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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 178
Netizens-Digest Thursday, October 8 1998 Volume 01 : Number 178
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] Re: Battle Heats Up - but the real issues are still being hidden
[netz] Testimony submitted into the record-Oct 7 - house hearing on DNS
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1998 07:44:48 -0400
From: Mark Lindeman <mtl4@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: Battle Heats Up - but the real issues are still being hidden
Ronda Hauben wrote,
>But even if that weren't true how can the supporting organizations
>be oversight over a Board of Director?
>
>The form of the IANA proposal is that of a corporation. In a
>corporation the Board has to be in charge.
See the on-line comments at the Dept. of Commerce, in this case at
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/proposals/comments/10-03-98.htm
. J. William Semich, the president and CFO of .NU Domain Ltd, is talking
about control over Internet fees. He argues that the IANA/ICANN proposal
>is seriously flawed by its lack of fiscal accountability to all of us who
will use
>its services and pay its fees.
He elaborates:
<<<<
Nowhere in the bylaws is the Board of Directors required to consult with
any outside groups, experts, or other interested parties on how best to set
its fees or plan
its budget.
Nowhere in the bylaws is there any provision for any kind of independent
budget review or hearing mechanism or approval process for the budget,
borrowing, or
any other fiscal decisions;
And nowhere in the bylaws is there any provision for any kind of
independent fee-setting review process or approval mechanism, either by
those who must pay the
fees (the Supporting Organizations, who represent the consumers of the
services to be provided by the new Corporation) or by any independent body
of fiscal
experts.
All these fiscal decisions are made solely by the new Internet Authority's
own Board of Directors.
The relevant language in the proposed new bylaws makes this absolute power
of the Board clear[...]
>>>>
and indeed, it does seem pretty darn clear. I'm not canny enough to judge
Semich's proposed amendments, but his critique is lucid enough.
Mark Lindeman
MTL4@columbia.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 03:10:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Testimony submitted into the record-Oct 7 - house hearing on DNS
When I heard that the House subcommittee on Basic Research
was going to have a hearing on Oct. 7 I asked to submit
testimony into the record and was told that wasn't
possible.
Then on Monday the staffer in charge of the hearing told me
I could submit something into the record.
That left only a day to work on something.
Here's what I sent to the House Science Committee
Subcommittee on Basic Research via email today and I
also handed in a copy when I was there for the hearing.
I have made one correction here with regard to what
I submitted.
The mission of the hearing was to talk about the proposals
received by the NTIA on the DNS. Only one proposal was
discussed and almost all the witnesses said they hadn't
read any of the others. On the notice of the heaing
all it mentioned were two proposals.
And at the hearing the Committee people and witnesses
talked about how to implement the Postel/Sims(?) proposal,
with no concern that there were two other proposals
submitted and that the Postel/Sims(?) proposal was
created thru a closed door and silence everyone process.
When the NTIA official was asked about what process there
would be for the proposals she said that the NTIA would
look at the comments and review the proposals. However
the actions of the Committee and the witnesses was to
act as if there was only one proposal that was already
being implemented.
The testimony I submitted follows.
I welcome comments.
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
- -------------------
Testimony before the
Subcommittee on Basic Research
and
Subcommittee on Technology
of the
Committee on Science
on the subject of
Internet Domain Names
Rayburn House Office Building
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
by
Ronda Hauben
researcher, writer,
co-author Netizens: On the History and Impact of
Usenet and the Internet
Published 1997 by IEEE Computer Society Press
October 7, 1998
INTRODUCTION
I am pleased to be invited to submit testimony to the House
Science Subcommittee on Basic Research and Subcommittee on
Technology on the subject of whether the Domain Names System and
related essential functions of the Internet should be transferred
from U.S. Government oversight into a private sector corporate
entity.
My name is Ronda Hauben. I am co-author of the book Netizens: On
the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet published in
May 1997 by the I.E.E.E. Computer Society Press. I am also an
editor and writer for the Amateur Computerist newsletter which
has covered the history and importance of the Internet since
1988.
I have studied and taught computer programming and have
participated online since 1988 and on Usenet since 1992.
