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Wall Street History
https://www.gofundme.com/s3h2w8
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10/28/2005
Berners-Lee...ICANN
Smithsonian magazine is celebrating its 35th anniversary and
among its “35 people who made a difference” over this period
was Tim Berners-Lee, the man who developed the World Wide
Web.
A group of California academics had first come up with a system
in the late 1960s that employed “hypertext” to link computers
with one another through a network, the Internet; but it was
Berners-Lee who took it a crucial step further when in the fall of
1990, he wrote some software making it easier for physicists, in
his case, to share results by interlinking documents so that all the
information could be shared. Others had thought of this, but it
was Berners-Lee who was the first to actually implement it.
[In other words, the Web is built over the Internet.]
Berners-Lee, who was working at a physics laboratory in
Geneva, Switzerland, CERN, first considered calling his work
Information Mesh, or Mine of Information, but settled on World
Wide Web. By the summer of 1991, he then made the critical
decision to put his software on the Internet for free.
But as the Web took off, there was debate within CERN on
whether or not to profit from it and it was Berners-Lee who made
another crucial decision in saying ‘no.’ As Smithsonian’s Tom
Standage writes:
“Without an open standard, (Berners-Lee) reasoned, there would
end up being several incompatible forms of Internet media,
backed by Microsoft, AOL and others. Making the Web royalty-
free made it more attractive than any proprietary alternative.
‘Without that, it never would have happened,’ he says.”
Berners-Lee, 50, is now at M.I.T. Tom Standage:
“To have changed the world once would be enough for most
inventors, but Berners-Lee still regards the Web as a work in
progress. ‘The Web is not done,’ he says. One area where there
is room for improvement is in making the Web a two-way
medium, as it was in its earliest days: the original Web browser
was also an editor (it not only displayed pages, but also let the
user alter them), but this feature was not included in subsequent
browsers as the Web went mainstream. Berners-Lee regards the
current mania for Weblogs and wikis (pages anyone can edit) as
a step in the right direction. ‘One of the things that makes wikis
and blogs attractive is that everybody is able to express
themselves,’ he says. But there is still room to make them easier
to use, he believes.”
But switching gears, a debate over who actually controls the
Internet is heating up as a UN conference in mid-November in
Tunisia picks up where a 2003 one left off.
Currently, the United States exercises control. Back in 1998, it
was decided that the system would be managed by the non-profit
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or
ICANN, which was established by the U.S. Department of
Commerce, with the headquarters in Marina del Rey, California.
ICANN oversees Web domains and addresses, a function that is
obviously critical. But other nations have been increasingly
vocal, saying one country shouldn’t control it all, which is why
many seek an international body, through a multi-lateral treaty,
within the UN.
A key EU spokesperson on the topic recently reversed previous
EU opinion and said the U.S. should be removed from its
oversight role of ICANN, though far from all European Union
member nations agree.
One controversy that came to light recently didn’t help matters.
ICANN was going to seek establishment of a separate ‘.xxx’
domain name for all pornographic sites, but the Commerce
Department withdrew its support; a sign to some the U.S.
government still exhibited ultimate control.
Of course at the same time, China has been proving it can control
what its own people see by blocking certain Web sites.
In the November / December issue of Foreign Affairs, reporter
Kenneth Neil Cukier elaborates on some of the above.
The first phase of the UN’s World Summit on the Information
Society was held in December 2003 in Geneva, at which time
China called for the creation of a new international treaty
organization, while France wanted an intergovernmental
approach but one involving only an elite group of democratic
nations. [Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe took the opportunity to
weigh in back then, calling the existing system of Internet
governance a form of neocolonialism.]
Cukier writes, “One of the most cherished myths of cyberspace is
that the Internet is totally decentralized and inherently
uncontrollable. Like all myths, this one is based on a bit of truth
and a heavy does of wishful thinking.” For example, “In four
critical areas it requires oversight and coordination in order to
operate smoothly.”
