Saturday, October 01, 2005
Is U.S. control over the Net a Myth?
John Palfrey: The US "control of the Internet"
John Palfrey's blog had this reaction to the Times article on the challenge to U.S. domination of the internet:
"But the notion that the United States has 'effective control of the Internet,' as reported here and elsewhere misses is badly misleading. (The NYT/IHT quote lead reads in full: 'The United States and Europe clashed here Thursday in one of their sharpest public disagreements in months, after European Union negotiators proposed stripping the Americans of their effective control of the Internet.') The US does not have 'effective control of the Internet' via its partial authority over the DNS (which, I repeat, ought to be fixed). The Internet is controlled by the interplay of an incredibly complex series of laws, code, markets, and norms, as Lawrence Lessig famously wrote in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace -- that was right in 1999, and it's right in 2005. The US no more has control over the Internet than China does, or as we as users do, or as Microsoft or Google do. The misplaced emphasis on ICANN-as-lightening-rod ensures that the more important issues of Internet governance are glossed over or never engaged in full."
John Palfrey's blog had this reaction to the Times article on the challenge to U.S. domination of the internet:
"But the notion that the United States has 'effective control of the Internet,' as reported here and elsewhere misses is badly misleading. (The NYT/IHT quote lead reads in full: 'The United States and Europe clashed here Thursday in one of their sharpest public disagreements in months, after European Union negotiators proposed stripping the Americans of their effective control of the Internet.') The US does not have 'effective control of the Internet' via its partial authority over the DNS (which, I repeat, ought to be fixed). The Internet is controlled by the interplay of an incredibly complex series of laws, code, markets, and norms, as Lawrence Lessig famously wrote in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace -- that was right in 1999, and it's right in 2005. The US no more has control over the Internet than China does, or as we as users do, or as Microsoft or Google do. The misplaced emphasis on ICANN-as-lightening-rod ensures that the more important issues of Internet governance are glossed over or never engaged in full."
