8/14/2019 The Web's Regulatory Racket - by Bret Swanson - Forbes.com - 09.17.09

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by Bret Swanson 09.17.09

As the fruits of the Internet spread across the world,global bureaucrats salivate. Private-sector

leadership of the Net has created history's mostpowerful platform for commerce and culture. Butwith a key guardian document of a free 'Net set toexpire at September's end, this successful model isunder siege.

European Union Competition CommissionerViviane Reding has called for a "G-12 for theInternet" to make "recommendations" on theoperation of the Internet. Soviet-trained HamadounTour, secretary-general of the InternationalTelecommunications Union, wants governmentsand his U.N. agency to exercise more "muscle" on

the Internet. And Russia and Brazil have madesimilar noises.

But noise is the problem. Just as electromagneticnoise can degrade a communications signal,political noise can similarly encumber an economy

in this case, the global digital economy.

Sept. 30 will mark the end of the Joint ProjectAgreement. Stretching back in several incarnationsover the last decade, the JPA is a compact betweenthe U.S. Department of Commerce and the InternetCorp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN),the California nonprot that administers domain

names and IP addresses, essentially the digitalmap and logical space of the Internet. Instead ofinjecting politics into cyberspace, the modest U.S.role has shielded the Net from would-be meddlers.But as America's mostly hands-off stewardshipwinds down, what mischief might October bring?

The rise of the Net is a story of scientists andengineers cooperating on technical challenges, andof private companies deploying hundreds of billionsof dollars worth of network infrastructure. Yes, theembryonic Net dawned as a Pentagon ARPAproject, and many government scientists have

contributed along the way. But the framework andfunction of the Internet's logical layer remained

almost totally free of politics. The Internet was builtand is now operated by private companies.

How has the world fared under the existing model?In the 10 years of the Commerce-ICANN

relationship, Web users around the globe havegrown from 300 million to almost 2 billion. WorldInternet trafc blossomed from around 10 milliongigabytes per month to almost 10 billion , a near1,000-fold leap. As the world economy grew byapproximately 50%, Internet trafc grew by100,000%. Under this decade of private sectorleadership, moreover, the number of Internet usersin North America grew around 150% while thenumber of users in the rest of the world grewalmost 600%. World growth outpaced U.S. growth.

.com .net .edu .us .cn.eu .whatever

Can we really digest this historic shift? In this briefperiod, the portion of the globe's population thatcommunicates electronically will go from negligibleto almost total. From a time when even the eliteaccessed relative spoonfuls of content, to a time inthe near future when the masses will access allrecorded information.

These advances do not manifest a crisis of Internetgovernance.As for a real crisis? See what happens whenpoliticians take the Internet away from theengineers who, in a necessarily cooperativefashion, make the whole thing work. Criticism ofmild U.S. government oversight of ICANN is hardlyreason to invite micromanagement by an additional190 governments.

There is a crucial analogy between the physicallaws that govern communications technologies andthe man-made laws that govern people. It takes thepure, noiseless glass of optical ber to carry laserlight around the world. The Internet Protocol's

simple, common language allows billions of diversedigital devices to plug into a universal platform.Likewise, simple and stable political rules areessential for the transmission of unpredictable butproductive human endeavor. Too much noisedisru pts the signa l, wheth er an Internettransmission, business activity or political speech.

There are, of course, legitimate disputes overtechnology and language. And groups like theU.N.'s Internet Governance Forum have beencreated to hash out these important matters.ICANN, too, has been slow to fulll one of its keymandates: to solidify the path to permanent private-sector leadership so no government, foreign ordomestic, can exert undue inuence. This is thechief problem that must be addressed by Sept. 30.

The rush of international organizations andgovernments seeking more power over Internetgovernance threatens to destabilize the Internet'score. Plunging this crucial global resource into thepolitical realm would fragment the Internet andundermine one of its fundamental virtues universality. Instead of empowering global users,the politicization of the Net could substituteposturing and populism for sound technology, severglobal connectivity, and stie commercial andcultural creativity. The Internet itself is the truemultilateral instrument of diversity and innovation,not the politicians groping for control in its name.

Are the dual ascents of globalization and theInternet a coincidence? Could we have brought 500million Chinese and Indians out of desperatepoverty without the digital platform that connectsthe world? Would we know of the deep but hiddenthirst for reform in Iran? In the years ahead, whatfurther economic and civic fruits might the Internetyield?

We can only hope a free Internet lives so we mightfind out.

Bret Swanson is president of the technology

research and strategy firm Entropy EconomicsLLC .

The Web s Regulatory Racket