Not quite the global Internet we thought we had

This has appeared in a few places now, reposted here as well. Internet governance still has a few issues to address! A British citizen, living in Spain, with his Internet server in the Bahamas, is subject to censorship by US authorities?

By Joel Hruska | Published: March 07, 2008 – 04:36PM CT

The United States has often presented itself as the guardian of Internet free speech. China may censor the Internet, and otherwise-civilized nations such as Germany or France may attempt to block what they view as unacceptable material, but the United States of America likes to think of itself as a place that doesn’t censor people online… unless you happen to own a foreign travel business that offers trips to Cuba. Under such circumstances, as Steve Marshall discovered, all bets are off.

Steve Marshall is a British citizen living in Spain. For the past decade, he has operated an online travel agency that specializes in selling trips to Cuba to various European nationals. Marshall operated a number of Cuban-specific web sites, including several that focused specifically on the literary and historical aspects of Cuba, and maintained them in English, French, and Spanish. The Internet Archive has some of Marshall’s web material on file. The sites themselves don’t appear to have been particularly well-designed—both Flash and text ads abound—but there’s no evidence that Marshall failed to provide the services he advertised.

According to the Department of the Treasury, however, Marshall and his business helped Americans evade the US embargo against Cuba. A 2004 DoT (Department of the Treasury) press release stated: “This travel provider is not only a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people, but it also facilitates the evasion of U.S. sanction policy.” The PR goes on to assert that Tour and Marketing International Ltd. (Marshall’s company) advertised itself as the number one agency for American travelers, claimed it could serve any traveler, and insisted that Americans interested in traveling to Cuba use the company’s online payment system.

Marshall’s domain name registrar, eNom, is based in the US. It apparently didn’t learn that his company had been blacklisted for two and a half years. When it did, however, the registrar promptly shut down Marshall’s sites without notification and has since refused to release the domain names to him. Marshall has since rebuilt his business using a European registrar and the .net rather than the .com suffix, but his experience raises troubling questions.

As previously noted, Marshall is a British citizen operating a business from Spain, with servers located in the Bahamas. He does not claim that no Americans ever visited Cuba, but he has stated that he was uninterested in marketing his services to the US. In this case, the Department of the Treasury was able to shut down his business without notification or negotiation of any sort. Even if he wanted to appeal the decision, Marshall has no organization to which he can appeal, save his registrar, which can simply claim to have been following government orders.

If the US intends to continue presenting itself as the guardian of Internet rights, situations like this require a bit more delicacy. By effectively shutting down Marshall’s business, the United States has committed the censorship it condemns in other nations. Even worse, the Department of Treasury effectively shut down an international business without any type of due process. Both France and Germany followed a court process when investigating Yahoo for alleged improprieties, and the company in question (Yahoo) had the opportunity to respond to the charges in a court of law. Marshall was afforded no such luxury.

While the Internet may be global in nature, foreign companies may very well limit their use of US registrars and hosting services out of concern that activities targeted at other countries could be shut down here.

At last! Britain Drops ‘War on Terror’ Label

This is great news  as 2008 approaches – finally some common sense and perspective that will restore some balance.

Daily Mail, December 27 2007 -

The words “war on terror” will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country’s chief prosecutor said Dec. 27.

Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless “death cult.”

The Director of Public Prosecutions said: ‘We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language.”

London is not a battlefield, he said.

“The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers,” Macdonald said. “They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way.”

His remarks signal a change in emphasis across Whitehall, where the “war on terror” language has officially been ditched.

Officials were concerned it could act as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, which is determined to manufacture a battle between Islam and the West.

The term “Islamic terrorist” will also no longer be used. Officials believe it is unhelpful because it appears to directly link the religion to terrorist atrocities.

Booglegum

Booglegum is the Aboriginal Place name for a hill now known as Pine Mountain, near Possum Creek, also near Bangalow and Byron Bay, in NSW Australia.

In the 1920s it was adopted as the property name for the original Possum Creek homestead of Frank O’Meara, formerly known as Jerseyville, which overlooks Pine Mountain from a nearby hill. The Booglegum homestead, built in the 1890s from timber cut from the property, remains to this day and has recently been restored by its current owners , Sue Taylor and Ian Peter.  Sue Taylor originally purchased the property in the early 1980s after it had been in a state of disrepair and had become a hippie squatter camp during the 1970s.

