[governance] Substance: What issues should the WGIG focus on?

[carlos a. afonso]

Adam, the problem is not necessarily at the RIR level - although Harold
proposes (and I agree and am doing the same within LACNIC) that IP
numbers be treated as assets of the commons throughout the IP
distribution "food chain".

The real problem is within the countries, when ISP or backbone providers
either practice IP hoarding to avoid competitors in certain service
layers or sell them dearly, making life impossible for smaller providers.

Now that IPv6 means IP addresses become absolutely abundant, all the
more reason to end this once and for all.

fraternal rgds

--c.a.

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Peake <ajp at GLOCOM.AC.JP>
To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 02:47:02 +0900
Subject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] [governance] Substance: What issues should
the WGIG focus on?

> At 11:35 AM -0400 9/9/04, Harold Feld wrote:
> >I believe that we should raise the issue of the administration of
> the
> >number space within the context of the WGIG.  We should highlight
> those
> >issues in number allocation that inhibit noncommercial use of the
> Internet
> >and should press for examination of these policies with a goal of
> changing
> >them to policies that facilitate noncommercial use.
> >
> >Similarly, competitive effects of IP address allocation should be
> >examined.  Artificially inflated prices caused by allocation
> policies that
> >inhibit the development of competition hurt all users, but
> noncommercial
> >users in particular.  Artificially inflated prices are essentially a
> >regressive tax on IP allocations.
>
>
> Harold,
>
> How much do RIRs charges for a single IP address, I am pretty sure
> APNIC works out at about 1 cent / address (it might be as much as 3
> cents. US not AU.)  Where's the problem, with the RIR or ISP?  (I
> don't know, this is a genuine question!)
>
> I am very interested in finding out if RIR open policy processes
> work. Something we've discussed in other lists is how some of the
> early large allocations (the pre 1995 blocks) might be recovered.
> Some people in Japan have mentioned IP number portability as a
> problem, plenty of broadband and growing home networks (I am
> technically clueless, but I think there are kind of hard wired
> reasons why that's hard.)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Adam
>
>
>
>
>
> >Harold
> >
> >At 07:21 PM 9/8/2004, you wrote:
> >>Not sure what this means. The tendency is to allocate number space
> to
> >>large players (big ISPs which then sub-allocate to smaller
> comapnies
> >>etc.), with no possibility to have your own small subset of IP
> space
> >>as an end user (even if you are an .org with 100 computers). Is
> this
> >>what you'd like to have changed? With IPv6 this seems sort of
> >>impossible (so I am told). I think it is a pity too.
> >>
> >>On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, at 16:32 [=GMT-0400], Harold Feld wrote:
> >>
> >>>  Allow me to suggest an addition:
> >>>
> >>>  5. Access to number space in a manner that fosters
> non-commercial access
> >>>  and is competitively neutral.
> >>>
> >>>  Harold Feld
> >>>
> >>>  At 11:38 AM 9/5/2004, Milton Mueller wrote:
> >>>  > >>> "William Drake" <wdrake at ictsd.ch> 9/5/2004 12:23:56 AM >>>
> >>>  > >Can we identify five to seven leading issues and
> recommendations
> >>>  > >that we think are the most pressing with regard to IG?  These
> can
> >>>  > >be either individual issue-areas (e.g. management of
> identifiers is
> >>>  > >obviously one of them) or cross-cutting meta-level problems.
> >>>  >
> >>>  >Our forthcoming report will clarify many of these issues.
> >>>  >We (the Internet Governance Project) will be able to release
> >>>  >it in a few days. At the moment we are still subject to a
> >>>  >vetting process. Unfortunately, some of the actors are playing
> >>>  >games, either strategically refusing to comment or commenting
> >>>  >privately but telling us that they are officially "not
> commenting"
> >>>  >(but still giving us some valuable insight into what they
> think).
> >>>  >
> >>>  >Nevertheless, I can identify several areas that I think will
> >>>  >prove to be strategic:
> >>>  >
> >>>  >1. Relationship of Intellectual Property Protection to
> >>>  >Free Expression and Privacy.
> >>>  >I believe that certain international organizations and
> >>>  >perhaps some business interests will attempt to claim
> >>>  >that IPR is off the table, and that it has nothing to do
> >>>  >with Internet governance. Nothing could be further
> >>>  >from the truth. The Internet has forced a complete
> >>>  >revision of global copyright and trademark agreements
> >>>  >In a variety of venues, including
> >>>  >WIPO and ICANN, we see IPR protection issues
> >>>  >coming into direct contact with free expression and
> >>>  >privacy norms and even some scientific inquiry norms.
> >>>  >These issues should not be worked out exclusively
> >>>  >in arenas such as WIPO, which are historically mandated
> >>>  >to serve IPR interests and see IP owners as their
> >>>  >constituency.
> >>>  >
> >>>  >2. ICANN's status as a non-state actor.
> >>>  >This is a tricky one. ICANN is under attack on three fronts,
> >>  > >1) its basis in US Govt/law 2) its non-governmental nature
> >>  > >3) the degree to which it does "policy" as opposed to
> >>>  >"technical management" (which may be just an extension of
> >>>  >issue 2). There is no doubt that specific governments intend
> >>>  >to make an issue of this, and there is still the possibility
> that
> >>>  >it will overwhelm everything else. Imho, we need to defend
> >>>  >the multi-stakeholder, non-state governance of the regime
> >>>  >against the possibility that it will become more governmental
> >>>  >and regulatory, while recognizing (critically) that ICANN
> *does*
> >>>  >do policy and supporting efforts to find a model that
> >>>  >does not rely on US govt contracting. There are some even
> >>>  >deeper issues regarding the use of contracting as a global
> >>>  >governance mechanism, too much to go into here.
> >>>  >
> >>>  >3. Relationship between security/surveillance on the
> >>>  >Internet and civil liberties.
> >>>  >Here again, the narrow, issue-specific regimes focused
> >>>  >on attacking terrorism/crime tend to override other legitimate
> >>>  >concerns. We could promote a broadened dialogue
> >>>  >that forces Internet surveillance and security measures to be
> >>>  >respectful of human rights in a globally uniform way.
> >>>  >
> >>>  >4. Right to internetwork globally
> >>>  >The most fundamental issue is the hardest to convey.
> >>>  >Territorial governments must formally recognize and
> >>>  >explicitly accept the non-territorial nature of IP networking
> >>>  >and the Internet's architecture. No serious agreements about
> >>>  >Internet governance in any given area can be made until that
> >>>  >issue is dealt with. Either the potential of global networking
> >>>  >is accepted as a factual starting point, or governance
> >>>  >gravitates toward chopping it up into territorially-controlled
> >>>  >architectures and resource allocation procedures (thus
> >>>  >destroying much of the value of the Internet). It may be
> >>>  >too much to ask territorial governments to accept the
> >>>  >reality and salience of nonterritorial interconnection, but
> >>>  >that is really the choice they are faced with.
> >>>  >
> >>>  >--MM
> >>>