“First, there are domain names, such as www.foreignaffairs.org.
Somebody must decide who will operate the database of generic
names ending with suffixes such as ‘.com,’’ .net,’ and others
Also, someone must appoint the operators of two-letter country-
code suffixes (such as ‘.cn,’ for China).
“Second, there are Internet Protocol numbers, the up-to-12-digit
codes, invisible to users, that every machine on the network
needs to have in order to be recognized by other machines
[Ed. note: we are rapidly running out of these numbers and the
Internet needs to be upgraded.]
“Third are what are called root servers. Some form of control is
needed in the actual machines that make the domain name
system work. When users visit Web sites or send e-mail, big
computers known as root servers match the domain names with
their corresponding Internet Protocol numbers in a matter of
milliseconds. The database is the world’s most important
Rolodex. Yet due to a technical hiccup that occurred when the
network was young, there can be only 13 root servers, some of
which provide data to mirror sites around the world .Today, ten
root servers are operated from the United States and one each
from Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Tokyo.
“Fourth and finally, there are technical standards that must be
formally established and coordinated to ensure the Internet’s
interoperability .everything from how routers send traffic to
parameters so that video flows smoothly. Ultimately, the
standards let the Internet evolve.”
So you can see that with the technical underpinnings being what
they are, and despite the open network that operates like an open
society, the domain name system remains the central chokepoint
where control can be exercised.
One of the founders of the Internet itself back in the 1960s was
Jon Postel, a computer science professor at the University of
Southern California. He ended up managing the Internet for 30
years on behalf of the Department of Defense’s Advanced
Research Projects Agency, which funded the Net’s initial
development. Postel was the one who handed out domain
names, including country-codes.
Kenneth Cukier:
“By the mid-1990s, however, it became clear to the small coterie
of officials in the United States and elsewhere who were aware
of the matter that the Internet could no longer be administered by
a single individual. But who or what would replace him?”
It was the Clinton administration that then brokered a bitter
compromise and established ICANN in 1998. [It was because of
these negotiations that Al Gore would feel compelled to over-
hype his own role.] It turns out the process was so intense,
Postel suffered a heart attack and “never lived to see the birth of
the successor organization he was instrumental in creating.”
ICANN’s private-sector status has helped restrict political
interference. But in 2002, members of the Federal
Communications Commission were asked by China’s Ministry of
Information Industry why Taiwan had been granted a two-letter
domain, ‘.tw.’ That proved to be the start of the controversy that
brings us to today. And it doesn’t help that in this global debate,
many nations have used the United States’ action in Iraq as yet
another example of American unilateralism.
Kenneth Cukier:
“What would prevent Washington, they (argue), from one day
choosing, say, to knock Iran off the Internet by simply deleting
its two-letter moniker, ‘.ir,’ from the domain name system?
Surely the Internet ought to be managed by the international
community rather than a single nation.”
But as the second phase of talks is about to get underway,
recently the Commerce Department issued a short statement
saying the United States would retain its authority over ICANN.
The U.S., though, is acknowledging that countries have the right
to control their own two-letter domains, though this will still
present problems such as with Taiwan’s ‘.tw.’ Most importantly,
though, is maintaining control of the technical infrastructure and
keeping this out of the hands of politicians and bureaucrats.
Kenneth Cukier concludes:
“Ultimately, what is playing out is a clash of perspectives. The
U.S. government saw the creation of ICANN as the voluntary
relinquishing of a critical source of power in the digital age;
others saw it as a clever way for Washington to maintain its
hegemony by placing Internet governance in the U.S. private
sector. Foreign critics think a shift to multilateral
intergovernmental control would mark a step toward enlightened
global democracy; Washington thinks it would constitute a step
back in time, toward state-regulated telecommunications.
Whether and how these perspectives are bridged will determine
the future of a global resource that nearly all of us have come to
take for granted.”
Additional Source: Christopher Rhoads / Wall Street Journal
Wall Street History will return next week.
Brian Trumbore
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