IP: Re: John Gilmore on ICANN, Net-stability, and response to terrori

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 15:01:37 -0400
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> From: Charles Brownstein <cbrownst () cnri reston va us>
> Subject: Re: IP: John Gilmore on ICANN, Net-stability, and response to
>  terrorism
>
> (Speaking or myself) I am all for international comity and having as 
> little governmental oversight of the net as possible.  Yet I think there 
> are national security concerns - in the sense of infrastructure 
> reliability- eg., rather than the spooky stuff- that the US cannot afford 
> to abandon given the impact of the net on our economy- and which other 
> nations ought review as well.
>
> I believe we need to think of the Internet in the same way that we should 
> think about local  mechanisms of commerce: roads, waterways, airways, 
> spectrum, etc.
> That is:
> - the voluntary private sector has a role not an absolute right, given the 
> common good and the appropriate motivations and limits of private 
> interests in these arenas;
> - governments (especially democracies as legitimate agents of the 
> citizens) have a particular fiduciary role and responsibility;
> - international responsibilities need to be formal with agreements binding 
> on nations;
> - agreements need to strong and made under official umbrellas (we need to 
> formalize the US policy umbrella and encourage other nations to do the same).
>
> Internet infrastructure reliability needs quite independent of special 
> interests and intractable issues in intellectual trademark and name 
> services. There is ample history of legal and appropriate cooperation 
> among entities in this layer that evidence the broader interests of the 
> Internet. There are outstanding motivations, directly among the private 
> and public entities involved, to achieve results for reliability and 
> national security requirements.
>
> ICANN is (perhaps appropriately) distant from the owners and operators of 
> the physical Internet infrastructure where security can be achieved-- eg., 
> in the network layers. It has more than enough to deal with in the 
> difficult area of the Internet that it was chartered to address- and on 
> which its performance will surely determine its continue existence.
> --
>
>
> Chuck



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/