Also I submitted the proposal "The Internet an International
Public Treasure" to Ira Magaziner and the U.S. Department of
Commerce at the request of Mr. Magaziner based on the concerns I
presented to him about the narrow phrasing of the question of the
transfer of the Domain Name System to the private sector. I also
responded to the Green Paper and submitted comments expressing
concern that the general nature of the Internet and its history
and traditions, and its nature as a communication medium were
being lost sight of in the Framework for Electronic Commerce
issued by Mr. Magaziner and his staff and in the Green Paper and
subsequent White paper. And I attended the Geneva IFWP meeting in
July 1998 and wrote up an account of what happened in an article
"Report from the Front: Meeting in Geneva Rushes to Privatize the
Internet DNS and Root Server System".(1)
The proposal that I wrote and submitted to Mr. Magaziner on
September 4, 1998, is now one of the three proposals that has
been posted at the U.S. Department of Commerce web site by the
NTIA with a request for comments.
As you can see from my proposal I have found your hearing process
valuable and have referred to testimony given by one of the
witnesses in this matter in the Preface to my proposal. I want to
commend the committee for both holding these hearings and for
putting the testimony received on the committee's web site. I
want to make a further recommendation, however. I want to
recommend that you explore having an online discussion group.
There the public could comment on the issues before the committee
and on the testimony received or offer additional information or
viewpoints into the public record so that you will have a broader
set of information and viewpoints to influence your
deliberations, especially when those deliberations concern the
operation and future of the Internet. I hope that after you hear
the rest of my comments you will understand better why this is so
important.
HISTORY OF INTERNET
First, I would like to offer a bit of history of how the Internet
came to be and I will endeavor to show how knowing this history
will be helpful in determining how to evaluate the proposals
before the NTIA.
Then I will provide some recommendations toward the policy
decision that this Committee and the NTIA are proposing to make.
The Internet is a product of several significant and successful
research projects that were conducted under funding from the
Advance Projects Research Agency (DoD) in the 1960s and 1970s.
One of the earliest of these projects is perhaps one of the most
important in its relevance to the problem before this committee
today. That project was the creation and support for interactive
computing and time-sharing. In 1962-3, a computer scientist and
engineering researcher, J. C. R. Licklider was invited to join
ARPA and to begin the Information Processing Techniques Office
(IPTO). At that time the common form of computing available was
known as batch processing using large mainframe computers.
Someone who wanted to run a program would bring a stack of punch
cards to a computer center and return several hours later or the
next day to retrieve the printout that the program generated to
see if the program achieved the desired aim.
Needless to say this was a cumbersome and frustrating means of
using a computer. J.C.R. Licklider and the time-sharing projects
that ARPA subsequently funded set out to change the form of
computing and to make it possible for an individual to be able to
type his or her own program into a computer and to achieve the
results of the program immediately. This new type of computing
that they created was called time-sharing. Relying on the speed
of the computer, these computer pioneers were able to set up a
series of different terminals for use by users who were all able
to utilize the computer at the same time. As a result of time-
sharing systems, multiple users were able to interact directly
with a computer simultaneously.
One of the projects funded by J.C.R. Licklider was called the
Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). It was part of the project
funded at MIT by ARPA which was known as Project MAC.
There were several important surprises that the pioneers of
Project MAC reported from their research into time-sharing.
1) They didn't have to rely on professional programmers to do
much of the needed programming for their time-sharing system.
What they found was that the participants in the project would
create programs and tools for their own use and then make them
available to others using CTSS.
2) A community of users developed as a result of the ways that
people contributed their work to be helpful to each other.
3) CTSS made it possible for users to customize the computing
system to their own needs. Thus the general capabilities
available provided a way for the individual user to create the
diversity of computing applications or programs that this diverse
community of users needed.
As a result of this project, the researchers realized that once
you could connect a remote terminal to a time-sharing system, you
could develop a network with people spread out over large
geographical distances.
The networks that developed as a result of the research in time-
sharing provided working prototypes and also a vision that
would help to guide the next stage in the development of
networking technology. The effort to improve the throughput of
data across telephone lines led to ARPA supported research in
packet switching and the funding of the ARPANET research to use
packet switching to link up the computers that were part of
ARPA's research program.(2)
The next piece of history that is important to consider is the
period during which the early Internet was formed. In 1981/1982 a
mailing list was begun on the ARPANET. This mailing list was
called the TCP/IP Disgest and the moderator was Mike Muuss, a
research computer scientist at the U.S. Army Ballistics Research
Laboratory (BRL). The BRL during this period was one of the DARPA
sites making the transition from an early ARPANET protocol, NCP
to TCP/IP, which was to be the protocol suite that would make an
Internet possible.
By 1983 the cutover from NCP to TCP/IP had occurred and this
made possible a particularly relevant event for the matters under
consideration by this committee. That event was the separation of
MILNET and the ARPANET into two independent networks to create an
Internet. This split would allow MILNET to be devoted to the
operational activities of the Department of Defense. And those on
the ARPANET would be able to continue to pursue network research
activities. Gateways between the two networks would provide
inter-networking communication.(3)
This gets us to a definition utilized in 1974 by Louis Pouzin,
who had worked on CTSS at MIT and then returned to France to work
on creating a packet switching network that was called Cyclades.