Booglegum is a fine heritage homestead, one of the finest in the Byron Bay area. The origins of the name and the use of the name to denote the area now known as Pine Mountain (and until recently home to Paul Hogan) seems to be unrecorded.

Hence this small piece of local history!

Greening the Internet

Believe it or not, a credible UK report suggests that information technology produces as much carbon gas as the airline industry. An Inefficient Truth is the first research report produced by Global Action Plan on behalf of the Environmental IT Leadership Team.  The Leadership Team is a unique gathering of major UK ICT users from a range of different sectors.

According to the report, ICT equipment currently accounts for 3-4% of the world’s carbon emissions, and 10% of the UK’s energy bill. “With a carbon footprint now equal to the aviation industry, ICT, and how businesses utilise ICT, will increasingly come under the spotlight as governments seek to achieve carbon-cutting commitments.”

But the whole thing is, that at least 80% of this is totally unnecessary and easily changed. Some of the areas of incredible waste are:

1.    Most government and corporate computers are left switched on all day every day – millions of computers here – to enable IT departments to update operating environments after hours when they need to (infrequently)
2.    large clusters of underutilized servers abound, operating at less than 50% of capacity where virtualization would represent significant power savings and cost savings
3.    IT Managers rarely if ever see power bills while being responsible for most of the power utilization in many industries.

And that’s the easy part. Very small changes in this area can dramatically reduce both power bills and greenhouse gas emissions. And governments which are currently looking to set greenhouse targets can fund some nice quick wins here with simple work practice changes.

Which is something industry is taking notice of. Initiatives such as the Green Grid  and IBM’s Green Technology Initiative are looking to capitalize on the new interest here. IBM has already announced a virtual computing program where universities and businesses can replace their existing physical clusters with a much more efficient virtual machine,
while at the same time earning thousands of dollars in carbon credits

But, as Bill St Arnaud points out, this might be just the beginning of what’s possible with broadband and the Internet. In his excellent http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/, Bill points to a number of initiatives and potential initiatives, such as

1.    The Hibernia Atlantic initiative is laying cable to Iceland to allow co-location of data centres with the cheap hydro and geothermal renewable energy sources available. Co-location of large data centres appears to be a massive area of potential greenhouse emission reductions, easily achievable once people have optical broadband capabilities
2.    network architectures requiring less switching centres (sometimes referred to as cloud computing architectures)
3.    Developing societal applications that promote use of the Internet as an alternate to carbon generating activities such as tele-commuting, distance learning

This is all good news, and an area we intend to explore further. We welcome news of initiatives underway in this area and collaboration to affect change to IT practices resulting in both cost savings and greenhouse gas reductions.

Internet Governance Forum, all talk, no action, but some progress

I guess I had better write something about the Internet Governance Forum meeting in Rio de Janeiro (November 2007).

 

I have to say that, even for someone who has been involved in the discussions and the lead up for several years, the meeting was unusual. And that might be its strongest attribute.

 

It was unusual for governments, who are used to making all decisions by themselves, operating in negotiating mode, and making formal diplomatic statements at organized plenaries. But here, the WSIS concept of multi-stakeholderism prevailed, negotiations were verboten, and plenaries and formal statements downgraded in favour of participative workshops.

 

It was unusual for business interests, because on the whole it didn’t seem to be going anywhere or have any formal agenda. Rather, the days were spent discussing and informing.

 

It was unusual for the civil society groupings, whose usual presence at UN sessions was complicated by an eclectic bunch of single interest groups less skilled in the ways of the UN and in many ways wholly disorganized.

 

And it was unusual for the internet old-timers who call themselves the Internet community, because they were required to think beyond their usual boundaries, address issues outside of their area of competence, go over the same ground time and time again, and interact as equals with people they would sometimes like to regard as incompetents.

 

So let’s just say that there was a degree of discomfort for everyone present.

 

Within those constrains, the event worked surprisingly well. Only someone convinced they knew everything already would have failed to learn something from the very competent line up of speakers, panelists, and participants bringing a wide range of viewpoints, experiences, and perspectives to bear on internet governance.

 

The level of expertise was very high. The level of interaction was a little disappointing at times, and the format not quite right yet.

