An audio recording of the core values workshop organized by Isoc India Chennai together with OneWebDay and Ian Peter Associates at IGF 2009 Sharm el Sheikh What is the Internet? What makes it what it is? What are its architectural principles? What are the core values? And what is happening to the core values in the process of its evolution? What is it that needs to be preserved and what changes are inevitable? ( detailed descriptions of this workshop is at the Internet Governance Forum website ) The panel was chaired by Lynn St Amour, President of the Internet Society and inlcluded Daniel Dardailler, Rt. Hon’ Alun Michael, MP., Nathaniel James, Alejandro Pisanty, Ian Peter, Markus Kummer with apologies from Patrick Falstrom, Ambassador Yrjo Lansipuro, Jonathan Zittrain, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy, Issac Mao and Milton Mueller Janna Quitney Anderson of Elon School of Communications has written an article titled “Net’s 10 Commandments” proposed by Ian Peter during this workshop also summarizing the deliberations at this workshop by panelists on arstechnica http://bit.ly/64zpsS Link to the Report http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/component/chronocontact/?chronoformname=Workshopsreports2009View&curr=1&wr=64 Workshop description: What makes the Internet what it is? What is happening to its core values as it evolves? What should be preserved and what changes are inevitable? The planners of this session quoted Internet protocol co-inventor Vint Cerf, in the description of this session: “The remarkable success of the Internet can be traced to a few simple network principles – end-to-end design, layered architecture, and open standards.” They noted that the Internet’s underlying principles are threatened when new policies are proposed with inadequate understanding of the core values.
Internet Society president and CEO Lynn
St. Amour moderated the session and led it off with a
scene-setting focus statement:
“The Internet is obviously much more than a technology,” she said.
“It’s origin was not a single act of invention but very much an act of
cooperation and collaboration. Forty years ago when history was ripe
for change it was a time for challenging traditional models and
practices, and – fortunately – the right people at the right places
at the right time took up that challenge and established the
processes, practices and ideals that underlie the Internet in
addition to the technical developments. We have called this the
Internet model.
It’s a common set of operating values and also endorses some
architectural principles. But the operating values such as open
standards, freely accessible processes, transparent governance,
bottom-up processes, active community involvement – those principles
and values are shared among the key organizations that are central to
the Internet’s development and ongoing evolution. That whole set of
ideals we call the Internet ecosystem.”
St. Amour showed an Internet Society document made to depict the
Internet Ecosystem. A PDF of the document is available here: http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/docs/internetmodel.pdf
An all-star lineup of folks who have been involved at the top echelon
of the organizations that arose out of the principles established in
the 1960s were on hand to speak on this panel, representing
organizations such as the Internet Society, the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers.
Daniel Dardailler of W3C said the Internet community values
its shared principles for technology and for how people work
together. “We want the Internet to be an enabler, so more people can
enjoy the benefits we see,” he said. “There are principles of
operations and with the multistakeholder approach all participate.”
He began to list key characteristics. “Computer science principles
require that layers can work separately. The Web sits on top of the
Internet. This separation is important. Everything has to be
extensible. You want only one root – you want unique ID – we need to
keep one root. The Web is putting data in the pipe and we don’t want
the data to go faster through some sites without our knowledge.
Common to Internet technology is that we are open-standards and
open-source. Everyone should be able to test the system with their
own platform. We want our technologies to be royalty-free. For the
Web it’s important. We are at the top of the stack – there will be
more things later on but right now we are the interface. Everyone
needs to have access to the system. It has to be visible to any type
of device. Separation of content from implementation is paramount.
Websites should have metadata.
“The principle that runs throughout all of what I have said is the
principle of CHOICE. I buy a computer in France, I arrive in Egypt, in
my hotel I get WiFi and I can use it. We don’t want to go back to a
point where we have incompatibility. The Internet has been on the
forefront in regard to allowing people to participate in the design of
communication.”
Alun Michael, a member of the UK Parliament and active
Internet policy maker said there is a need to be careful to grasp
what is important but not to squeeze too hard. “We need to grasp three
nettles,” he explained. “First we’re dealing with a future not yet
conceived. Management techniques of industry, government, the
international community are too slow to keep up with changes on the
Internet. Second, the core values are the technical values and they
affect the whole of society and not just engineers. Cities don’t often
turn out as their architects intended. It’s about the people. We also
need to not just listen to young people we need to hand it over to
young people. They talk about the issues in a completely different
way and there’s a real and powerful opportunity to use that talent
and engagement in a positive way. Third, the IGF process needs to
communicate to legislators who do not take an interest in this process
in any way.
Policymakers are overwhelmed by issues like cybersecurity. We need a
proportionate response. My favorite quotation about legislation comes
from 1890s: ‘Laws rarely prevent what they forbid.’ We have the
opportunity for much better governance in the real-world sense. Do
proposals to fix the problem threaten the core values of the Internet?
We have to prove that a cooperative approach works. It depends on the
right people at the right times do something about it. We have to
deliver solutions instead of relying on the last refuge of the
policymaker which is to legislate and regulate.”
Nathan James, director of OneWebDay, began by bringing up the
importance of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.
“This is a beautiful expression of one of the most sacred of human
rights,” he said. “I would argue that the real value of the Internet
is its human network of users and that a discussion of core Internet
values must begin with the consideration of the human values of its
users. Do users value the end-to-end principle, open innovation
systems, a secure root, the most modern version of IP? If they do,
most of them don’t know it. Instead, users value the Internet as an
expression of their deeper values and aspirations: expression,
collaboration, dissent, freedom, democracy, family, friendship,
community, opportunity, justice, even fun.”