Computer science researcher, Louis Pouzin, defined an internet as
a network of independent networks. (He called "an aggregate of
networks [which would] behave like a single logical network" a
CATENET. DARPA adopted his concept as the goal of the research
project it was supporting).(4)
Each network could determine for itself what it would do
internally, but each recognized the need to accept a minimum
agreement so that it would be possible to connect with others who
were part of the diverse networks that made up the Internet.
RECOMMENDATIONS
I have taken the time to review these two important developments
in internetworking history because these two developments are at
the foundation of the design of the current Internet as we know
it today.
These two developments highlight what is so special and
particular about the Internet.
The Internet that has grown up and developed is a continuation of
the time-sharing interactive communities of users and computers
where users contribute to and are in effect the architects of the
network that they are part of. Also this understanding leads to
another significant aspect. That is that this system of human-
computer networking partnerships has a regenerative quality. New
connections and programs, and databases or mailing lists are
contributed by the users themselves. And thus the Internet grows
and spreads and connects an increasingly larger number of
computers and users around the world.
The second important aspect is that the Internet architecture and
design accommodates different needs and capabilities of a diverse
set of users and user communities. For example, someone in Ghana
with a 386 or 486 computer and a modem can be connected to and
send email to someone in a research laboratory in Switzerland
which has the most modern computer workstations. That is because
the architecture of the Internet requires the least possible
equipment and capability to be able to make Internet
communication possible.
Thus people and computers around the world who are using an
extremely diverse set of equipment and computing capability are
able to interact and communicate.
I have taken the time to describe these general features of the
Internet for a few reasons. The first reason is that this is what
is so precious about the Internet and this is what I believe
needs to be understood and protected when considering any change
that may be contemplated in how the Internet is controlled,
managed or operated.
Any change in the minimal requirement that makes communication
possible across the independent networks that make up the
Internet can obsolete thousands of computers and many more users
around the world and thereby jeopardize the connectivity and
global communication that the Internet has achieved.
Any change in the ability of users to represent themselves and to
utilize the Internet for their diverse purposes and to contribute
to what is available to others on the Internet, (as long as this
does not put demands on others on the Internet), any such change
can deprive millions of users of the Internet of the general form
that makes it possible for the Internet to serve the
communication needs of so many diverse communities of users.
This diversity includes the computer scientists at MIT or the
high school student in Sydney, Australia. If there are particular
needs of any one group, such as the security needs of DARPA, or
the ability to write with Japanese characters of users in Tokyo,
the architectural design provides that within an individual
network or several networks such needs can be accommodated,
without imposing such requirements on the users of other
networks.
These two principles are important to study and understand
because they represent what is being violated by the Framework
for Electronic Commerce prepared by Ira Magaziner and his staff.
This framework does not treat the Internet as a network of
independent networks, but instead as a single network that must
be changed to meet the needs of a particular set of users.
Thus instead of recommending that an independent commercial
network or a few commercial networks be created as part of the
Internet to meet the special needs of commercial Internet users,
Ira Magaziner's framework document requires that the entire
Internet be changed to meet the particular needs of a particular
set of users. This is a violation of the concept of an Internet.
My recommendation is that the Framework that Mr. Magaziner has
created needs to be recast to be a Framework for the Internet as
a New Means of International Communication. Within that framework
Mr. Magaziner can describe the particular needs of particular
communities of users, but these particular needs cannot be
allowed to replace the generality of the Internet design so that
other users of other independent networks are being imposed on to
satisfy the needs of any particular group of users.
The second important precaution is that users must be protected
to continue to represent themselves and their needs. This is what
provides for the diversity of what is available on the Internet
and is the continuation of the culture and regenerative quality
of the early time-sharing communities. This is what makes it
possible for a user in Benin for example, to spread the Internet
to other users there, and for a student in Finland to start the
linux project that has been developed by thousands of others into
an operating system that gives Microsoft competition. Those who
might want a different type of network, as I have heard some
large corporate entities in the United States explain, as they
want to be able to more carefully choose who will do what
functions for them, can do so in their corporate network as part
of the larger Internet, but they must not be allowed to impose
their special demands on the larger Internet community. The
reason for this is that then users in MILNET, for example, will
be required to do things in their network that do not serve their
needs, and the concept of an Internet will be violated, leading
not to the further growth and extension of the Internet, but back
to a single network, to one that serves only a few commercial
entities at the great loss to the many other users on the
Internet.
