20140414 - JFC Morfin: Mr. Roy's "internet giveaway"

At 16:42 11/04/2014, Mr. Roy H. Mars II wrote

To Whom It May Concern:

The decision by Barack Obama to give away the internet to the governance of some nebulous 'international' body or commission is the worst decision ever made by any president in history. It is entire magnitudes worse than Jimmy Carter giving away the Panama Canal. Yes, giving the Panama Canal 'back to Panama' gave them Carte Blanche to invite the Chinese in to take over running one of the most vital waterways in the world. But giving away the internet is giving away the entire world. The Internet has been a bastion of free speech and the free exchange of ideas all over the world (except places like China where they already sensor the Net). Placing it under the auspices of the UN - an organization of unelected elites, a great many of whom are from nations run by one form of dictatorship or another, would be giving that organization control over the people and future of the world. He who controls the media controls the message. In this day and age the Internet IS the media. It is the one thing that connects people all over the world to communicate freely and exchange ideas. It is that vehicle because the United States of America has kept it that way - even against our own would be dictator and elitist politicians. If we give it up, that will end. I urge that the Internet remain an entity of the American people (not our government) - a free and open information highway for the entire world.

Sincerely,

At 11:53 14/04/2014, JFC Morfin answered

Dear Roy,

Independently from the way in which you are welcome to express your opinions, you seem to share with everyone in here a common objective: network neutrality, stability, and growth for the best of everyone, your country and the world, because development means peace and protects human rights.

The problem we all face is that the internet mix as it is today does not scale to this objective. We observe this from its different points of view: technically, operationally, societally, politically, legally, economically, culturally, etc. There are inherent flaws that have to be corrected, but there are different visions of them and, therefore, no architectural doctrine and governance strategy that everyone would even agree to deeply discuss. This is what is evidenced on this list: people still believe in patches.

So what to do? Should we wait for criticality or prevent it?

Situation

The 50 year old US digital network culture spans many areas that interact together. Two are now directly interfering due to its maturity: these are the Executive and Legislative branches. Both are doing their best, but they do not work at the same pace and the pressure against the Executive involvement becomes detrimental to US interests. The US’s best interest is the world’s best interest because in a closed network (the internet is global on a unique globe) there are only win/win or lose/lose situations. In that homogeneous context, this is true for every state, community, and person.

The US interests have been identified by all the US administrations for decades: it is that the Executive steps down as soon as the Legislative can take over in order to banalize accountability and transparency under stable and long haul trusted Judiciary control.

This would give the US a tremendous advantage. This would definitely mean that the day to day law applying to the internet, without any risk of foreign Gov interference, is the US Law. This is because quite every internet structure is embodied in the US. However, people everywhere feel uncertain because the US-Internet-Governance-and-the-US-Law-are-not-ready.

1. ICANN is not designed and has not adapted itself to become what the World Summit on the Information Society has unanimously (including the US) opted for: an enhanced (i.e. Multi-Stakeholder including Govs, Business, and People on an equal footing) open (everyone and every issue welcome) cooperation toward a people centered society. Actually, until recently and by its internal design, it has opposed it. It stayed a closed cooperation of only recently multi-stakeholding (leader meetings organized by ISOC) aggregated internal stakeholders. So, it does not know how to set-up, manage, and develop an MS open enhanced cooperation, at least not yet. This is what the NTIA asks it to prove, that it is capable to achieve, within a timeframe giving the world time to set-up an alternative or a complement if this is needed. They do not give, at this time, the feeling they are at ease with any of these two cases: taking or sharing the con.
   
   
2. Until now, the US Legislation (1996 Telecommunications Act) has not been updated to the 2014 datacommunications situation. We use to say that "code is law" on the internet, but this also means that "law induces code"; therefore, an old law delays innovation. Updating it is not that easy when compared with the rest of the world, because the US historical context is different from everywhere else. In the US, Datacoms legally started as private sector initiatives, outside of the ATT Bell System monopoly. The first time a data transportation bill by a third party carrier was issued in the world was on Feb. 29, 1972, by private Tymshare Inc.’s Tymnet service, not by ATT. In every other country, Datacoms initially developed from the public area (Spain, France and Canada, or in connecting the US/Canadian, then French/Spanish networks). They developed from their ITU member, their national PTT monopoly. The conversion to private sector is on its way but not fully completed yet in people’s mind. National evolutions usually progress one engineer/politician/citizen generation at a time.

History

In 1976, there was a private spin-off of the ARPANET project: Telenet Inc. An FCC decision gave both Telenet and Tymnet a "value added network" license to permit them to operate VAN domestic and international services outside of the ATT Bell System monopoly. Tymnet was in addition licensed to create and maintain the international digital naming (the one we use today). This was permitted by a legal split between "basic" and "enhanced" (“value added” at that time) communications services, between what actually are technically "neutral" and "non-neutral" network services. Only recently, the FCC tried to impose neutrality on the Internet (2010 Open Internet Order) but this was victoriously opposed by Verizon in Courts. The FCC is now trying to find a way to keep the internet on the track we all want it to follow (neutrality, stability, and growth) but that is not easy without appropriate legislation: http://www.deadline.com/2014/02/fcc-will-revamp-open-internet-rules-without-appealing-court-decision/ (and most probably an architectural reshape we observe through the Mobile APPS anarchy).

