<h3>
<a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/20111218_breaking_the_internet_howto_unintended_consequences_of_governments/" target="_blank">Breaking the Internet HOWTO: The Unintended Consequences of Governmental Actions</a>
</h3>By <a href="http://www.circleid.com/members/1420/" target="_blank"><b>McTim</b></a><div> </div>
<a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/20111218_breaking_the_internet_howto_unintended_consequences_of_governments/">http://www.circleid.com/posts/20111218_breaking_the_internet_howto_unintended_consequences_of_governments/</a><br>
<p><b>"Breaking the Internet"</b>
is really hard to do. The network of networks is decentralized,
resilient and has no Single Point Of Failure. That was the paradigm of
the first few decades of Internet history, and most people involved in
Internet Governance still carry that model around in their heads.
</p>
<p>
Unfortunately, that is changing and changing rapidly due to misguided
government intervention. Ever since 2000, when we witnessed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo%21" target="_blank">LICRA v. Yahoo!</a> conflict, we have had governments taking actions that move us away from the <a href="https://projects.eff.org/%7Ebarlow/Declaration-Final.html" target="_blank">utopian vision of early netizens</a> towards a <a href="http://www.isoc.org/tools/blogs/scenarios/" target="_blank">dystopic, unrecognizable Internet.</a>
</p>
<p>
This past month has been incredibly busy in terms of misguided
governmental interference. Here is a short list of recent governmental
bloopers and why they are deeply flawed;
</p>
<p>
<b>1. Put out a <a href="https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c564af28581edb2a7b9441eccfd6391d&tab=core&_cview=0" target="_blank">RFP to run the core names and numbers entity</a> (the IANA) but limit it to US organisations.</b>
For over a decade, other governments have complained bitterly that the
US "controls the Internet". This move further entrenches that flawed
perception but serves no actual purpose since it is nearly inconceivable
that any entity other than ICANN (based in California) will get this no
fee contract from the Department of Commerce. Serving turkey at
Thanksgiving is an American tradition, but this move elevates the term
"giving the bird" to new heights. Governments unhappy with this decision
have another reason to try to "split the root" or build their own set
of nameservers that they can control.
</p>
<p>
<b>2. Propose a <a href="http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/10/27/india-proposes-government-control-internet" target="_blank">UN Committee for Internet-related policies</a> (CIRP).</b> India has done this in the UN General Assembly. Earlier this year, India, along with Brazil, and South Africa floated their <a href="http://www.culturalivre.org.br/artigos/IBSA_recommendations_Internet_Governance.pdf" target="_blank">"IBSA Proposal"</a> [PDF] to near universal criticism. Despite this, the Indian delegate at the UN still said that CIRP would, <i>inter alia,</i>
</p>
<blockquote><p><i>"coordinate and oversee the bodies responsible for
technical and operational functioning of the Internet, including global
standards setting."</i></p></blockquote>
<p>
Since this is completely unlike the current situation in which the
technical and standards bodies operate independently, developing
standards and policies in open to all, bottom-up, transparent and
consensus based processes this proposal seems aimed at breaking the <a href="http://www.apnic.net/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/8715/hot-topics-20031124.pdf" target="_blank">"Internet Model"</a> [PDF]. This model, sometimes called the <a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/20111218_breaking_the_internet_howto_unintended_consequences_of_governments/www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/docs/internetmodel.pdf" target="_blank">Internet eco-system</a> [PDF] has given us the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs. An <a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/20110910_governing_the_internet_the_model_is_the_message/" target="_blank">excellent description of this</a>
is well worth reading, and as one commenter suggested "The model is so
important that a threat to the model is a threat to the Internet
itself." Because some governments are so angry about US unilateral
control over Critical Internet Resources (see #1 above), they are
willing to kill the Goose, thus ensuring no one gets the Golden Eggs.
</p>
<p>
<b>3. Start a new <a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/20111125_another_thanksgiving_another_131_domain_names_seized/" target="_blank">Thanksgiving tradition of censoring websites without due process.</a></b><a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/20111125_another_thanksgiving_another_131_domain_names_seized/" target="_blank"> Last year the </a><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110201/10252412910/homeland-security-seizes-spanish-domain-name-that-had-already-been-declared-legal.shtml" target="_blank">rojadirecta case</a> caused quite a stir in Internet governance circles. It seems that ICE will continue to do this until your <a href="http://icanhascheezburger.com/" target="_blank">lolcatz</a> are replaced with <a href="http://www.circleid.com/images/uploads/6151.gif" target="_blank">this</a>, only then will we see the public at large up in arms.
</p>
<p>
The rojadirecta case was striking in that ICE not only asserted
authority over content (found to be legal in Spain, where rojadirecta is
located) stored on a webserver outside the USA, it censored the website
that only carried (allegedly) infringing links, as rojadirecta does not
have the actual content that were thought to be infringing. Again, the
US government angers the rest of the world. It may also be useful to
point out that seizing the domain did not stop rojadirecta, they just
moved their website to multiple other domains.