 

ICANN of course had its usual moments of attention – indeed the speed at which a broader discussion could turn to a criticism of ICANN was astonishing to note at times. I was frustrated that people cannot see beyond the narrow walls of a names and numbers organization to the wider issues that internet governance needs to address. (I was equally frustrated that despite some years of discussion around this, the perceived US dominance of ICANN by the United States Government has also not been addressed).

 

Still as Bertrand de la Chapelle pointed out, what has started to happen is that people who were previously diametrically opposed on issues are now beginning to hear and understand each other. That’s the big gain , I think.

It may take longer than I would like, but the increased understanding arising from IGF gives hope that something sensible will eventually evolve from this exercise. Paticularly if activity starts to occur more frequently between annual meetings in the dynamic coalitions and other working groups.

APC revisited

While in Rio for the Internet Governance Forum I had the opportunity to attend a couple of pre-conference events of the Association for Progressive Communications (www.apc.org)

 I’d had very little to do with APC for a long time – but back in 1989 I attended a preliminary meeting in Epe Holland to establish the organisation, and in 1992 (I think from memory) in San Francisco I was one of the seven signatories of founding directors to establish the organisation. By INET in 1993, APC had spread the Internet to many countries – even having more spread than the academic networks in those days. The role of APC in early Internet establishment is one of the interesting untold stories.

 It was great to catch up with a few old friends from those days – Mark Graham, Andrew Garton, Mike Jensen, – but equally great to meet some astonishing people and learn something of the great variety of worthwhile projects being undertaken by APC members across the world.

 What was equally impressive was the great work APC did during the Internet Governance Forum as an organized body working on social change issues. APC  was everywhere, organized, coherent, and a real player in the evolution of internet governance. All credit to all the APC staff, but particularly Anriette Esterhuysen and Karen Banks, both of whom were also around in the early days of APC and have played major roles in building the organisation it is today. With Willie Currie and others – and so many really active members in all regions – APC is continuing to do really great work.

Is it time to drop IPv6?

More and more we are learning that

• IPv6 and IPv4 raise severe coexistence problems which we do not know how to address (particularly in multihoming)
• IPv6 despite all our efforts is not being taken up
• the hype and false promises are not helping
• numbers will run out if nothing is done.

Randy Bush has compared the IPv6 rollout (starting from 1995) with the war in Iraq -  “no transition plan, declared victory before the hard part started, no real long term plan, no realistic estimation of costs, no support for the folk on the front lines [and continual declaration that] victory will be next month” – to which we would add acute embarrassment at the failure, which leads to denial and coverups and all sorts of attempts to wish the problem will go away – rather than admitting failure, and beginning a serious attempt at a remedy.

We now (among others) think its time to learn from the failure and start to examine alternatives. These might include

• greater use of NATs
• a controlled market for IPv4 addresses
• reallocation  of unused or underutilised blocks

All of these can give us more time. Then, we believe, a new protocol will emerge to pave over tcp/ip.  Will it be based on Ethernet addressing?

Market economy truth on Wikipedia

There was a time when Wikipedia was interesting and could be trusted. Sadly, I think we have moved beyond that .

The ease with which anonymous, non-moderated comments can be posted has not only attracted cranksters to create their own version of the truth on any subject, but lately has also seen  political party appointees, CIA officers, ad otherspaid to create ersions of the truth. The end result of this model is whoever cares most gets their version of the truth known – at least momentarily.

Market-economy truth?

As Lauren Weinstein puts it -

The fact that such editing can usually be undone (and redone later for that matter) doesn’t change the fact that Wikipedia can never be an authoritative source while it is subject to this kind of anonymous abuse — whether by jokesters out to get their kicks or well-meaning contributors simply unwilling to check their facts.  Such events can easily turn Wikipedia pages into rumor and defacement billboards rather than encyclopedia-quality content.  The damage is already done.

If Wikipedia expects to really be taken seriously in the long run, it needs to rethink its standards for item creation, modification, and attributions.

Root zone control – the emperor has no clothes!

I’ve thought for a while that the US control of authorising the root zone file for the Internet was more symbolic than useful. Sure it exists, sure it annoys the hell out of just about everyone else,

But in reality if it is ever significantly abused it will be quickly abandoned. A couple of articles on this below.

