don't, however, agree with the notion that ICANN isn't to do anything
>more than custodial--if it were just assigning names and numbers
>ministerially, there'd be little fuss over its creation and evolution.
>Decisions about name assignment that fall far short of the radical can have
>big implications--for example, creation of new TLDs, and assignment of the
>registry and registrar functions for them, matter to a lot of people. Plus
>there's the point that just how well ICANN succeeds will be used to make
>arguments about the ability of the Net to self-govern in other areas.
Good to see that you recognize this. And all this leaves out
the fact that users are affected by the fact that poeple can
get domain names without legitimate telephone numbers and addresses,
etc so their junk emails and posts can't be traced, etc.
A lot of system administrations and users have spent many many
hours trying to fight those sending the junk emails only to find
they can't get a legitimate telephone number or address for the
culprit.
And the increase of those benefitting from selling domain names
will only increase the flood of junk and other abuses that
users have to deal with.
>On your larger point, I agree that it misses something to simply respond to
>you that most of the internet is a cobbled together set of privately-held
>subnets and backbones. That's true, but the reason so many people are
No it's not at all true.
But I appreciate your rasiing the issue.
First of all, many of the backbones and networks that make up the
Internet around the world are owned by Universities who are owned
by the government, or they are in some way or other publicly funded
and owned.
When I was at an IETF meeting in Europe folks commented to me about
how different the view of the world was in the U.S. than in Europe.
And the Internet is *not* merely routers, wires, etc.
The Internet is a global cooperative communications medium.
The Internet includes my computer and me, and other users and their
computers, it includes our phone lines or other means of getting
to an online connection, it includes the contributions we send
around the world, i.e. the messages we communicate with, and
it includes the folks who cooperate to make the Internet possible,
the system administrators (whether they work for a company, a university,
etc.) The Internet includes the programs that people have contributed
either for pay or voluntarily, it includes the technical and other
support that people give each other to make it possible for people
to be online and communicating online. It includes those who maintain
the mailing lists, or newsgroup FAQs, etc.
To start claiming that the Internet is a few backbone ISP's
(who are publicly funded or private corporations) is an
inaccurate representation of the Internet.
The Internet is a network of networks, but those networks aren't
just a set of wires or routers. They are networks, or systems
which include the people, their communication etc.
>concerned about due process, fairness, etc., in policies about its
>coordination--or even in custodial functions of names assignment done by,
>say, NSI--is that, de facto, it's the only game of its sort in town right
>now. That could change, but until it does, many people are bound by the
>internet's underlying structure and can't readily take their networking
>business elsewhere if they don't like how it's working. Why can't that be
>acknowledged, though, without having to claim that the Net's coordinating
>and assignment functions belong to the United States government, which
>doesn't want them?
And we (or at least I) do want an Internet that includes as many people
around the world as possible, *not* to go out and figure out which
of the competing nets or even internets I want to join.
Thus I agree that there is a significant public interest that
anyone who undertakes to make signficiant changes to the Internet's
essential functions must recognize.
However, what I don't agree with is that the U.S. Government
can just claim it doesn't want to be responsible about what happens
with these coordinating functions, or that it can just turn them
over to whomever it chooses. If it doesn't want them, and I don't
think that is exactly accurate,( because the U.S. government has
had very strict criteria about what it wanted as a place to give
these functions too), then it would have opened up the question
of what is appropriate to happen to them.
It didn't do that. It did the opposite. It set out a rigit framework
for how these essential functions must be turned over to some narrow
sector of the Internet community under principles that are totally
hostile to the development of the Internet, principles like competition.
The Internet as a communications medium relies on cooperation.
The U.S. government didn't undertake a study involving the
International community to determine what would be an appropriate
way to protect these vital functions. That was my proposal for
a prototype to not only examine the question but also to do it
in a way that involved the International Internet community,
and so that the means of studying the question would also provide
a prototype for how to solve the problem.
So if the U.S. government genuinely didn't want to have to be
the sole party to protect these vital functions any longer, they
had to treat my proposal very seriously, and in fact implement
it.
But since they didn't even discuss it with me, it is clear they
are not interested in passing these vital functions onto
another more appropriate structure.