</p>
<p>
<b>4. Be hypocritical.</b> Proclaim your support of Internet
Freedom abroad and actually fund projects that are doing excellent work
to protect freedom of speech online with one hand while using the other
to restrict those freedoms (see #3 above) not just for your citizens,
but for billions of Internet users worldwide.
</p>
<p>
<b>5. Make <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/thai-crackdown-on-facebook-remarks-on-king-20111125-1nz1t.html" target="_blank">pressing a facebook "like" button</a> a criminal act.</b> Well done, Thailand for giving us a humorous interlude in this long, boring post!
</p>
<p>
<b>6. Issue a <a href="http://images.spaceref.com/news/2011/ProtectiveOrder.pdf" target="_blank">court order </a>
instructing non-profit public interest organisations outside the USA
(and one in Virginia) to take specific actions in the databases they
manage.</b> In some cases, these actions may violate contracts the
organisations have signed with their members. Once again, a unilateral
action by a government actor throws sand in the gears of a well-oiled
Internet policy system that has taken decades to evolve.
</p>
<p>
<b>7. Propose legislation that not only censors Internet content on
allegations alone, but that requires ISPs and ANYONE who runs a caching
DNS server, a search engine, advertising or payment network to police
content.</b> In the USA, there is an intense battle over this
SOPA/PROTECT-IP legislation that actually reaches in to DNS servers and
mandates filtering by server operators.
</p>
<p>
As the <a href="http://www.cdt.org/policy/cdt-warns-against-widespread-use-domain-name-tactics-enforce-copyright" target="_blank">CDT</a> and <a href="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-sopa-and-pipa" target="_blank">many others</a> (including myself as a signatory) have argued, the DNS is not the appropriate place to do this.
</p>
<p>
DNS name queries should be and accurately translated into DNS name
responses regardless of query source or query subject. That's the design
of the DNS and it does its job billions of times per day. This
legislation would mandate that your DNS server send you a lie when you
made specific queries. Internet broken, plain and simple. In addition,
our new DNS Security extensions are incompatible with a lying DNS
server. The DNS is the wrong focal point to attack this problem.
</p>
<p>
Besides the breakage, the measure, as originally proposed (and as
amended) just wouldn't work to Stop Online Piracy (House bill) or
PROTECT-IP (Senate). It's trivial to register a new domain name, or find
a new DNS service provider and let's not forget the content "lives" on
webserver somewhere that has an IP address, so filtering DNS replies
does not remove the content. Of course, one domain name can have many
sub-domains, so taking down one domain can affect hundreds of perfectly
innocent websites (as happened in last years Thanskgiving ICE takedown).
</p>
<p>
<b>8. Hold hearings to put pressure on the organisation that
manages Internet name and number resources to delay a program that is a
result of more than 7 years of bottom-up policy making processes.</b>
Two separate House committees put ICANN on the hot seat this week
because Congress clearly doesn't understand that they don't get to make
these policies, they are just one stakeholder among many. I applaud
ICANN for <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/house-hearing-icann-whats-dot-rush-137109" target="_blank">sticking to their agreed upon schedule</a> for adding more gTLDs to the root;
</p>
<blockquote><p><i>"This process has not been rushed," said Kurt Pritz,
SVP of ICANN. "Every issue has been discussed. No new issues have been
raised. The people at this table participated in this debate."</i></p></blockquote>
<p>
Even though I have never been a proponent of new gTLDs, I understand
that the Policy Development Process has finished and I accept the
result. Whinging to Congress is just bad politics for the ANA and others
who testified at the hearings if they ever want to be taken seriously
in ICANN policy making going forward.
</p>
<p>
On the face of it, all of these disjointed legislative, judicial and
executive actions would seem to argue for a global set of rules that all
governments would abide by. We saw during <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Summit_on_the_Information_Society" target="_blank">WSIS</a>
however that the US is not about to give up the one lever of control
they have over Internet names and numbers, nor are other governments
willing to give up sovereignty over what happens in their territories.
</p>
<p>
If, by some miracle, a deal was reached on a treaty, this would be even
more disastrous than individual governments making bad policy decisions.
Having nearly 200 UN Member States making Internet policy in a top-down
governments only setting would only multiply the badness of the bad
ideas listed above. Do we really want China, Burma and Iran (just to
mention a few) making decisions on what content we can consume or
create?
</p>
<p>
Governments and Intergovernmental bodies are supposed to serve the public interest. Unfortuantely, they <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/2011/12/16/dear-congress-it-s-no-longer-ok-to-not-know-how-the-internet-works" target="_blank">don't grok the Internet</a>
and their knee-jerk efforts are a threat to the Internet as we know it.
They can best promote the public interest by NOT regulating the
Internet.
</p>
<p><b>By <a href="http://www.circleid.com/members/1420/" target="_blank">McTim</a>, Co-Chair of the African Network Information Center Policy Development WG</b></p>