Begin forwarded message:

From: “David P. Reed” <dpreed@reed.com>
Date: April 2, 2007 9:28:32 AM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Cc: ip@v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Department of Homeland and Security wants master key for DNS

A dirty little secret is that the late, lamented and sensible Jon Postel once demonstrated how easy it would be to take the entire Internet out of the hands of the government entirely, because in fact the decision of what the “root” is is pretty damned arbitrary.
(because people who think roots and port numbers are “real” seem to fantasize about physical metaphors that create more reality than there is here, so you have to show them).

I think it would still be a small project to take the roots away from
the US Gov’t entirely, once and for all.   If they demand the key and
get it with the purpose of enforcing yet another attack on collective
will, I am happy to help.   Nothing illegal is necessary.  99% of
humanity will probably volunteer to join the new root system – both libertarian conservatives and liberal thinkers are pretty much together on this.  I’m pretty sure Microsoft and Apple (and I know
Linux) communities would happily substitute a new root for a “gov’t censored” one – and I don’t think appeals to “child molesters” and “terrorists” and other bloody shirts being waved would cause them to think twice.  What might get Microsoft to play ball is a promise to stop hammering them on antitrust, but hey, they have to worry about the next administration and the one after that – companies outlive governments.

And even if Microsoft didn’t put the new roots in, it’s really easy to distribute a root replacement add-in or to add it to the NAT boxes.

So “self help” is why the government might want to think twice about sticking this screwdriver in their own eye.

Yeah, as John Levine says, the ICANN may not be a very mature body, but just think what the maturity of your favorite governmental figure
is like.   Do you like the “liberals”?  Do you like the “religious
right”?   Do you like the Hillary?  What about the Cheney?

In the matter of the DNS, we the users of the Internet hold all the
power.   The master key is a fantasy.

David Farber wrote:
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Christian Huitema <huitema@windows.microsoft.com>
> Date: April 1, 2007 4:53:59 PM EDT
> To: dave@farber.net
> Subject: RE: [IP] Re: Department of Homeland and Security wants master
> key for DNS
>
>> In view of ICANN’s chaotic management, I expect that a lot of those
>> governments are quietly happy to have ICANN under adult supervision,
>> and although they may say they want it independent of the US, short
>> of handing it to the ITU or some other institution with international
>> legitimacy, the USG is going to stay in charge, in which case it
>> really doesn’t matter whether the master key belongs to ICANN, IANA,
>> DOC, or DHS because it all amounts to the same thing.
>
> But why do we need a master key for the DNS at all? If a name is
> really popular, one can expect that its key will be well known.
> Verification of
> that key should not depend on the whims of the centralized registry.
> DNS servers should manage their list of well known keys, and protect
> their users against any bureaucratic error at the root level. Most top
> level domains and many big services should easily reach that level of
> popularity, and not depend on the root key for their security.
>
> — Christian Huitema
>
>

OECD on The Participative Web

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/57/14/38393115.pdf?contentId=38393116

The concept of the “participative web” is based on an Internet increasingly
influenced by intelligent web services that empower the user to contribute
to developing, rating, collaborating on and distributing Internet content
and customising Internet applications. As the Internet is more embedded in
people’s lives “users” draw on new Internet applications to express
themselves through “user-created content” (UCC).

This study describes the rapid growth of UCC, its increasing role in
worldwide communication and draws out implications for policy. Questions
addressed include: What is user-created content? What are its
key drivers, its scope and different forms? What are new value chains and
business models? What are the extent and form of social, cultural and
economic opportunities and impacts? What are associated
challenges? Is there a government role and what form could it take?
Definition, measurement and drivers of user-created content
There is no widely accepted definition of UCC, and measuring its social,
cultural and economicimpacts are in the early stages. In this study UCC is
defined as: i) content made publicly available over the
Internet, ii) which reflects a “certain amount of creative effort”, and iii)
which is “created outside of professional routines and practices”. Based on
this definition a taxonomy of UCC types and hostingplatforms is presented.
While the measurement of UCC is in its infancy, available data show
thatbroadband users produce and share content at a high rate, and this is
particularly high for younger age
groups (e.g. 50% of Korean Internet users report having a homepage and/or a
blog). Given strong network effects a small number of platforms draw large
amounts of traffic, and online video sites and social networking sites are
developing to be the most popular websites worldwide.
The study also identifies: technological drivers (e.g. more wide-spread
broadband uptake, new web technologies), social drivers (e.g. demographic
factors, attitudes towards privacy), economic drivers
[...]