If you have a genuine problem to solve, you don't cut off access
to where you may get an answer to the problem.
>The experiment is to see about the creation of an organization holding a
>public trust, yet not a creature of any one government or even an
>international treaty. Whether that's a wholesale "privitization" in the
>>deep sense, apart from whether the articles of incorporation name it as
>"public" or "private," depends on how responsive (and bound) the new
>organization is to its constituencies.
Well if you are conducting an experiment, you don't take the most
important functions of the Internet which is the most important
communication medium of our times, and experiment on it.
And if you want to do something regarding the Internet, you must
fashion what is being done to an undertanding of the Internet.
None of these are happening.
So I agree this is an experiment, but a very inappropriate and
irresponsible one. Many people spoke up at the meeting in
Boston on Nov. 14 to say that.
And many more would speak up if they knew what was going on.
The question is what to do about this.
The current agreement that the Department of Commerce has
with ICANN doesn't provide the basis for the kind of
examination of the problems nad issues that is needed,
and the NTIA has a long history of ignoring public input
and so is not the appropriate agency to be schooling
ICANN on getting public input.
Will you agree with me that there is a genuine problem?
If so then perhaps we can begin to discuss what one can
do to solve it.
Talking about ICANN as a new form of public trust doesn't help,
as it already is structured in such ways that it doesn't provide
for the kind of responsible activity and participatory input
that is needed to deal with decision making about the Internet's
essential functions.
The real problem that the U.S. government had to present was
what would be a way to have decision making that would benefit
the Internet.
That question has never been asked, and thus any solutions are
not solutions to this problem.
>At 08:40 AM 12/1/98 , you wrote:
>>There was an interesting article in Forbes about the ICANN and
>>privatization
Good you took up these issues. That is something important.
Have you looked at my proposal at the NTIA?
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/proposals/hauben/hauben.html
I would be interested in your comments on it.
A discussion of it would have been helpful to get at the real
issues and then hopefully begin to find a way to solve the real
problems facing the Internet at this juncture in its development.
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
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Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 21:28:32 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: ICANN representing us "users" (pt 2 of 3)
Greg Skinner <gds@best.com> wrote:
>Catching up on some old email ...
>>Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com> wrote:
>>>Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu> wrote:
Good to have your comments on this Greg. I had gotten a promise from
Dave Farber that he would answer and still look forward to his
response as well.
>>>users showed up at some of the IFWP meetings but no one has a good
>>>idea how to either reach them (the millions) or distill what they
>>>have to say.
>>But isn't this then the challenge that has to be taken up before
>>transferring control and ownership over the essential functions of
>>the Internet to a small clique of people who will then have control
>>over the Internet and its users?
>I think this is a fair question. Unfortunately, I don't think a
>practical solution to this problem exists that does not cost a lot of
>money. Unless you can get someone like Ted Koppel of Nightline to
>host a panel discussion on Internet name/address/protocol management,
>you have to spend lots of time and money getting literature printed
>and posted, getting airtime, etc. Even then, it's not clear the
>outcome would be any different. In an era when lots of people are
>happy to bring up WebTV or AOL or some other highly-customized
>environment, and don't have much inclination to seek out anything
>else, there's not much you can do to get them to consider other
>options.
I have done several papers about different online forms and it
seems when the need was there they were developed if necessary.
One was on the early development of MsgGroup mailing list
and another about the discussion on early Usenet newsgroups
and ARPANET mailing lists and a 3rd about the tcp/ip digest
at the time of the cutover to tcp/ip. All of these looked
at the process of online forms to be helpful. ul
That was part of my proposal which still sits online at
the NTIA and has basically been ignored. But one of the tasks
for the prototype group I proposed was to explore the different
existing online forms to determine what kind of form would
be helpful.
The proposal is at:
Proposal of Ronda Hauben (English Version) URL:
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/proposals/hauben/hauben.html
It seems to me that if it was possible to form Usenet, and the
mailing list form, if those forms aren't adequate, others can be
developed.
But it is to explore the existing forms first.
However, my experience has been that a mailing list or newsgroup
doesn't have to be moderated, but there does have to have a constructive
purpose to have something useful going on on it.
