[Chapter-delegates] The Future of the Internet Governance Forum

Sun Dec 12 13:37:10 PST 2010

Signed on behalf of PICISOC.

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 6:41 PM, Fred Baker <fred at cisco.com> wrote:

>
> On Dec 11, 2010, at 10:06 AM, Grigori Saghyan wrote:
>
> > Dear All,
> >
> > my impression is that they do not know what to do. During OSCE
> (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe ) Cyber -security
> related conference in Yerevan 8-9 December 2010 Russian representative
> suggest to create a group of specialists for INFORMATION RESISTANCE. These
> group will define what we can read or watch in the Internet. Also I was
> informed that there are persons, (may be it is Wikileaks command) who are
> "propagandizes of Internet terrorism". But most interesting was that
> according to OSCE other representative "access to information is not an
> absolute right", and in some cases it is possible and necessary to limit
> this access. In this situation ISOC have to help governments, because
> government is a group of government officials with very narrow views. For
> this it is necessary to make real suggestions - how to provide free access
> to the information and at the same time prevent crime in cyberspace. How to
> help and what kind of strategy and appropriate tacti
>  cs it is possible to suggest - this is a question. Any kind of suggestion
> from NGO can be modified by government officials, necessary to be very
> careful.
>
> I agree that this is a knotty problem. From my perspective, there are two
> issues.
>
> One issue is with abusive content - content that can infect a computer with
> malware, or which is used in a botnet to attack other computers. I don't
> know of anyone that really wants to receive this stuff. The problem that
> many legal jurisdictions has had is in defining the crime; is it the
> creation of the attack or the software that implements it, the use of a
> script kiddie package to use the attack on someone, or is it being the owner
> of the compromised computer that is forwarding it? The owner of the
> compromised computer is relatively easy to find, but their only real crime
> is likely to be naivete.
>
> The other is access to content that is prohibited for other reasons. This
> might include anything from kiddie porn to political speech. On the "kiddie
> porn" end, I am very much of the opinion that it can't really be made
> impossible to access. One can also argue that at least some kinds of content
> that is prohibited in various places *shouldn't* be. That is of course a
> question that each country, by which I mean both its citizens and its
> government, needs to ponder and comment on, and I won't be so presumptuous
> as to tell you what you should think, although you can likely guess what I
> think.
>
> Permit me, if you will, to quote myself on a similar thread on
> nanog at nanog.org regarding the efforts *my* government appears to be going
> through to limit access to content.
>
> On Dec 9, 2010, at 11:22 AM, Fred Baker wrote:
> > In my ever-so-humble opinion, this is not primarily about copyrighted
> material; it is primarily about content control. Go to any country in the
> world; they have something they wish wasn't available on the net. It might
> be child pornography, pornography in general by some definition of that term
> or lack thereof, journalist reports regarding their country or certain
> events in their country, paparazzi photos of their leaders or their
> consorts, or comments or comics featuring important religious figures or
> violating local social norms. The UN Al Qua'da Task Force would like to
> block all files that originate from Al Qua'da. During the US 2004
> presidential elections, one of the candidates suggested using CleanFeed to
> suppress information about dog racing. It might be COICA, HADOPI, or some
> municipal court judge who has no idea what he is asking but makes a decree
> that <something> should go away. They are all, at the end of the say,
> talking about the same thing: "we don't care wha
>  t other countries or other people think; in our country, <something>
> should not be available on the Internet."
> >
> > Which is to say that they think that they should be in control of some
> bit of content. Content control, which they might well decry when others do
> it and respond very poorly when you point out their own actions.
> >
> > I would note that in many cases similar laws already exist in the various
> countries' legal systems. For some reason, rather than enforcing the
> existing law of the land, they feel compelled to make a new law that is
> specific to the Internet. I asked a lawyer advocating yet another such a law
> about this once, trying to find out why she thought that was necessary. Her
> response was that the existing law of the land had been found in court after
> court and jurisdiction over jurisdiction to be unimplementable and
> unenforceable; a certain famous statement about the definition of obscenity
> comes to mind, and very appropriately. "If I have the law, it gives me one
> more chance to argue the case in court". A case she freely admitted that she
> would very likely lose.
> >
> > If your boss comes to you and asks you to be part of it, my suggestion (I
> am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice) would be to first ask him
> whether he has a court order. If you are obligated to comply, you are
> obligated to comply. But in any event, I would suggest that he read
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/08/AR2010120804038.html.
> I suspect we will be reading similar articles about some 70 sites that have
> been taken down recently, and in some cases they may take whoever-did-it to
> court and win a judgement. The Internet routes around failure, and people
> who think they can control content are notorious for failing.
> >
> > That's not a political viewpoint; some of those things that folks would
> like to go away probably should. From a very pragmatic and practical
> perspective, any technical mechanism that has been proposed is trivially
> defeated. The first implementers of DKIM were the spammers. What does
> CleanFeed do with https or encrypted BitTorrent? DNS Blocking is very
> interesting in a DNSSEC world, and is trivially overcome by purchasing a
> name in another TLD - or a thousand of them. Null routes block access to
> specific addresses; move the content, and the null route is a waste of bits.
> Look at how successful we have been in erasing botnets from our memory, or
> viruses, or spam.
> >
> > The way to address these things is not to childishly wish there was a
> magic silver bullet that would make the problem go away. If it's against the
> law, and in most cases the content that folks want to control is, go arrest
> the guy.
> >
> > That's not to say that you couldn't use technologies like CleanFeed or
> Lawful Intercept, if you use them lawfully, to gather forensic evidence. But
> that's a far cry from pretending to make the content go away.
>
> So from my perspective, I would not look for technical solutions to
> political issues. If some content is illegal, the solution is not to try to
> make it disappear, because it is excruciatingly difficult to make content
> disappear. The solution is to track the people that are in violation of the
> law, and arrest and prosecute them. I do think that some laws prohibiting
> content are themselves ill-advised, and would recommend that the countries
> in question nullify those laws. But that is a whole different topic.
>
>
>
>
> > Grigori Saghyan
> > ISOC.AM
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > and some other such strange definitions.
> >
> > On 10.12.2010 16:22, Jon McNerney wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear Colleagues,
> >>
> >> In an extraordinary meeting on 6 December the United Nation's Commission
> on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) decided to create a Working
> Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) (
> http://www.intgovforum.org/) with a membership made up only of
> governments.
> >>
> >> We believe this decision sets back the model of multistakeholder
> cooperation under which the IGF was established, and contradicts the
> instructions given to the CSTD for the establishment of the Working Group
> >>
> >> The Internet Society has joined the International Chamber of Commerce -
> Business Action to Support the Information Society, the Internet Governance
> Caucus, and many other Internet, business, and civil society organizations
> in sending a letter to the CSTD, asking them to retract their previous
> decision and to establish an appropriately constituted Working Group that
> ensures the full and active participation of governments, the private sector
> and civil society from both developing and developed countries, involving
> relevant intergovernmental and international organizations and forums.
> >>
> >> Like the Internet, a multistakeholder approach has been at the core of
> the Internet Governance Forum's formation and success. We hope that Internet
> Society Chapters and Members, as well as other organizations, will join us
> in signing the letter.
> >>
> >> You may read the full letter, and see the growing list of signatories,
> and indicated your own support here:
> >>
> >> http://isoc.org/wp/newsletter/?p=2710
> >>
> >>
> >> Sincerely,
> >>
> >> Jon McNerney
> >> Chief Operating Officer
> >> Internet Society
> >> www.isoc.org
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >
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-- 
Kind Regards

Andrew Molivurae
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