Comment Re:What Internet Governance is really about (Score 1) 735
There've been a lot of press releases from groups like the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) about "internet governance" and similar topics, but what they're really doing is using the near-universal dislike for ICANN to accomplish other goals. Typical announcements talk about several things:
Both WSIS and WGIG have some odd bedfellows. The registrars
hate ICANN because of their perception that ICANN's methods
for expanding the number of TLDs and assigning registries
are contrary to their interests. The ITU hates ICANN because it
assigns no power to governments (and despite all other parties
that play in ITU, it is the vote of "sovereign states" that really
counts). These people are playing together because of the
old "enemy of my enemy" dictum, but it's mighty clear that
they would not play well together once the enemy was gone.
Most of the registrars would hate dealing on ITU terms
(the few state monopoly ccTLD registrars excepted).
The ITU also dislikes that all of the protocol work came out
of the IETF, rather than its own study groups. It's now working with ETSI to create what it calls "NGN" (for Next generation Network", which is really an adaptation of the work done in
3gpp and 3gpp2 for wireless (and those are largely adaptations
of IETF core protocols, and much of the actual engineering
of things like ROHC and SIP was done in the IETF). The crazy
thing is that this is really just a service overlay network that
they somehow believe will subsume the services currently
running on the bit-pipe Internet we have now (where anyone
can offer you content or services without a special deal with
the operators). There is only one way that could happen,
really--massive regulation that eliminated everything but
the operator's approved services. They could try it and watch
it fail, of course, but I personally am pretty concerned about
the attempt.
Both WSIS and WGIG have some odd bedfellows. The registrars
hate ICANN because of their perception that ICANN's methods
for expanding the number of TLDs and assigning registries
are contrary to their interests. The ITU hates ICANN because it
assigns no power to governments (and despite all other parties
that play in ITU, it is the vote of "sovereign states" that really
counts). These people are playing together because of the
old "enemy of my enemy" dictum, but it's mighty clear that
they would not play well together once the enemy was gone.
Most of the registrars would hate dealing on ITU terms
(the few state monopoly ccTLD registrars excepted).
The ITU also dislikes that all of the protocol work came out
of the IETF, rather than its own study groups. It's now working with ETSI to create what it calls "NGN" (for Next generation Network", which is really an adaptation of the work done in
3gpp and 3gpp2 for wireless (and those are largely adaptations
of IETF core protocols, and much of the actual engineering
of things like ROHC and SIP was done in the IETF). The crazy
thing is that this is really just a service overlay network that
they somehow believe will subsume the services currently
running on the bit-pipe Internet we have now (where anyone
can offer you content or services without a special deal with
the operators). There is only one way that could happen,
really--massive regulation that eliminated everything but
the operator's approved services. They could try it and watch
it fail, of course, but I personally am pretty concerned about
the attempt.
