Time for Reformation of the Internet
This comment was sent to me anonymously.
In the early 16th century, a devout monk from Germany visited Rome. He was awed to be at the very seat of Christendom. Then he looked around and was appalled at what he saw. He, and then Germany, and then much of Europe, awoke to the abuses of an institution that was claiming a monopoly on the right to mediate the relationship between man and God. The Roman Catholic Church of the time was selling indulgences (purporting to reduce your time in purgatory, for a fee), then spending the money on grand parties. Luther realized that there was nothing in the sacred texts themselves that gave any intermediate institution the exclusive power or right to stand between individuals and salvation.
It’s time for netizens to come to a similar realization about their direct relationship with the empowerment offered by the internet. None of the core principles that produced the net give any set of clerics – even the original engineers, or ISOC, much less ICANN – the right to prevent innovation at the edge. Indeed, the sacred texts of the net explicitly empower decentralized action. The internet arose because everything not prohibited was permitted. Now, ICANN is itself holding new TLDs, and even new services from existing registries and registrars, in purgatory – occasionally deigning to accept high fees to let some proposals proceed. (Registries and registrars both provide services at the edge, running their own databases on their own servers.) Instead of acting appropriately to define (and ban) sin, the clerics of the internet are seeking to set themselves up as intermediaries who must be pleased and paid before anyone can do anything new.
Some have called for Internet democracy. Some have called for more involvement by governments in “internet governance.” Neither is what is needed right now. What we need is a reformation – a general realization by decentralized actors that there is no need at all for any intermediary to stand between them and any changes they think will improve the internet. They don’t need an institutional indulgence – they just need to act cooperatively and vigorously to keep making the internet better. Some actions will still be appropriately considered wrongful – and these should be banned by either governments, or ICANN (through consensus policies), or both. But it’s time to stop sending money to ICANN on the theory that we need them to hire staff whose job it is to give us all permission to innovate.
Luther appealed to the secular leaders of the day to help resist the corruption of the church. Perhaps we will need the governments (maybe even the ITU) to help take the net back for netizens. But Luther’s wise appeal for support from German princes did not amount to abandonment of the central faith that drove him. He did not believe salvation was irrelevant – just that it could not and should not be bought from a self-appointed intermediary. We may need support from governments (particularly the US government) to take the net back from a corrupt central clergy. But we have to preserve the faith that gave rise to the internet in the first place – that the resources at the edge belong to individual actors, and that empowerment comes from decentralized, cooperative innovation, not from top-down regulatory prescriptions.
If there were a Luther for the internet, he might post (presumably on his blog, rather than on a church door) some set of theses that seemed to him self-evident but that few involved in the church of the day were previously prepared to utter. With apologies to the real Luther, they might look something like the following:
In the Name of Jon Postel.
1. The RFCs and standards that created the net decree that everyone at the edge shall be free to innovate unless they cause harm to others.
2. This principle cannot mean that such innovation must first receive approval from any centralized authority.
3. It also doesn’t mean that anyone is free to do anything they want – it must be possible for the community of netizens to prohibit harmful actions through their own decentralized acts.
4. Accordingly, it is right for every member of the internet community to cooperate with others and to abide by policies that have been established by consensus to prohibit harmful actions.
5. Aside from such instances, however, no central authority has any ability or right to determine what is “best for the net” or which actions should be encouraged or allowed.
6. The decentralized actions of netizens, to adopt or refuse new services and connections, are the only true judgments about whether a particular innovation is good or bad.
7. The cooperation that gave rise to the internet did not and could not grant to any institution the power to make decisions on behalf of all netizens.
8. Since there is no such power, any claim by any institution to a right to prevent innovation at the edge of the internet is inherently flawed and contrary to the most basic principles from which the internet arose.
9. ICANN purports to speak on behalf of the internet community. This is plainly not the case and represents an inherent contradiction – because the internet community can by its decentralized actions speak for itself. Indeed, it can only speak in such manner).
10. Those who claim for ICANN the power to approve any innovation are ignorant or corrupt.
11. The claim that introduction of new TLDs will cause technical difficulties is plainly false and manufactured to increase ICANN’s powers rather than to assure continued innovative and empowering uses of the internet.
12. Before ICANN made such claims, the goals for internet governance were modest – to avoid conflicting names at the top level and to introduce competition. Neither the White Paper nor any earlier documents reflecting the purposes for which ICANN was created justify a general claim of a power to give or withhold permission for innovation.
