[WSIS CS-Plenary] [governance] Thinking about

[Vittorio Bertola]

Il gio, 2004-09-16 alle 15:59, Enrique A. Chaparro ha scritto:
> A copyrighted standard (in fact, copyrighted text and reference
> code describing the standard) does not prevent the creation and
> use of a program implementing it.

It depends. If the only way to have access to the text describing the
standard is to pay hundreds of dollars|euros|whatever, and copyright
prevents you from having access to that text in other ways, then
copyright might also be in the way of free implementation of the
standard (this often happened with ITU standards, by the way). It
certainly is a minor constraint if compared to the dangers of a patented
standard (see the recent Sender ID issue...) but it still is a
significant constraint if you're accessing the standard for
non-commercial purposes.

I think all Internet standards should be freely reproductible (which, as
you know, does not mean copyright-free, but rather subject to a free
license).

> at the same time, I insist that `Internet governance' (in the sense
> of a system of mandatory transnational rules, a set of bodies 
> responsible for enforcing such rules, and a public oversight
> system) should be limited to whatever is necessary to ensure
> smooth traffic of IP packets from source to destination. 

I and many other people that usually attend ICANN meetings spent a good
part of the last year opposing a new service by VeriSign, the operator
of the .com / .net registry, named SiteFinder. This service altered the
way DNS works (DNS is the distributed database system that allows you to
know which server corresponds to a given domain name) so that whenever
you asked for a non-existing domain name, the registry would tell you
that its own servers were hosting that domain name, and (if you were
using the Web) present you with a search page.

This service *did* alter substantially the route of IP packets, but also
had deep consequences in terms of:

- business (other search engine companies were prevented from supplying
the same service at the user level);

- marketing (VeriSign could survey users' behaviour and mistypings);

- privacy (VeriSign could intercept data or send cookies to users who
never wanted to reach their servers);

- trademarks / personal names protection (VeriSign was actually showing
a web page for strings that could have been under other people's
control);

- network stability (plenty of applications that relied on the original
behaviour of the DNS instantly ceased to function);

- technology (other innovations were prevented, and the fundamental
principle of layer independence was broken);

etc... - all of this on a global scale.

In your opinion, is regulation of such a service part of "Internet
governance", or not? 

I don't think you can part some of these aspects from the others, and
discuss them separately in different places. I have been spending years
on this subject now, and I am more and more convinced that it's almost
impossible. And by multiplying the forums you make it more difficult for
the less organized and financed actors - that is, us - to coherently
lobby for a global result.

> In that
> sense, standards including patented technologies prevent the
> required `smoothness', but copyright and trademark issues are
> completely out of scope (and should be dealt with elsewhere).

Where? At WIPO? :-/

I see the WGIG as a huge chance to quietly start a new governance model
on information society matters, starting from a tiny bit and then moving
up towards places where we never had a say, such as WIPO or WTO. I think
that, if the final composition of the WGIG is actually satisfactory and
balanced, and if we are smart enough to exploit this opportunity, we
have plenty to earn from this adventure.

> Regards from the Far South (and thanks for an enriching discussion)

Thank you too :)
-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu.org
(((f1tt3r h4pp1er))) @ http://tmp.bertola.eu.org/