IP: Comment re NYT article and Boston Meeting: New Internet Board Hears Plenty of Skepticism

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 11:58:42 -0500
From: George Sadowsky <George.Sadowsky () nyu edu>
Subject: Re: IP: New Internet Board Hears Plenty of Skepticism

Dave,

This is a distorted analysis.  I was there, and there were quite a few
people who said good things about the Board and wished them well.  Positive
messages in the last session got loud applause, as opposed to attacks which
got just a little.  Many of us (dare I suggest a silent majority?) came to
hear what the Board had to say and were not prepared for yet another set of
verbal fisticuffs with the dissenters.  Nor was that the purpose of the
meeting.

I hate to say it about the New York Times, which is a favorite source of
information for me, but this is distorted reporting.  The fact that Rhonda
Hauben and her husband made empassioned plea after plea to return Internet
assets to government (yes, government) control, and that others expressing
negative thoughts made repeated trips to the microphone did not seem to be
noticed or considered important  by Clausing in her counting.  In fact,
Ronda as the first speaker (drawn by lot), started by saying, "This is a
very sad day for the Internet," and continued with her first impassioned
speech of the day.

Clausing also got the intent of the meeting wrong.  It was not intended to
reach consensus; it was intended for the Board to hear the views of the
"Internet community"  -- whatever that means in such a context.  Esther
asked for a show of hands several times during the meeting, just to get a
sense of the group.  I think, but I cannot be sure of my recollection, that
she asked (in the question quoted by
Clausing) for hands of persons thinking that it would be possible to reach
consensus _today_.  _If_ so, that's a very different question, and the
results need to be interpreted very differently.  she also asked at the end
how many people were glad they came to the meeting, and I believe that
almost everyone raised their hands.

This seemed very much like a replay of the Geneva IFWP meeting, much of
which I attended.  Many of the same people raised many of the same
objections.  But I did not see any convergence among the folks who were
objecting, that's to say that even if ICANN its supporters were to absent
themselves from the meeting, the chaos would continue and perhaps intensify.

This is not to say that all doubts expressed had no foundation.  There were
points that emerged that could usefully be examined.  But I felt that a
significant nuymber of the negative comkments were not to assist ICANN in
its potential role, but to raise enough doubts to paralyze the decision
making process.

Forgotten, I think, in all this is the opportunity cost of not making
progress on the Internet Governance issue.  Three days ago I spoke on
Internet Governance at Internet World Venezuela, a country that is
generally much more concerned about the low price of crude oil, avoiding
economic depression and dealing with the telephone company's policy of high
per minute charges which is stifling Internet growth.   They and countries
like them stand to gain a lot more relatively from the rapid spread and the
effective use of the Internet than we do in the United States.  The
haggling over issues that we do has real costs to the rest of the world.  A
number of speakers noted that although they may have doubts, let's get on
with it  --  if we need to modify our direction, the Internet community is
a sufficiently connected and vocal community that we can do so later.

In my talk in Caracas, I noted that among other things that trying to
achieve democracy in cyberspace is a very difficult process.  The New
England town meeting model does not scale to millions of unknown
participants.  The current model of how we operate seems much closer to
that of Hyde Park, where thousands of people have soap boxes, can all yell
eqaually loudly, and millions of people can hear them.  And if things don't
change the way they want, they keep yelling.

In addition, in the New England town meeting, I'll bet that you didn't
insult your neighbor to his or her face, in large part because the culture
demanded that you be responsible in what you did in living in physical
proximity to your neighbors.  In the cyberspace equivalent, it seems to be
a temptation impossible to resist to goad if not openly insult your
cyberspace neighbor, since you may never have to confront him physically.
The result is that we get the verbal equivalent of the Jerry Springer show
instead of reasoned discussion that is sufficiently structured to lead to
closure.  Given the vastly expanding population taking part in the
Internet, sufficient widespread individual responsibility in cyberspace may
be impossible to achieve, and small vocal minorities may be able to exert a
destabilizing influence substantially greater than their size or
importance.  It's discouraging.

Another part of the opportunity cost we are paying from such events is our
need to take ourselves 'out of the sandbox.'  The constant negatives
expressed by a vocal but, I believe, small minority of the Internet
community sure give (and perhaps are meant to give) the appearance that we
cannot grow up as a community.  Governments will regard that (in part
rightly so) with concern and alarm.

Perhaps the Board does have a lot to learn.  That audience has more to
learn than the Board.  And perhaps Jeri Clausing has most of all to learn
if she is to serve her profession well.  This article should have been
titled in context, "New Internet board hears plently of skepticism from the
few who did not get their ideas accepted and came to Boston to continue the
fight."  Had this been advertised as a "friends of ICANN" meeting, the
results would have been quite different indeed.

George

~
_____________________________________________________________________
David Farber         
The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems
University of Pennsylvania 
Home Page: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~farber