Creating Tomorrow's Internet.
INTERNET MARK 2 NEWSLETTER - DECEMBER 2005
A warm welcome to all our readers! In this issue:
=> WSIS WRAPUP
=> GOOGLEISATION and EMERGING ISSUES
=> NSF GETS IT (protocol developments)
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ABOUT THE INTERNET MARK 2 PROJECT
The Internet Mark 2 Project rose out of concerns that Internet protocols and
governance have not evolved sufficiently to deal with the range of problems
which have appeared as the Internet gets older and bigger. We welcome your
feedback and involvement in our work; some suggestions as to how you can get
involved appear at www.internetmark2.org.
The Internet Mark2 Newsletter is circulated free of charge, and will bring
regular updates on issues with Internet Governance and Protocols.
To subscribe is as simple as sending an email to mailto:subscribe@internetmark2.org
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WSIS - GOVERNMENTS TRY TO CONTROL THE INTERNET
2005 was the year of the World Summit on then Information Society, but of
particular importance to the Internet was the debate about the role of nations
and the United Nations in Internet governance.
A great deal happened in this respect, and a great deal didn't. In terms of
actual control functions, things probably got worse, as, is the light of a
challenge from the UN to play a larger role, Internet governance became
politicized within the USA and the USA decided to tighten its grip. If this was
a mere bureaucratic move, it could be dismissed - but this was very political,
involving the White House - important enough for Condoleeza Rice to write to the
European Union.
On one level, it makes very little difference at all. On another level, however,
the Internet at least in terms of ICANN, has become very much declared an item
of national interest by USA.
On a practical level, the counter-measure was establishment of a UN sponsored
Internet Governance Forum, which will meet for the first time in 2006. This new
body will prove interesting in how it approaches various key issues.
We support this proposal - we believe there are many matters that this forum
should address that are not covered by any other forum or governance body -as
well as some unfinished business as regards legacy governance structures.
To see what we told them, see the link from the Home Page at
www.internetmark2.org.
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EMERGING ISSUES
But in many ways, the debates at WSIS missed the big issues that we expect will
dominate our thinking in 2006.
VOIP VS TRADITIONAL TELCO MODELS
For instance, the battle between VOIP (voice over IP) and traditional telephony
systems, which will begin to dominate discussions in national regulatory regimes
of countries with high broadband penetration, hardly got a mention. Yet there is
hardly an issue where the importance of understanding the potential of the
Internet is more important. Traditional telco business models are very
threatened by Internet growth, and telco lobbying power will undoubtedly lead to
some draconian attempts to stop Internet growth by regulatory restrictions based
on content type.
Model legislation therefore becomes important in allowing the emergence of a
regime in which voice connections are no different to any other Internet
connections.
We envisage a future regime where bandwidth is about as basic as water or
electricity supply, distance does not matter, time doesn't matter, volume
doesn't really matter - more a flat annual cost Internet. That's the one that
can help this planet and global communications most.
We want to see the Internet as a place you visit, not some highly regulated
network facility broken up into different regulatory regimes according to the
types of traffic being transmitted.
GOOGLEISATION
2005 was also the year in which the power of Google became apparent. Moving from
a simple base as a very good Internet search engine, Google, using excessive
market capitalisation that had some people talking of a second 'dotcom" era,
proceeded to
" Make available Google Maps, raising ire among some countries at the easy
availability of satellite imagery of military facilities
" Became evidence in a criminal court case in USA, where Google searches on the
words "neck" and "snap" became part of criminal evidence, raising substantial
privacy issues
" Released Google desktop, with cookies allowing customization of news alerts
and further raising privacy concerns
" Released Google Print, a plan to make available on line literary works,
raising copyright concerns
" Began rolling out city wide free wireless networks in towns such as Mountain
View, California, posing enormous challenges for those who would regulate
telephony and broadcast facilities and support the economic viability of legacy
broadcast and telephony models.
And much more. This was the year that Google posed new challenges for
regulators. We have yet to see responses, particularly at an international
level.
OTHER ISSUES WE BELIEVE IGF SHOULD LOOK AT
These are issues we would like to see discussed in an Internet Governance Forum
- and they have precious little to do with ICANN, which is a good thing. We
would also add to the agenda
Widespread spectrum availability to support global communications (even at the
expense of legacy systems such as free to air TV)
Digital rights management
US Broadcast Flag Legislation
Network Neutrality
Where is the model legislation here? Where is the best practice approaches? We
call on the Internet community to take this opportunity to engage with
governments and help forge satisfactory regulatory regimes for the growth of the
Internet.
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PROTOCOL DEVELOPMENTS
Where to from here?
Since we first raised the issues of Internet ossification in detail in 2004,
there have been a number of developments supporting the position we took. In
particular, the US National Science Foundation , which took a leading role in
development of Internet Mark 1, has taken a role in supporting projects that
deal with large scale change rather than ossification by incremental change. We
were excited enough to link their workshop document to our home page.
More on this initiative can be found at
http://www.nsf.gov/cise/geni/.
Early in the new year, when we find time for a major site revamp, we will bring
you a range of links to exciting initiatives we are aware of in Ethernet usage,
port 80 and above standardisation to create new networking possibilities, and
some other pretty exciting developments at the edge of Internet development.
Apologies for not having the time to write it all up now, but we will get to it
early in 2006!
Thank you everyone for your support and interest. We look forward to some major
developments and changes in 2006 and to your further involvement.
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