David Post at the Volokh Conspiracy notes the Internet may be changing governance soon – disastrously:
The US government is contemplating relinquishing the last remaining vestige of its control over a vital piece of the Internet’s core technical infrastructure – the domain name system (DNS) — and, with it, the last vestige of its ability to exercise oversight over how that system evolves and is used in the future.
It is, for any number of reasons (which Danielle and I try to summarize) a very good idea; the US government’s special position in the management of key Internet resources – oops, I almost said “Internet governance”! – no longer makes any sense, and there are many reasons to support a transition placing the control over these resources into the hands of the global Internet community.
But this transition could also go very badly. How? The power that comes from control over the DNS is substantial, and, like all power, it is subject to abuse. In the case of the DNS, abuse means leveraging control over the DNS into control over the content of Internet communications. What does that look like? Well, it looks like something I warned might be coming a few months ago (see here): using control over the DNS databases to hear, and to enforce via the DNS entries, claims about the distribution of unlawful content – content that infringes (or is alleged to infringe) copyright, say, or that violates consumer protection laws, or gambling laws, or anti-pornography laws . . .
So, yes, ICANN does have its thumbs over the carotid of the Internet. And?
It is starting to look, to me, like a deal is being cooked up: one condition of handing over control of the DNS to ICANN will be its promise to set up a process to deal with copyright infringement claims through the DNS. Far from providing safeguards against this kind of mission creep, the US government may be conjuring it into existence. We will all regret that if it comes to pass.
The article is worth reading in full. I am not enough of a network expert to know if an alternative master DNS setup is possible; but the real question is how to responsibly structure such an organization such that it is blind to the content it’s transporting. It’s not clear that this is a technological question, but rather the dreaded human/political question.
