At 06:58 11-08-2012, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
Traditionally, and still in some countries, the telecommunications
monopolist *is* the government, so defending the monopoly is directly
in the government's financial interest. In other countries, where
there's still a de facto monopoly, that monopolist is very good at
political lobbying. So in both those types of country, the vested
interest drives the government position. Add that to the governments
that want central control and/or monitoring of information, and you
get a strong bloc of political support for standards and regulations
that support monopoly, control, and eavesdropping.
Yes.
Nowadays some governments only own a share of the telecommunications
monopoly. Other operators, for example some companies who are part
of the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (
http://www.etno.be/Default.aspx?tabid=1239 ), have a financial
interest in these monopolies.
The US does not need central control because most of the content
accessed by its users is internal traffic. It's easy to apply local
laws. The EU can also use its laws on a country basis. Revenue
which is a significant incentive for content providers. Advertising
revenue per user for a one content provider is as follows:
US/Canada $9.51
EU $4.86
Asia $1.79
Other $1.42
Here is a rough estimate of users for one content provider:
US 158,758,940
Brazil 54,902,560
India 51,925,180
UK 37,569,580
France 24,345,920
Italy 21,822,640
Canada 17,474,940
Spain 16,075,560
Egypt 11,513,720
Russia 5,560,080
Romania 4,928,100
Tunisia 3,107,040
Libya 608,380
China 520,780
Uganda 444,560
If tomorrow Italy decides to adopt a "sending party pays" model it
may still be financially viable for the content provider to remain in
that market. It may not work that well for Uganda.
If tomorrow Libya decides that it would be in its interest to control
access to the Internet, operators can route around the problem as we
all know that's how the Internet works. Well, not really, if most of
the traffic passes through one international gateway. You can send
traffic over port 443 to prevent eavesdropping as that port is
secure. Well, not really, if the user already trusts the wrong SSL
certificate.
If you are on an Internet governance soapbox you might as well talk
about how the US is evil and it should not be the only country
running the Internet. You might also want to add that having only 13
root nameservers is all part of a conspiracy and that the IETF must
fix that. Obviously someone must be running this Internet thing or
else you will have to review your belief system.
At 07:56 11-08-2012, John C Klensin wrote:
Remembering that there is no such thing as a Sector Member from
a non-Member country, someone who was very cynical about these
things might even suggest that the most effective way to get the
ITU out of the Internet would be to have them pass these
measures in their most extreme form with the medium-term result
of wrecking their budget and, with it, their ability to
function. Or one might speculate that is the reason why ITU's
Yes.
A form of that risk exists whether such treaties are created or
not. If a country considers it sufficiently necessary to its
national interest to withdraw from the Internet and adopt a
different and non-interoperable set of protocols, it will almost
certainly do so with or without approval from Geneva. I believe
we should make that process as easy as possible for them,
designing things so that they can't hurt others when they do so.
Countries who isolate themselves from contemporary
communications technologies have not been treated well by
history, economics, or their own populations.
Yes.
We also should not discount some possible advantages: for
example, the withdrawal of a few selected countries from the
Internet and enforced requirements there to use only
non-interoperable protocols could do wonders to reduce the
amount of malicious spam introduced into the network. :-(
There are advantages in everything.
At 08:11 11-08-2012, Dave Crocker wrote:
[1] The IETF-based characterization of this was by Marshall
Rose: With enough thrust, pigs /can/ fly.
FWIW the original statement was different.
At 08:13 11-08-2012, Carsten Bormann wrote:
(That's also what you choose your leadership for.
If we don't like the outcome, we can always decide not to re-elect Russ :-)
I am taking bets on who will be the next IETF Chair. :-)
In traditional telecommunications the cost of sending one MB of data
is around US$30. A user can get a one GB Internet subscription for
the same price. In the traditional standards organization you don't
have a say if in the baking of the standard. In the IETF you wring
the neck of the WG Chair or Area Director if he/she does not let you
have a say.
As an anecdote, I was notified that I will be unsubscribed from an
ISOC mailing list due to technical limitations. It is unconceivable
for that to happen in the IETF.
Regards,
-sm