Re: Internet Governance & "Producers' Cooperatives"

[Einar Stefferud <Stef@nma.com>]

My mail appears to be blocked by gtld-discuss@gtld-mou.org, so that
list may not get a copy of this.  My last contribution was returned to
me.  I am not a subscriber, so perhaps gtld-discuss@gtld-mou.org is
not a good place for me to try to hold a discussion.

The primary error of your logic is that you equate 
"No Central Control" to mean the same thing as "NO CONTROL AT ALL!"
The Internet, as is the Economy, is Edge Controlled, and that is 
why they do not work well with central control.

And, by the way, the Economy also suffers from having "culture,
investigation, human relations, cooperation, education" so the
Internet having them does not distiguish it from an Ecomomy.  

Likewise the Economy also has "childrens corruption, crime
organization, people manipulation", so this "distinction" is 
also not present.

Mr. Bill's big problem is that he is blind to his impact on the
economy, and since the Economy has no Government or Central Control,
it is up to other Governments where they do exist to deal with
monopolists, especially when the monopolists persist in denying the
reality of the fact that they have succeeded in reaching the "End Game
of Monopoly" which is known as "Antitrust".

(Why anyone would relish geting into such an end game is far beyond my
understanding, unless they have a deep conviction that they really
should be allowed to run the world.  Were I BillG, I would at this
point be diligently working to split the company into at least 3
parts, and spin them off to work their magic by competing with each
other.  Now that will produce some real involvation, in place of the
current upgrade churning.

But, in the case at hand for the DNS, the NSI monopoly was created by
the US Government (perhaps inadvertently and without intention) when
it caused or allowed the TLD namespace to be artificially restricted
to one single commercial TLD, which then turned into the .com monopoly
spawned by the market structure failure that stemmed from not having
enough competing TLD registries to provide any competiton.  So, the US
Govt is responsible for causing the market structure failure, and it
seems reasonable that they should now remedy the situation which they
caused. In short, just open up the root to competing TLD registries.

This remedy does not require a new Government of The Internet 
any more than the MS Monopoly requires a New Goverment of The Economy.

By the way, it is an interesting exercise for those who want to create
a new Internet Government, complete with constitution and preisdent
and supreme court, to also consider how they would do the same for the
econonomy!

So, this is the parallel between Internets and Economies.  Neither of
them will fare well under centralized control of any Centralized
Governance, whether it is an Internet Governance or ITU Governance, or
UN Governance, or Dictator Governance, or "democratic Governance.

Both the Internet and the Economy, which are both "edge Controlled"
rather then "centrally controlled", function best when they are
coordinated with confederations of edge located power centers.

Now, if you beleive that the Internet now needs its own centralized
Government, I suggest that you should also be lobbying for a new
Central Ecomomy Government.

Cheers...\Stef



>From your message Fri, 29 May 1998 20:24:41 +0200:
}
} Einar wrotes:
}> >
}> >I do not believe what we need is a new Government Of The Internet!
}> >
}> >Lets draw a parallel between the Global Internet and the Global
}> >Economy, both of which nobody can or should "own" in the sense of
}> >centrally controlling "it" as though it is some kind of monolithic
}> >centrally controllable thing.
}> >
}> >(edit)
}> >
}> >All historical instances of centrally controlled economies have been
}> >known to fail, and now every government that ever "owned" an economy
}> >has come to wish it did not own one.  In short, economies work much
}> >better when not centrally controlled.  So do Internets.
}> >
}> >My thesis is the the Internet is more like an economy than an
}> >enterprise, and so it is not a good idea to form up a central control
}> >mechanism for it, regardless of how you might scheme to rig
}> >representation to arrive at a "fair" arrangement to share power at the
}> >center among all the people who have an interest in one or another
}> >part of the Internet.
}> >
}> >The Internet only works when its users are free to make their own
}> >choices, and to cooperate with those the they find it useful to
}> >cooperate with.  In short, we don't need singular central control to
}> >make us cooperate.  We do it better on our own with free and open
}> >markets, which only work well when they are indeed free and open.
}
}Internet is a market yes, but also:
}
}A place for culture, investigation, human relations, cooperation, education
}...
}
}And also for childrens corruption, crime organization, people manipulation ...
}
}Please explain how can we aply your economic model to these points?
}
}No goberment means the law of the strongest, Mr. Gates will be very happy,
}anybody else?
}
}I agree that we dont need a central control just the opposite to give the
}control to the people.
}
}Best Regards,
}	Salvador Vidal