>>>It is the same as people more and more who shout down public talks of
>>>people they disagree with. That is destructive of open discussions
>>>and it has forced me to disengage with such lists due to the deep
>>>personal viciousness shown.
>>This is a serious problem as it is important to have your
>>participation in such open processes. And I know you have a
>>long experience of such participation. But isn't this an
>>important problem to be taken on.
>The only practical way to solve this problem that I'm aware of is
>having a moderated forum, whether or not it's online. Then you will
>get people who will refuse to participate because they feel their
>first amendment rights are being violated because they cannot say what
>they want when they want, and will go off and form
>alternative/underground forums and never be heard from again.
that isn't my experience. I have in general found unmoderated
newsgroups or mailing lists better, but only when there was a
constructive purpose, as I mentioned before.
Also the NTIA Nov. 1994 online forum was an example of a valuable
online form.
The only probelm was that it was ignored by the NTIA, who didn't
even, to my knowledge, write any report about what happened,
and made *no* recommendations based on it. So that is a disincentive
to participation.
>>When I was on the com-priv mailing list in 1992-3 I experienced
>>similar problems and it also led me to leave the list.
>>But the problem there I felt was that instead of the U.S. government
>>protecting the ability of people to participate in the list, they
>>created a list which would be aimed at promoting such a hostile and
>>unuseful environment. And then they claimed that that list was the
>>indication that the U.S. govt was getting input into its policy
>>decisions.
>I wasn't aware that the USG created com-priv or had any official
>involvement in it. That being the case, I don't see how they could be
>held responsible for what list participants did. And if they shut the
>list down or kicked "malefactors" off, you would have the same problem
>I described above, where people would complain about censorship and
>loss of first amendment rights.
There were a number of NSF officials on the mailing list, some of
whom were active on it at different times. This was also a period
when there was an AUP in place on the Internet, and this mailing
list functioned on the Internet, yet when an attack was waged
against any questioning or discussion over whether or not the
NSFNET backbone should be privatized.
Also, the NSF Office of Inspector General, in a report they
issued during the period commented the NSF officials for there
participation with the public on the com-priv mailing list.
As the NTIA online conference in Nov. 1994 showed, there were many
people who felt that the NSFNET should *not* be privatized,
and there was a reason to have a serious public discussion on the
issued, but the com-priv list prevented that from happening
by the way the issue of privatization was assumed to be the
answer, rather than an issue to hear the pro and con about.
At that time, at the NTIA online forum, folks said it will then
cost a lot more money to have the possibility of universal access,
and now we are being told it will cost $2 billion this year
for schools to have some access, *not* even universal access.
So there is a real need for a broad discussion of these
issues, and the online forms provide the ability to have that
discussion.
>>But previous to that, and in many other situation even during this
>>period, the Acceptible Use Policy employed by the U.S. govt with
>>regard to the Internet kept other lists and newsgroups functioning in
>>a good way.
>I believe how a list functions is primarily a function of its
>participants, and not AUPs or any other external rules.
To the contrary. In the research I have done I have seen
the battle on early ARPANET mailing lists between those trying
to challenge some bad commercial practices, and those who tried
to not allow that to happen. And the fact that the AUP was
in place (or an equivalent) helped those who were trying, for
example to complain about the lack of a programming language
for an early Xerox work station, or the poor keyboard of another
company. The companies therefore, despite their reluctance had
to take the complaints seriously. And the companies actually
benefitted, as they got real criticism of the problems.
There were other examples, but the AUP was very helpful in
supporting a constructive atmosphere.
>>With the privatization of the Internet, however, this kind of
>>hostile atmosphere, or the sending of junk posts to newsgroups
>>or mailing lists, has become much more commonplace.
>I also believe bad behavior on lists and newsgroups has been with us
>for many years. Again, it's a function of who particpates. I don't
>know that it is more commonplace now (as a total percentage of net
>usage), although some groups may now see a higher percentage of flames
>than they used to.
I realize you have been online for a long time (I found one of your
early posts on HUMAN-NET :-) So I can understand if that has
been your experience. But though I got on the Internet in 1988,
I didn't get on Usenet until 1992. But at that time there was
a lot less of the problems, than exist now.
>--gregbo
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 #218
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