The other precaution that follows from understanding these
essential characteristics of the Internet is that commercial
entities want to carry on certain experiments in how to subject
various aspects of the Internet to so called "competition". They
must not be allowed to do this in a way that affects the whole
Internet, but must be restricted to the particular network that
they develop for their commercial purposes. Thus the commercial
corporation that is being planned by the U.S. Government to sell
off parts of the Internet's essential functions must not be
allowed to control anything but its own commercenet. Those who
are interested in such experimentation should be advised that
they will have to form their own network which can be connected
to the Internet, but that such experiments can only go on inside
their own network, and cannot be imposed on the rest of the users
of the Internet.
To do otherwise is to jeopardize the fact that only a minimal
requirement is necessary for all to connect to the Internet and
this is only that which makes the communication across the many
independent networks that make up the Internet possible. To do
otherwise will mean the obsoleting of many machines and cutting
their users off from communication with the rest of those on the
Internet.
Thus the corporation that IANA and NSI have designed, or that the
Boston Group has proposed must not be allowed to take over the
essential functions of the entire Internet. Instead such
corporate activity needs to be restricted to an independent
commercial network that can be part of the Internet but cannot be
allowed to impose its special requirements on the others who use
the Internet. This might mean that the .com machines will become
part of a .com network, and would be able to communicate with
others on the Internet, but not impose their "for sale" and
speculative practices on the users in the educational or
scientific communities who make up much of the Internet.
Before there are any plans to change the form or structure or
management of the Internet, it is crucial that there be an
assessment of the special characteristics and functionality that
must be preserved and a plan created for how to be certain that
this is done.
Since both the IANA/NSI proposal and the Boston Group proposal
are for structures that are to be limited to a commercial
network, and not imposed on the Internet itself, how then can the
essential functions of the Internet be administered in a way that
represents the cooperative and international nature of the
Internet itself?
My proposal provides for a prototype cooperative research program
involving researchers in any country or region that agree to
participate. These researchers who will be part of this program
are to be responsible for carrying out the investigation and
inquiry among online users to determine the general
characteristics and functions so that they can propose a plan to
safeguard these crucial characteristics and functions.
There is one final lesson from the history and development of the
Internet that it is important to consider when trying to
determine how to form a more international system for protecting
and administering the essential functions of the Internet
represented by the Domain Name System, IP numbers etc.
Usenet was begun in the 1979-80 period by graduate students who
were part of the Unix community. The invitation to join Usenet
which was handed out at the January 1980 Usenix conference
explained why it was crucial to develop an online network,
not to form committees. They describe why it was crucial for
those who were interested in developing Usenet to actually use
the network, so that they "will know what the real problems are."
It is with this goal in mind that I created the design in my
proposal for a prototype where researchers from a diverse set of
nations or regions will utilize the Internet to figure out how to
create the necessary cooperative, protective forms and processes
to administer and support the essential functions of the
Internet. Just as adhering to the principle of relying on "using
Usenet" made it possible to grow Usenet, so the principle of
using the Internet will make it possible to scale the Internet
and create a means for a shared oversight of the essential
functions and to solve the problems that arise along the way.
The Internet is the symbol and manifestation of hope for people
around the world. As more and more people communicate on a
worldwide basis. the foundation is increasingly set to find
peaceful and productive ways to solve the many serious problems
that exist in the world today. Also, however, this vision has its
enemies. But the U.S. Government has the proud distinction of
being the midwife of the achievement of achievement of the 20th
Century represented by the development of the Internet. If there
are those in the U.S. Government who recognize the importance and
respect that comes from giving birth to the communications system
that has spread around the world with such amazing tenacity and
determination, they must find the means to treat the decisions
and changes needed to further develop the Internet with the proper
care and concern.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes:
(1) http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/ifwp_july25.txt
(2) See chapter 6 "Cybernetics, Time-Sharing, Human-Computer
Symbiosis and Online Communities" in Netizens: On the History and
Impact of Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer Science Press,
1997. A draft is available at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook
(3) Describing this transition, Vint Cerf wrote:
"The basic objective of this project is to establish a model and
a set of rules which will allow data networks of varying internal
operation to be interconnected, permitting uses to access remote
resources and to permit inter-computer communication across the
connected networks.
(4) Louis Pouzin, "A Proposal for interconnecting packet
switching networks," Eurocomp Conference Proceedings, 1974, p.
1023.
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #178
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