In 1983, the USG endangered the US Datacoms’ international leadership. This resulted from another Court decision that led to Reagan’s ATT deregulation. It was copied all over the world, beginning with Thatcher in the UK. However, the other countries only had (or still have for some) to deregulate their unique monopoly. They did it slowly once the US had stabilized their own Datacoms choice with the Internet model. This is now the turn of the US to finish the process on their side, if they do not want to be passed by the non-legally delayed innovation of the rest of the world. However, correcting what one calls the US industry “status-quo” strategy, is not that simple because this "second deregulation" has the legacy of the first one (e.g. fringe providers, Loc/ID issue, privacy [of which the understanding is quite different in the US and the rest of the world], security, etc.)

Situation assessment

As being an internet informed user (“IUser”) interested in protecting my user virtual global network system operational capacity and security, I agree with you in disagreeing with the NTIA announced strategy. However, this is only a phase (under pressure) of the complete, long-term and consistent strategy: I doubt this is the real target and, in any case, what will most probably happen. The target as I understand it is more complex. In this particular area and circumstances, it is:

1. for ICANN, to demonstrate to the world, within one year, its ability or inability to carry out the job.
2. to have such (in)ability validated by everyone from you and me and every other State (Sao Paulo++): i.e. consensus. Just look at the EU position to understand that the real question (“do you want the Internet to be American in our way or in your way?”) may take time to be accepted before evaluating the proposed solution.
3. to force the Congress to eventually understand what digitality really is and how it works , so it introduces and votes on an adapted and US/Common interest 2016 Internet Act. The USG’s priority is the TTIP agreement with the EU, and the EU just started the negotiations yesterday in responding to the NTIA about the ICANN’s Sao Paulo preparation process current inadequacy.
4. to settle with the Dubai majority (World Telecommunications Treaty) and reach a consensus on a WIPO like World Digital ecosystem organization that will economically and militarily protect sovereignties, businesses, and people - as per the WSIS consensus.
5. in the process, to challenge the techies, so they eventually take into account the architectonical innovation needs that they disregarded during the status quo period and to revamp the internet security (cf. G.W. Bush 2002 non-implemented Cyberstrategy).

This is supposed to be completed by “9/9/19” (i.e. three weeks before the last limit end of the NTIA contract, so that we can still have a crash buffer for patching an internet survival and/or digital palliative care!).

The interest of this scenario is to be a self-organization criticality scenario (i.e. what scientifically describes earth-breaks, sand pile formation, avalanches). Whatever people do, them being right or not, it will happen. The only question for each of us is to know how well we will survive, or even may benefit from, it.

My IUser approach

As an IUser, my approach is to not trust, rely on, and use the weakest components, i.e. the single points of failure and anything centric (but my own self, as the center of my own world, ditto for everyone: this is what Einstein explained to us about the non-geo/heliocentric but cosmocentric universe). Mainly, I do not want to be dependent on:

• ICANN: because at this time, its design is not appropriate to the technology, the majority of the world actually voted against it in voting against the US in Dubai. It could reform, and fare well but this is a bet I am not ready to take for my country, business, family, and life. I am certainly OK to cooperate with them as soon as they do not want to stay a single point of failure and accept to consider a mutual enhanced cooperation and consolidation strategy as unanimously demanded by us, the people of the world, in Tunis

• NTIA: because it may be pushed too much by the Republican opposition; I do not know what the Congress will understand, imagine, and vote for; and Obama cannot be reelected (this will be definitely settled in 2019 by another Administration).

I am friendly to ITU in its being in charge of the telecommunications infrastructure, and I share its concerns for Datacoms’ stability, development, and neutrality (their bandwidth is neutral to free speech, protocols, and content). However, the delayed innovations that we are to free are far too much outside of (1) its scope (semantics, multilinguistics, brainware, big data, intelligent systems, distributed ontologies, quantum computers, active content, etc.) and of (2) the Westphalian nation state conception. We need to build through our common agreement the technical premises of a new relations-state model and establish the basis of a modern understanding of sovereignty in the digital age.

A world polycracy?

I need a World Digisphere Organization, conceived on an equal footing MS basis, open to every stakeholder like you and me and the USG, where everyone can benefit from everyone’s innovation toward common digital stability, neutrality, and development, and will be accountable to Law in an internationally concerted and precautionary responsible manner respecting each culture, relational sovereignty, and human right extended to the digisphere environment. I call this polycracy because democracy is by the people for the people through votes which calls for equally informed and debated votes to be organized, but that does not scale to the entire globe. In addition, the internet experience has shown us that we do not want kings, presidents, and votes (cf. IETF mantra) but rather things that work and we find useful when we freely decide to use them. It happens that the crowd of the persons who have retained and protected their self-determination has a name in legal terminology: this is the "multitude". Governments, industry, and civil society structures are to best facilitate the life of the multitude’s members on a reciprocal manner. One calls this “concertation” in the subsidiarity/substitution framework along the EU constitutional treaties; one may also call it multi-stakeholderism, provided that it is on a real people, state, and corporation equal footing and the stakes are of every kind, not only economic.

The question is therefore: will the imperial democracy of the industrial age know how to become a polycratic leader of the digital age? Since informed people, like me, tend to adhere to the WSIS international consensus of a people centered information society and have the capacity to adapt and deploy the ad-hoc technology, the kind of seamless or critical transition will eventually be decided by the US Congress. Then by my work your vote.

jfc