Those of us who went through the crypto-wars will see a lot of similarities between the situation we faced then and now. The main difference being that in the mid 1990s very few people understood what the net was really capable of, it was seen as merely a way to make money. Those who were paying attention knew that it was rather more important. The 1979 revolution in Iran spread through the then new medium of the compact cassette. The 1989 collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was in large measure driven by Western television signals leaking over the border. Long before that, the development of the printing press led to the Reformation, nor is it coincidental that Benjamin Franklin and many other revolutionaries were in the business of print. The Web is not the first media technology to give the masses unrestricted access to information. The unprecedented feature of the Web is that it gave everyone a voice. Many if not most of the people involved in the development of the Internet and the Web have understood this from the start. And the potential political consequences of the Web have been rather better understood in government circles than many imagine. What has changed in the years since the last ITU rechartering event is not the understanding of the potential consequences of the net but the fact that the Iranian election protests of 2009 and the Arab Spring have made them imposible to ignore. Russia and China have been pushing for government regulation of the net for years. They even agreed a treaty under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which commits the parties to work together to stop such things as 'Information terrorism' which is their term for freedom of speech. There is nothing new in their ambitions. Russia has made plain that it will make no effort to control Internet crime originating in Russia unless the US and European powers agree to censor publications critical of Putin. But there is also another side to the complaints made by Russia, China and others, a complaint that US dominated organizations like ICANN and the IETF do not allow sufficient credit for in my view. The current governance structure of the Internet does more than merely prevent other governments from gaining control of the Internet, it grants the US an extraordinary degree of control. Or at least they give the appearance of doing so on paper if the checks and balances on that control are not sufficiently understood. As with the crypto-wars there is a very real risk of the governments getting together to make a 'grand bargain' and as with the crypto-wars the grand bargain will almost certainly mean absolutely nothing. Legislation through treaty making has in recent years become a major threat to the concept of democracy. Rather than present a controversial proposal to their legislature, various governments will propose it in closed session of an international treaty making process which the legislature 'must' then ratify as a fait accompli. Unlike in the crypto-wars, there is no risk that the US government delegation will engage in this type of back-stab operation. But there is a very real risk that other governments will. There are many governments would prefer a police-friendly state to an open Internet and there is a very real risk that they will accept treaty clauses that 'require' them to bring the net under direct government control. It may be that these governments will succeed in such a move, but it is also possible if not rather likely that the attempt would provoke the civil unrest that they are attempting to suppress. Mubarak's government hoped that shutting down the Internet would shut down the protests. Instead it had the opposite effect as the keyboard warriors were forced to leave their homes and go into the streets to find out what was happening. Contrary to the view expressed to me by one IESG member, there is no outcome here that is 'unthinkable'. Diplomats will almost invariably tell you that their has no choice but to sign whatever treaty they are working on. Looking at recent treaty actions in the US Senate it seems highly unlikely that any treaty agreed in Dubai will make it out of committee, let alone receive the super-majority required for ratification regardless of what the treaty actually states. Moreover, the diplomats are not the policy makers. If the WCIT process results in an over-reach, governments can and will leave the ITU. If people believe such outcomes are unthinkable, they have not been paying attention. What should be unthinkable is the idea of sending planes over a country to drop bombs on cities. Such actions are rather commonplace in our world. The reason that institutions such as the ITU persist is not that it is unthinkable that any government would leave but that the people who lead such organizations dare not commit to any act that might provoke such an action. The most likely outcome from Dubai therefore is an ambiguous document that the reader can interpret as maintaining or overturning the status quo as they choose. The only real area of concern being the extent to which that document gives a pretext for government network takeovers. My personal view is that it does not make a difference whether the document does or not since the governments who are attempting to control the net in their country will do so irregardless of what the treaty says, nor is the text going to dissuade anyone from protesting. Rather than being overly concerned about the diplomatic situation, we should instead focus on the ways that the technical architecture of the Internet creates control points that are vulnerable to capture and consider ways in which those control points can be made capture-proof. The Internet has three separate potential control points: The IP Address registry, the DNS name registry and the various registries for protocol features. All three are an example of a Tinkerbell ontology: They exist for no other reason than that people believe in their existence. ICANN DNS names have relevance because there is a consensus that they are so, new.net DNS names are irrelevant because there is consensus that they are so. Rather than attempting to maintain the status quo, we should instead identify what are the necessary concerns. We need to protect the openness of the Internet. We do not need to perpetuate the existence of ICANN, IANA or the RIRs as institutions. Maintaining the institutions may be a means of protecting the open internet but we should be prepared to walk away from them if necessary and in particular we should not defend their monopoly status at all costs. Consider for example the maintenance of IPv6 address space. Why does this have to be an IANA monopoly? The only necessary requirements for IPv6 address space is that the same space is not assigned to two different parties and we do not run out. If the ITU-T wants to also be in the business of handing out IPv6 address names then give then a /21 or a /16 and tell them to go party. No really, choose your battles. Having a duopoly in address assignment is better than a monopoly. If Russia, China et. al. decide that they want to do that and tell IANA what prefix they are going to be using, they can make it a fait accompli in any case. The DNS is a rather more complex consideration. In that case I see a fracture as all but inevitable. But that should not be a cause for panic. The fracture that I anticipate is at the root rather than the leaves. There will be only one example.com but people who live in different countries will arrive at it in rather different ways. New.net was a quixotic proposition when advanced by a private corporation, when advanced by a large nation state it is not. Rather than try to defend ICANN at all possible costs, I will be investing my energies in working out ways to mitigate the effects of the split. In conclusion, there is an issue here but not a cause for the panic that many seem to suggest. The situation is certainly complex, but not one that is too complex for mortal understanding. What I am certain of is that we do not need to rely on the counsels of those who tell us that the situation is so complex that we need not worry our little heads about it. In fact I believe the exact opposite: The openness of the net will only be secured through frank and open discussion of all the issues. [1] http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/one_item_and_teasers/trty_act.htm -- Website: http://hallambaker.com/