13. There is no sound reason for ICANN to seek to regulate the business models adopted by those who offer innovative services on the internet.
14. ICANN has used fear of regulation by governments as a means of persuading netizens to recognize its unjustified powers. But, by doing so, ICANN has claimed powers that are more appropriately feared.
15. What is empowering about the internet is its devolution of power to the edge – to decentralized actors, provided that they do not harm others.
16. Therefore, the need is to prevent the rise of any central power, rather than just to make sure that governments do not assert such powers.
17. What was important about the original idea of ICANN was not that it was private (as opposed to governmental) but that it did not have any authority to impose its rules unless those subject to the effects of such rules agreed to abide by them.
18. ICANN has now abandoned this core principle of its origins, so as either to exercise unaccountable powers, or to raise funds by imposing non-avoidable fees in exchange for permissions and services that no netizens desire, and is therefore illegitimate.
19. In many cases, the problems that ICANN purports to be solving are entirely of its own making.
20. The internet would improve if ICANN were simply to disappear.
21. It is folly to attempt to preserve the domain name system in its prior state, indefinitely, as some of the original engineers who dominate the ICANN system appear to desire to do.
22. It is folly to attempt to predict in advance which innovations will succeed and which will fail.
23. ICANN meetings are attended by a small group of insiders who can afford to travel around the world (or who use ICANN fees to pay for this) and who enjoy such grand parties at the expense of netizens.
24. There is no reason to defer to the expertise of these ICANN hangers-on. They don’t actually run the net. They just talk about policy issues and prevent entrepreneurs taking the risks necessary to innovate.
25. It is time for all netizens to reassert their own collective control over the development of the internet – a control they exercise simply by deciding what connections to make, what new services to use, which identities to adopt.
26. So long as ICANN is allowed to to act as the sole source of recommendations for additions to the root zone file, and the sole source of accreditation for registrars, the power of netizens to make these choices will be destroyed.
27. The US Government, which purports to control the decision regarding what should be added to the root zone file in its capacity as a fiduciary for the global internet community should forthwith declare that it will accept recommendations for additions to the root zone file from any party — and will deny such requests only when parties actually harmed by such innovations can affirmatively show why they should be prohibited. Parties who believe they are harmed should seek an injunction from a court.
28. All registries for top level domains should immediately begin to employ any distribution channels and business practices they believe will best serve the domains in questiion.
29. ICANN is in breach of its many undertakings in the contracts with registries and registrars to enhance competition, act transparently, and to impose new policies only when based on consensus. It has given power to intellectual property interests even though domain names are not necessarily used as brands. It has disfavored privacy protections favored by users, solely in order to favor such intellectual property interests.
30. The contracts that ICANN sometimes cites as giving it the power to approve any changes in business operations of registries and registrars were imposed by duress and without the support of any consensus among the affected internet community.
31. Accordingly, ICANN’s contractually-based claims to a power to approve any innovations are unsupportable and may and should be ignored.
32. Only resolute action by netizens will prevent increasing growth of ICANN’s budget and illegitimate powers.
33. Concerted action by netizens to renounce ICANN’s false claims to power will certainly succeed and need not create any greater claim by governments to impose unwise regulation on the internet.
34. Failure of netizens to act together to renounce ICANN’s illegitimate claims to power would further embolden governments to impose even more centralized regulation and would ultimately destroy the most important principles that make the internet so empowering.
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2 Responses to “Time for Reformation of the Internet”
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The parallel of the Internet with the relation of man with God is flawed as this relation is brain to brain - not end to end - and many to One, while the IETF only permits P2P at best. A true network should surport tiers relations with tiers (the TNT which will hopefully blow up the innovation blocking). Also, this paper talks a lot about ICANN, missing that “I CAN” is pecisely another name of God, written with a French misspeling. Human relations are brains to brains (human and computer ones now). ICANN and IETF already imposes on us XXth century limitations, so XVIth century limitations cannot really be accepted as an innovation — or may be is it again French mispelling standing for invocation?
Take care
Sorry, but this is just plain wrong. Period. The entire article is based on the reader not realizing that a Registry and a Registrar and NOT the same thing. Take out all reference to Registrars (since Verisign is a Registry) and the article is laughable at its base and hysterical in its conclusions. I could drill down into each and every falsehood, but since the article is based on something so blatantly incorrect, I will not take the time. Either the anonymous author is an out and out scheister, or they know absolutely nothing about the subject they are writing about. Which is it?