continuing the meta-logue....
Tamar Frankel wrote:
> First, there was no need for codes of ethics in the past.
There were highly developed norms and codes surrounding the Internet. The concept of
"netiquette" is but one example.
> Perhaps there were such codes but they were not formalized.
Closer to the truth. And their informality was the source of the Internet's ability
to grow and become a revolutionary economic and technological development.
> We are moving toward a
> more formalized relationship among the various stakeholders of the Internet.
You live in a highly developed society where half the households have a computer and
about one third are on line. This distorts your vision of where we are in the
developmental process. The Internet is much too young and undeveloped to formalize
in the way you are proposing. 73+ percent of the hosts are in North America. Another
20% are in the advanced economies of Europe. What about the rest of the world? What
about the majority of people who are not even on the Internet in the US, yet? The
Internet is currently about one-100th of the size it will be twenty years from now.
Your view of the role of an "ethical code" is extremely naive from a political
standpoint. You are thinking of small, national professional organization, not a
global, amorphous, network offering an unprecedented scale and scope of information
resources. You don't know what the Internet is yet (neither do I). Formalization at
this stage means cartelization, politicization, and the subordination of
still-developing businesses, structures, and countries to the interests of the
already powerful and already developed. Just as the countries that industrialized
first were able to leverage their technological prowess into imperialism and
subordinate the yet-developed world, so this ICANN/WIPO process represents an
attempt by established powers to gain formal political power over the Internet.
> Size usually brings this about. More importantly, the environment has
> changed. A code may be needed when the number of actors is growing and the
> actions of one actor may affect the position of others.
I think you've got this precisely reversed. The bigger and more diffuse the social
entity, the less sense it makes, and the more dangerous it becomes, to attempt to
impose uniform ethical norms upon the entity. That's what Europe learned after three
centuries of religious warfare. Advanced societies based on a highly complex
cooperative arrangements can't impose uniform codes of ethics. They define
impersonal rules that facilitate peaceful cooperation.
Let's put the burden of proof where it belongs. Exactly what problem are you trying
to solve by formalizing a code of conduct? Point out to me specific abuses and
systematic problems and show me convincingly how ICANN's proposals will solve
them--and not make matters worse, or create unanticipated problems.
> In our case, a code may be an alternative to government interference, which most
> people believe is not desirable.
WIPO is government. The NTIA-ICANN cooperative agreement is government. (The latter
may be very badly-executed government, but it is government). I would like to be
able to tell you stories about what kinds of pressures the European Commission
placed upon this process, but might violate some confidences. The idea that this
process represents "private sector initiative" was dead from the start.
> Ethical codes emphasize self limitations, and reduced
> third party enforcement. For example, a declaration that an actor is "code
> compliant" may be attractive to clients.
Here you seem to be confusing voluntary agreements and informal norms with ICANN's
attempt to leverage its control of the name/address space into regulatory powers.
This distinction is critical.
--MM
