[Chapter-delegates] On exclusion (was Re: ISOC nominees must discuss ISOC's exclusion, financial support for chapters, board independence, finding waste)

[Andrew Sullivan]

Dear colleagues,

I have some reflections on Dave's posting, which I share here so that
you understand my way of thinking about these issues.  This mail does
not represent an Internet Society policy position as would be
determined by our usual PDP.

On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 11:19:03PM -0400, Dave Burstein via Chapter-delegates wrote:
> 
> *Should the majority of the Internet be effectively excluded from the ISOC
> board and leadership?* Asia, Africa, and Latin America - the global south -
> now have twice as many Internet users as the US and allies in the global
> north. (See The Color Of The Net Has Changed
> <https://netpolicynews.com/index.php/89-r/1015-the-color-of-the-net-has-changed>)
> India now has more Internet users than the US; China, about three times as
> many. 7 of 12 trustees are from the US and Canada. Only two of the twelve
> are from the global south. China is 25%-40% of the net, depending on the
> measure. The total exclusion of China is an unacknowledged policy. The
> Internet is for everyone?

I will not comment on the general issue about the country origin of
our Trustees except to note that I believe the nomcom has emphasised
this issue in the past when attempting to recruit people who will
stand to be Trustees.  I do take issue with the description of China,
however, because I think it is inaccurate.

China is not, in my view, actually 25-40% of the Internet, and I do not
think we have an unacknowledged policy.  Instead I believe we follow
an explicit policy of the Government of China.  They have decided to
use Internet protocols but to do so in a way that does not permit
independent networks to interoperate freely, in the way that the
Internet is designed.  Instead, China runs a tightly-controlled
catanet with a gateway to the rest of the Internet.  In my opinion, it
is much more similar to China Online (cf. America Online in the 1990s)
than it is to Internet access properly understood.

Sovereign governments have the right to regulate activities within
their own countries.  But we should not pretend that countries that
have explicitly chosen to prevent internetworking among independent
networks are part of the Internet.  They're not.  Internetworking
_requires_ that networks be able to announce routes: that's literally
how the inter-networking happens.  That is simply not allowed among
the networks in China, and so I think it is entirely mistaken to talk
about the Internet in China.  It's a network.  It's an online system.
But it's only kind-of the Internet, and it is drifting ever further
from the Internet.  I believe that is lamentable.  I also think it is
extremely dangerous that they are promoting this approach to
networking to the rest of the world, sometimes with considerable
success.

Furthermore, the Internet Society is not allowed to work in China.
China set up http://www.isc.org.cn/english/ as a direct attack on the
Internet Society, and it does not play by Internet Society rules or,
indeed, acknowledge the misappropriation of the Internet Society brand
inside China.

I do not believe that it would be in any way appropriate for the
Internet Society to have a board member subject to a sovereign
government that is so actively hostile to the goals and values of the
Internet Society.  I believe we do need to work to make sure the
Internet is for everyone, and that means we need to ensure that those
who are appointed to the Board of Trustees are in the legal position
to direct me to act in the best interests of the Internet, rather than
some other networking approach that is almost but not quite like the
real Internet.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
President & CEO, Internet Society
sullivan at isoc.org
+1 517 885 3587