NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Beware Godzilla Sleeping: The ITU's Internet Fiasco
Beware Godzilla Sleeping: The ITU's Internet Fiasco
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001004.html
A mainstay of science-fiction and horror films is the monster that
you're led to believe has been vanquished, but reappears in even more
horrific form (sometimes bringing along "friends" as well) in the
final scene, or the sequels, or often both.
Godzilla appears to sink back into the sea to leave a battered Tokyo
in peace, but he's merely snoozing, dreaming happy dreams of future
destruction.
It's worth keeping Godzilla in mind as we scan reports of the ITU's
new telecom treaty, which despite a glowing ITU press release was
quite properly not signed by the U.S. and many other countries,
rendering the entire exercise not even a Pyrrhic victory for the ITU.
The result is that we stand today regarding the open Internet in much
the same place we stood a couple of weeks ago before the ITU's WCIT
meeting in Dubai even began.
But like Alice in "Through the Looking-Glass," we had to do an awful
lot of running to end up very close to where we started. And while
this can be celebrated in the short run, in the long run it is a very
worrisome place to be.
Virtually all of the dangerous dynamics that we've talked about many
times in the past -- which led us to this point -- still remain in
play.
The existing DNS (Domain Name System) continues to be a focal point of
contention. ICANN's escalating mismanagement of the Internet's naming
resources, culminating in their extortionist, damaging, and
nightmarishly mutating gTLD expansion scheme -- designed to enrich the
existing domain-industrial complex -- has driven a stake through the
heart of any possible global cooperation in this area.
The DNS has been warped from a simple addressing tool into a truncheon
of copyright and censorship enforcement -- with the U.S. leading the
way with both related police actions without normal due process, and
the insane filings of millions of often hilariously inaccurate
takedown demands with Google and others, made all the worse since
there usually are no effective penalties for false takedown filings.
Governments around the world continue to eye the Internet and the open
communications it fosters to be primarily a threat, with its
technology ripe for surveillance, and its users to be controlled,
censored, flogged, imprisoned, and even worse. The ITU's newfound
fetish for DPI -- Deep Packet Inspection -- makes the wet dreams of
tyrants and others in this sphere all the more explicit.
These dynamics are continuing going forward. The risks of Internet
censorship, fragmentation, and other severe damage to the Internet
we've worked so hard to build will continue to be exacerbated, despite
our holding the ITU pretty much at bay this time around.
It's not as if better paths forward have not been suggested in the
past. But in answer to most such suggestions, the response has
usually been fear of tampering with the status quo, tied to concerns
that any changes might end up being worse than the de facto situation
in which we find ourselves today.
But as we've now seen with dramatic clarity, the current situation is
not likely to be stable in the long run. It is in fact highly
unstable, and the risks of this instability ripping the Internet apart
in fundamental ways are now worse than ever.
In the past we've talked about the possibility of creating new,
purpose-built multi-stakeholder organizations to better serve the
entire Internet community -- not just the relatively few lucky
entities currently suckling the bulk of the bucks from the DNS gravy
train.
Alternatives to the existing DNS -- secure, fully distributed systems
for Internet naming and addressing -- such as IDONS and others -- have
already been proposed, and could potentially eliminate billions of
dollars in associated waste, while simultaneously ending the kinds of
naming and DNS abuse problems that now seem synonymous with the
existing DNS ecosystem.
Pervasive Internet encryption systems -- that would make Internet
connections routinely far more secure from attacks and surveillance
abuses -- are possible but resisted, often in concert with much the
same kinds of arguments that tyrants have spouted since the dawn of
civilization.
The despicable behavior of ITU leadership at WCIT is but a shadow of
what the future may be like, unless we seriously take proactive
actions now to protect the global, open Internet -- and the open
access to information and communications that it engenders -- against
those forces who would turn the Net into a tool of political,
economic, and other forms of oppression.
The Internet Godzilla may be heading off to sleep for now. But he'll
be back, along with his brethren and multitude of minions as well.
And if we haven't prepared, if we haven't taken action by then -- woe
to us all.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
- Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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