The Web's Regulatory Racket - By Bret Swanson - Forbes.com - 09.17.09

The Webʼs Regulatory Racket by Bret Swanson 09.17.09

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

As the fruits of the Internet spread across the world, global bureaucrats salivate. Private-sector leadership of the Net has created history's most powerful platform for commerce and culture. But with a key guardian document of a free 'Net set to expire at September's end, this successful model is under siege.

How has the world fared under the existing model? In the 10 years of the Commerce-ICANN relationship, Web users around the globe have grown from 300 million to almost 2 billion. World Internet traffic blossomed from around 10 million gigabytes per month to almost 10 billion, a near 1,000-fold leap. As the world economy grew by approximately 50%, Internet traffic grew by 100,000%. Under this decade of private sector leadership, moreover, the number of Internet users in North America grew around 150% while the number of users in the rest of the world grew almost 600%. World growth outpaced U.S. growth.

European Union Competition Commissioner Viviane Reding has called for a "G-12 for the Internet" to make "recommendations" on the operation of the Internet. Soviet-trained Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union, wants governments and his U.N. agency to exercise more "muscle" on the Internet. And Russia and Brazil have made similar noises. But noise is the problem. Just as electromagnetic noise 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 Project Agreement. Stretching back in several incarnations over the last decade, the JPA is a compact between the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the California nonprofit that administers domain names and IP addresses, essentially the digital map and logical space of the Internet. Instead of injecting politics into cyberspace, the modest U.S. role has shielded the Net from would-be meddlers. But as America's mostly hands-off stewardship winds down, what mischief might October bring? The rise of the Net is a story of scientists and engineers cooperating on technical challenges, and of private companies deploying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of network infrastructure. Yes, the embryonic Net dawned as a Pentagon ARPA project, and many government scientists have contributed along the way. But the framework and function of the Internet's logical layer remained

.com .net .edu .us .cn .eu .whatever Can we really digest this historic shift? In this brief period, the portion of the globe's population that communicates electronically will go from negligible to almost total. From a time when even the elite accessed relative spoonfuls of content, to a time in the near future when the masses will access all recorded information. These advances do not manifest a crisis of Internet governance. As for a real crisis? See what happens when politicians take the Internet away from the engineers who, in a necessarily cooperative fashion, make the whole thing work. Criticism of mild U.S. government oversight of ICANN is hardly reason to invite micromanagement by an additional 190 governments. There is a crucial analogy between the physical laws that govern communications technologies and the man-made laws that govern people. It takes the pure, noiseless glass of optical fiber to carry laser light around the world. The Internet Protocol's

simple, common language allows billions of diverse digital devices to plug into a universal platform. Likewise, simple and stable political rules are essential for the transmission of unpredictable but productive human endeavor. Too much noise disrupts the signal, whether an Internet transmission, business activity or political speech. There are, of course, legitimate disputes over technology and language. And groups like the U.N.'s Internet Governance Forum have been created to hash out these important matters. ICANN, too, has been slow to fulfill one of its key mandates: to solidify the path to permanent privatesector leadership so no government, foreign or domestic, can exert undue influence. This is the chief problem that must be addressed by Sept. 30. The rush of international organizations and governments seeking more power over Internet governance threatens to destabilize the Internet's core. Plunging this crucial global resource into the political realm would fragment the Internet and undermine one of its fundamental virtues – universality. Instead of empowering global users, the politicization of the Net could substitute posturing and populism for sound technology, sever global connectivity, and stifle commercial and cultural creativity. The Internet itself is the true multilateral instrument of diversity and innovation, not the politicians groping for control in its name. Are the dual ascents of globalization and the Internet a coincidence? Could we have brought 500 million Chinese and Indians out of desperate poverty without the digital platform that connects the world? Would we know of the deep but hidden thirst for reform in Iran? In the years ahead, what further economic and civic fruits might the Internet yield? We can only hope a free Internet lives so we might find out. Bret Swanson is president of the technology research and strategy firm Entropy Economics LLC.