Internet Governance and Regulation

Topic owners: Vera, Arjun

Much like open-source software, the Internet can be considered a collection of servers, pipes, and users spread all over the world. How does it keep working? One easy answer is that the United States (through actors public and private) just sort of gets its way. This isn't really a satisfying answer descriptively or normatively, though. With the rest of the world contributing more and more to the Internet as a whole, is it time for a change?

Guests: Susan Crawford?

Some questions:

What are the options for internet governance? An ad-hoc system, or something more formalized? What should the regulations cover - everything or only the vital areas, such as cybercrime and technical standards? Should it be local or international in scope? --AMehra 19:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

International Regulation

• The UN's World Summit On the Information Society has come up with the Internet Governance Forum to help tackle some of these issues - is this a good idea?

Possible reading: The Path Towards Centralization of Internet Governance Under the UN - a series of three essays recently published on the Berkman Center's Publius Project.

Possible speakers: staff members of the IGF? --AMehra 18:52, 6 December 2008 (EST)

Local/national Regulation

• Efforts by the FCC - in conjunction with and separate from the UN efforts.

Possible speakers: Kevin Martin --AMehra 19:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Rights of Minors

Minors have long been recognized to not have free speech rights that are co-extensive with adults. But with the Internet, how do we define those rights? And what, if any, regulation should the government enact to protect minors on the Internet, while also respecting their rights?

There are two traditional categories where minors' free speech rights have been restricted. The first is with respect to pornography, the second with respect to the school environment. These two areas raise different concerns.

Jgruensp (fun topics, all: we could invite the CSIS commission which has been grappling with all these issues and is desperate for legal guidance)

Internet Dependency (What if someone somehow takes down the net?)

Dan Ray (maybe)

We have come to rely on the Internet for almost every aspect of our lives. If the Internet somehow suddenly went "down" (through either a cyberattack or physical attack on key backbone pieces of infrastructure), the result would likely be calamity, as well as hordes of people who wouldn't know what to do with themselves. Can we even imagine what the world would look like the morning after such an attack if it was successful? Are we wrong to rely so heavily on a single tool whose detailed technical inner workings so few people truly understand? Are we setting ourselves up to be ruined when someone compromises this tool? What about the tradeoffs between keeping the Net free+open vs. regulation to ensure that it retains its functional integrity in the face of attack?

We can invite Dan Kaminsky, who recently discovered a flaw in the inner-workings of the Net that could have caused some serious damage. See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/technology/09flaw.html?hp (or we could invite will smith, who defeated the aliens in independence day with the help of cyber-attack).

• I vote Will Smith. Unless everyone wants to get into the desirability of a DNS nonce of sufficient bitlength, in which case... no, still Will Smith. That guy's an elliptic curve cryptography fiend. However, if we do want to talk about design issues in the internet, and the failure of the marketplace to handle externalities created by poor software design, leading to the perpetual crisis of bugginess, we could do worse than to invite Daniel Bernstein. Plus, as an added bonus, he saw the issues that gave rise to the Kaminsky bug coming down the pike a long time ago. --Jgruensp

Internet as International Conflict Zone

Dan Ray (maybe)

In light of the recent events in Estonia, have we finally reached the long-predicted era of cyberwarfare? Is cyber-espionage a counterintelligence problem or something more? (This article from the National Journal talks bluntly about perceived threats, although is perhaps a little too willing to attribute causation of certain events to Chinese actors on dubious evidence)

Internet as an Extension of National Infrastructure

Dan Ray (maybe)

It is easy to define the borders of the nation in realspace (ports, airports, land crossings), and the tradeoffs between private propertyholders' rights and national security interests (making those tradeoffs? Not always so easy). But what are the national borders in cyberspace? Given the dangers described in the two topics above, what kind of role, if any, should national government play in monitoring and regulating major backbone communications links? What about the networks of semi-public industries such as utilities? Private corporations that store government secrets? Financial systems? Other types of privately owned networks?

--Jgruensp 23:54, 30 November 2008 (EST)