Quite a few people including Jeff Medcalf of Caerdroia have commented on the (correct, in my view) snubbing of the UN desire to control Internet domain name assignment by the United States government:
The Bush administration announced Thursday that the U.S. government will not hand over control of the Internet to any other organization, a surprise move that could presage an international flap.
At the moment, the U.S. government maintains control of the Internet’s “root”–the master file that lists what top-level domains are authorized–but has indicated in the past that it would transfer that responsibility to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.
The new principles, outlined by Assistant Commerce Secretary Michael Gallagher, say the U.S. government will “maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.” In addition, the principles say, the U.S. government will continue to maintain “oversight” of ICANN and prevent its “focus” from straying from technical coordination.
Gallagher’s blunt announcement to a wireless conference in Washington, D.C.–just a few days before ICANN’s next meeting in Luxembourg–hints that the Bush administration would like to keep the Marina del Ray, Calif.-based nonprofit group on a short leash. ICANN has become the target of criticism as its budget has zoomed upward from $7 million in 2003 to around $16 million today.
Thursday’s announcement also represents an effective snub to a United Nations process that is set to culminate in a summit in Tunisia in November. One gripe of the summit participants has been that poorer nations should have more say in the way the Internet is operated.
I won’t go into the 40 year historic background of the development of the Internet (at least not too much). If you’d like more background you can find a reasonable history here.
The logical backbone of the Internet—the protocols and conventions it uses—were almost entirely developed with military funding. The underlying “language“ of the Internet is TCP/IP which was created almost entirely with U. S. military funding and initially implemented through contracts let by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to Stanford University, BBN (Bolt, Beranek, and Newman—an extremely high-tech consulting firm), and UCL (University College London).
The World Wide Web, which is what many people think of when they think of the Internet although it’s actually only handful of protocols built on the Internet backbone, was built on protocols developed at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, but that’s another story.
All of this prelude serves to support two points. First, the United States controls the Internet because American taxpayers paid for it. The original physical backbone of the Internet, the logical backbone of the Internet, and the research that underpins the Internet were all paid for by American tax dollars. As Jeff correctly observes, our military wanted a computer network that could survive a nuclear war.
If the UN would like to buy into the investment we’ve made, I certainly think we should be open for bids. As with purchasing any asset the bid should be based on the current and prospective value of the asset not on the cost of development. A starting bid in the tens of trillions of dollars would probably be in order.
The second point is this: what is the basis for a claim of ownership of the Internet by anyone other than the people of the United States? I’ve made a claim based on the fact that we’ve paid for it. Other potential bases for claim could include a right to the product of one’s labor. Under that basis the United States and, to a lesser extent, Great Britain and perhaps the people of Europe could make a reasonable claim.
But on what basis could the United Nations make a claim? The argument appears to be that if something has an effect on one’s life that the person has a right to a say in its management. What is the philosophic underpinning of such a claim? I honestly have no idea.
Actually, we’ve heard similar arguments before. Do you remember during the U. S. presidential election that some people overseas were advancing the claim that since the outcome of the U. S. presidential election affected their lives, too, that they had a stake in the outcome and should be allowed to vote in our elections? I thought the claim was specious then and I think this claim is specious now.
But what is its source? Where does it come from?
