Audience: .

Question: Why is the Internet Good?

Description:

Internet Regulation

Internet behavior is regulated:

1. law: n/a?
   "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Gilmore.
2. architecture: protocols (IETF, W3C)
   "Architecture is politics." Kapor.
3. markets: consumption and production patterns
   "The Internet isn't free. It just has an economy that makes no sense to capitalism." Shapcott.
4. social  norms: the Internet culture, maxims, and memes
   "Some jerk infected the Internet with an outright lie. It shows how easy it is to do and how credulous people are." Vonnegut.

On the Net, the architecture, markets, and memes have generally opposed regulation by law.

Questions of Governance

• Does it regulate community action, or individual action?
• Does it regulate by central authority, or individual action?
• Does it implement its policies through coercive means, or individual acceptance?
• Does it abide by the interests of those that it governs?

The Internet could  be characterized as anarchic:

"And, just to state the obvious, anarchy does not mean chaos nor do anarchists seek to create chaos or disorder. Instead, we wish to create a society based upon individual freedom and voluntary co-operation. In other words, order from the bottom up, not disorder imposed from the top down by authorities."  [A.1.1 What does "anarchy" mean? Anarchist FAQ]

Real World Governance

• direct: threat of violence, fines (lack of revenue), and imprisonment from centralized authority.
• indirect: direct mechanisms require third parties to create incentives or disincentives against the governed.
  1. link: couple a related issue to a contentious issue. (Clipper 3 coupled digital signatures (and their legitimacy) to key escrow policies, or linking strong confidentiality to export controls.)
  2. choke: regulate those that are easy to go after. (CDA focussed on large ISPs, and telco common carriers, rather than those creating the content.)
  3. gouge: regulate those that have deep pockets, often used with choke. (Some have pushed to criminals the contributory infringement of copyright.)
  4. browbeat:  use the bully pulpit to abash, or threaten further regulatory action. (US privacy policy has to date been predicated on the fact that if the "industry" doesn't self regulate, the government will get involved.)
  5. herd: selectively place and remove liability to channel policy towards a goal without overtly setting the direction. ("Mandatory self regulation" and safe harbor provisions are frequently proposed solutions to Internet content issues.)

Internet Governance

• Governance is the act of regulation. It need not be through legal, centralized, or coercive means.
• The establishment of social conventions on a mailing list is governance.
• The emergent direction of an open source software project is governance.
• The use of cookies to profile users is governance.

Internet Policy Formation (1/2)

Primary Characteristics

"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Clark.

Open Participation ("We")

citizen engineer:  citizen is a contributor to her space (lists, Web, MUD, FAQ)

Consensus. ("... believe in rough consensus ...")

is it good enough, does it merit moving on, are there show stoppers?

No Kings ("... reject kings, presidents and voting.")

consensus mediated by Elders, citizen engineers who built the space and institutions others inhabit.

Running Code / Implementation ("... believe ... in running code.")

all policy is tested by both its support and formulation through implementation

Internet Policy Formation (2/2)

Secondary Characteristics

Coercion and Lack of Chokepoint

there have been few formal institution that real world governments could coerce because institutions of Internet policy are decentralized and non-coercive themselves!

Limitation of Scope

most policy is explicitly scoped, defined, and conservative in its application.

Funded Mandates and Lack of Fiat

any change requires work and resources, as tested by running code and implementation.

Uniform Enforcement

policies cannot be selectively enforced as they are in the real world.

Veridical Policy

"your clickstream is your vote."

Policy Deprecation

old policies fade into the background