I have often argued both on this blog and in live discussions that spam is a non-issue, which could be addressed by the ISP industry if it really wanted to. All the tools are there. A free software like SpamCannibal could do the job for low traffic operations. For ISPs, they could link their routers to DNS backlists and drop packets on port 25 from rogue ISP IP addresses or AS’es. Once the legitimate customer of ISP X will start complaining that their e-mail are being rejected on a massive scale and threaten to switch providers, be sure that ISP X will effectively stop hosting spam operations.

Only the political/economical willingness is missing. Right now, ISPs are just making lots of $$$ out of spam. That’s selling bandwidth after all. This is what you get when an industry focuses on short term profits rather than societal/ethical behaviour. Or customers could begin to sue their connectivity provider and ask for compensation for damage. After all, spam is costing billions of dollars each year to individuals and companies, in terms of lost time and resources. Saying that the carrier is neutral and is not responsible for carrying spam is unresponsible.
If the industry does not want to auto-regulate itself and really enforce its AUPs, one day or another governemnts will have to threaten them with fines is they continue to carry spammers on their network. So, spam issues, in the WSIS context, is just a smoke screen to divert us from real issues, ie unilateral political control on key Internet resources. But spam is a popular subject, as everyone is facing it. It makes good headlines in the popular press.

Harold Furchgott-Roth is a former member of the US Federal communications Commission. He currently runs a piece in several US newspapers on the outcome of WSIS.

It is titled “How the White House Defended the Internet” and is a fun read for those of us liking stupid, one-sided arguments. It seems only Steven Forrest can find this thrilling. Bret Faussett disagrees with most of the arguments presented.
While most consider the WSIS was a success for the US, as it did not have to surrender its control on the Internet,   Furchgott-Roth nevertheless considers that the UN is a winner, too .

As the title of the paper suggests, it it clear for him the US “saved” the Internet. However, he fails to mention that the USG is currently one of the biggest threats to the stability of the Internet, given the way US national politics has rotten the ICANN debate, as witnessed by the .XXX debacle.

Europe yesterday launched the first satellite of its Galileo project, which will go into operational service in 2010. Galileo is meant to compete with the US GPS system.

So, asks the tongue-in-cheek Auerbach, why would Europe start a competing project while the US GPS system has been running fine ? Why does Europe want to move away from a US-controlled GPS ?

Just replace GPS with DNS in the above sentence. All arguments applying to GPS stand true for the DNS. It is a well known fact the the USG has been degrading the precision of its GPS system on purpose for military strategic reasons. It is not unimaginable that the same could be applied to DNS also.

It is certainly not a coincidence that the former Internet czar of the European Commission and director of the ICANN Brussels office, Paul Verhoef, is now is charge of the Galileo programme.

Luc Faubert wrote an article on the ISOC@WSIS blog, describing ITU’s Itsumi (ie not the Itsumi we know and love ), as an emperor wishing to rule the Internet. While I certainly agree that the ITU is not the best authority to rule the Internet, whatever that means, there are some statements by Luc I disagree with. There are posted here as the moderator of ISOC@WSIS does not seem to read his e-mails to approve comments.

Governance discussions whose outcome have no impact whatsoever on users represented well over half the efforts

I would not be as affirmative as Luc is regarding the fact that it does not affect users. ccTLDs, for example, have much to do with patriotic feelings. The potential disappearance of a ccTLD under the current framework is a geostrategic issue. These two issues are addressed in the WSIS agreement. Porn TLDs do shock some cultures.
So yes, DNS TLDs are a political matter. This is a major concept that the technical community does not want to take into account. It is arguing that it is politicization of a purely technical matter. Sorry guys. Technology is here to serve societal and political goals. It is not an answer in itself, but can help addressing and solving the issues.

As for the “emperor”, there has been one for years and he made it clear he does not want to share its treasure. We should make sure there is no emperor, not even a soft-handed one. And if there must be an emperor somehow, let us apply the law of constitutional monarchies, ie the king reigns but does not govern.

L’hebdomadaire Woxx a publié ce vendredi un article sur le Sommet Mondial de la Société de l’Information au travers d’un entretien avec votre serviteur. Le voici .

The Luxembourgish Woxx weekly has published this Friday an article on the World Summit on the Information Society through an interview with yours truly. Here it is. .

According to this report by Kieren Mc Carthy, the US government will keep its oversight on the DNS root zone. Apparently, the EU has received a strong message from the US Department of State which frightened some member states. As a result, they surrended to the US proposal.

At WSIS last night,  the minimal agreement reached says that a Internet governance Forum will be established within 5 years. This forum will not have any oversight function. ICANN will fundamentally remain how it is today, ie under contract with the US Department of Commerce.

There may be some changes within the Government Advisory Committee of ICANN, but nothing fundamental.

The question now is if all this UN/ITU/Unesco circus was necessary to come up with such a small conclusion. They could as well have used the money  to fund the summit and its parrallel meetings to effectively address the digital divide.

In all languages, the Tunisian regime managed to lose a chance to make itself look positive. Should we send the blue helmets to protect the Summit ? Apparently, the priviledges and immunities granted to the WSIS participants have been forgotten.

French daily’s visiting correspondent badly beaten and stabbed on Tunis street

Journalists, others at World Summit on the Information Society attacked by authorities

Dans toutes les langues, le régime tunisien a raté une belle occasion de se mettre en valeur positivement. Faut-il envoyer les casques bleus pour protéger le sommet ? Les privilèges et immunités accordés aux participants du SMSI sont apparamment lettre morte.

Une équipe de journalistes belges molestée en Tunisie

La police de M. Ben Ali est accusée de chercher à intimider la presse

Tricia Drakes and Michael Palage have posted a proposal to solve one of the issues that has repeatedly been mentioned during the WSIS consultations. Make countries find it awkward that changes to their ccTLD in the root zone file has to be approved by the US DoC.

While this proposal will doubtlessly address some of the concerns, it does not yet solve the issue with gTLDs, nor does it address the perspective of an real, independent regulatory agency for names and numbers.

A lot of discussions surrounding WSIS and ICANN focus on the oversight function of the US government. Hans Klein’s recent paper sheds a good light on the different  contracts between ICANN and the USG. However, Klein does not discuss how legitimate these contracts are.

Any undergraduate law student knows that one party can only sell, rent or otherwise grant rights to goods and services it personnally owns. So the question is fundamentally: does the US own the Internet ? Surely, the USG owns the US military network, as well as the federal and possibly the academic. But the Internet is a network of networks. Can the USG impose its oversight on networks it does not own ?   Based on this hypothesis, the  contracts between the DoC and ICANN could only apply to the USG networks. Extending these contracts to any network directly or indirectly connected to the US administration ones would be a gross legal mis-conception, especially outside the US, as US law is not applicable elsewhere in the world.

Saying that the US owns the Internet because it financed part of its development would be like pretending that the EU should have oversight on each and any GSM telephone network in the world because the standards were developed with EU research money, or that the Finnish governement holds a right on every installation of Linux because it was developed by a Finnish student on the Helsinki university computers.

Unfortunately, neither the ICANN board, nor the staff have ever questioned how legitimate these contracts are and if they should not be considered void by design, because the other party has no right to contract on a service it does not own.

Just wanted to point out to two articles which explain with simple words and concepts what the current ussues of Internet governance are.
 
One is by Andy Oram on O’Reilly. The other is by Juan Sanchez on ReasonOnline. I praise these guys for explaing complicated issues while not oversimplyfing them.