plan (which I liked) could work is with (a) the very active support of the
USG and (b) the recognition of most of the nations which the Internet
What part of the USG? The views of the various agencies
and branches are very different on these issues.
'reaches'. There are significant public policy issues involved now
(although i expect that is one point on which we disagree sharply) and it is
Yes. I believe the real issues are primarily business ones.
This gets overlayed with significant religious and pseudo
public policy interventions.
many governments right now, support which it desperately needs (where else
is the next round of funding going to come from?)
Uh-huh.....That's special.
The halcyon days of the Interent's homogenous research-oriented user
community are over. This is serious business now and serious public
interest issues are engaged. However, the governance structures which we
have now are essentially identical to those of 20 years ago. They have
No doubt that's why people are rolling out OSI solutions again.
simply been scaled up and some contracted out. Aren't the old governance
structures simply incompatible with the Internet's new role? Clearly the
proprietary-TLD people think so, because Postel wouldn't add their new TLDs.
In fact, aren't they the ones who pushed this whole reform process in the
first place? They want their new TLDs, but preferably not an effective new
governance structure which recognizes the Internet's global significance.
You might want to look at places like www.ilpf.org and see how
"governance" is being approached for other Internet sectors.
The "reform process" origins and dynamics are much more complex
than you suggest.
I agree that the ITU is on one level a relic of an earlier age when national
cartels carved up the global telecom market for their own benefit, but at
another level they do know a lot about coordinating global networks for
global benefit.
The ITU was swept out of the "coordinating global networks" role
about ten years ago. Do you believe they know more than the
commercial players that actually provide and operate those networks
today?
If the ITU regime is so unpalatable, how about the WTO
agreement on basic telecoms? Its Reference Paper
(http://www.wto.org/wto/services/tel23.htm) actually calls for more
government regulation, not less, by requiring each country to have an
independent regulatory authority to facilitate competitive markets.
Yes, for basic telecom services. That's a legacy function
to prevent the PTTs from exercising complete control of
the domestic market.
Similarly, breaking NSI's monopoly (which is now miraculously a good thing)
has required the creation of new regulatory structures. The route chosen
has been a chain of private contracts, and what some find objectionable in
them are exactly the same kinds of things that public regulators have to do
to create stable, competitive markets.
Sorry, I don't buy the construct. They have three of 250 domains.
I have a monopoly on netmagic.com Ambler has a monopoly on WEB
Disney has a monopoly on Disney World. I see no problem with that
kind of "monopoly."
--tony