James said the inner workings of the Internet and its governance are
opaque to the vast majority of its users and aspiring users. “ It is
also ironic,” he said, “that we prize the innovation space the
Internet provides, its low barriers to entry, yet the barriers to
governance are so high, starting with awareness. Where will the new
ideas come from? Where are the strategies for the grassroots
engagement that democracy requires? It has to begin with framing
Internet controversies, be they over privacy and identity, security,
fair representation in the domain system, within the context of
deeper human values. It must begin by reaching out to other sectors,
such as human rights, social services and health, and helping them
understand how Internet governance decisions impact the realization
of their core values.
Markus Kummer, executive director of the Internet Governance
Forum, noted that the IGF is less of a technocratic gathering than
some are. “This kind of gathering brings in people who don’t normally
go to Internet-specialized meetings,” he said. “It has this mix of
technical and societal questions. I have a government background.
Governments work differently than the Internet community. They are
based on hierarchies and pyramids. The Internet is the opposite. It
is a borderless bottom-up network of networks. It is about
collaboration, not about giving orders to subordinates who follow
those orders it is about collaborative efforts.”
Kummer said the IGF is an attempt to bring these two cultures
together. “The Internet undermines traditional ways of doing things.
In traditional government ways of doing things, it is a structured
way of operating. You cannot control the Internet. You have to let it
happen. It is a tremendous tool of empowerment.”
He said people in governments are struggling to make better use of
the Internet in their own structures. “Deep down the Internet
undermines traditional structures,” he pointed out. “The Internet
core values go deeper than just the technological principles. Article
19 is an important part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
and some would say it’s the most important article, but there’s also
Article 29 which gives certain limitations and question of
responsibility. The Universal Declaration was drafted long before
Internet was invented. Then it was relatively to combine the two
principles, the principle of freedom of expression across borders and
at the same time to have responsibilities to the a society and the
values of the society. In a borderless world it gets much more
complicated. I think this is something you see in all of the issues
we discuss, be it copyright, security, freedom of expression – it is
the challenge of marrying the two, the principle of national
sovereignty with the borderless world of the Internet. We’re
struggling. We don’t have the answers. But we think it is important
to discuss these issues. The IGF, in its functioning, has adopted the
principles of the Internet. Being collaborative, being open, being
transparent. We value that the intelligence is at the edges.”
Alejandro
Pisanty, a longtime leader in both the Internet Society and
ICANN, said he sees core values under threat. “The Internet was
conceived as a means of communication between computers –
algorithmic,” he said, describing that in the early years of
computing nobody knew this would all scale up to be a network of
billions of users.
“Standards-developing organizations did not imagine this was
serious. No network is a simple network. Computer-processing power
was limited; you had to make things extra-simple to communicate.
There was a flat hierarchy. The RFC – Request for Comments – 760 has
several interesting phrases and statements including, ‘Be liberal
with what you receive and conservative with what you send.’ This
later became part of RFC 1855 on netiquette. It translates to ethics
of openness and tolerance of communication.”
Pisanty said these values are in danger. “They can be threatened. It
can start with things that come from the corporate world, like network
neutrality discussions, which have to be defined more precisely. It
basically means an Internet service provider should not privilege
their own products being sent over the network. All packets are
equal. It can come from the desire to bring back the owned-network
model – the traditional model of a telecommunications company that
owns the network, owns the cables, owns the switching equipment and
even used to own the telephone, the user’s terminal. Going back to
that model – people try to make this happen over and over again. One
of the tricks we must not fall for is that everything that is called
‘new’ might actually be a personification of the old; everything that
is called ‘change’ might actually be be change backwards. We have to
look very carefully from the Internet point of view that we really
continue with innovation, openness, bridging the digital divide,
allowing smaller companies and smaller civil society organizations to
operated and not let these be crushed by constraints that are built
into the technology or by other means, what Larry Lessig
fundamentally refers to as a combination of code and law.
Peter asked the people in the room why anyone should bother to
have core values. He said researchers have proposed that
communications mediums are tools for the development of humankind.
“As a tool for our development the Internet is an extraordinarily
powerful one and an extraordinarily useful one,” he said. “In 1988
Brian Carpenter said the principle of constant change is probably the
only thing that will continue to change indefinitely. In the middle
of all of this change, what is it that we need to protect? It’s a
great task for us to determine what the core of it is that makes it
so exciting.”
He listed some of the core values he treasures – his selected list of
possibilities for his proposed 10 Commandments, listed here with some
of his elaboration:
- Independence of applications
- New applications can be added anytime that’s a core value
- Permissionless innovation
- Open standards – openness and we can call that vendor-neutral I can use any computer, any device, I can send stuff to my mobile phone
- Accessible and globally inclusive – anyone can use it
- User choice, I can choose what applications I use and where I go to with them
- Ease of use, I can use it in my language, I can use it in a device I’m familiar with; universality and transboundary…
- Freedom of expression – Human network of users – a great tool for human development…
- The ability to change rapidly
- Trustworthy and reliable is one we have to work on; it’s got to be a core value.
Additional reporting by Andie Diemer, Eugene
Daniel, Shelley Russell, Drew Smith and Dan
Anderson
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