[Chapter-delegates] Digital sovreignty and splinternet

Thu May 26 08:06:13 PDT 2022

That depends on the definition, see:

http://www.apig.ch/Internet%202-definition.doc 

Best,

Richard

From: Joly MacFie [mailto:joly.nyc at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, 26 May 2022 17:04
To: Richard Hill
Cc: Ted Hardie; ISOC Chapters
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Digital sovreignty and splinternet

But, but. The Internet is not content. It is infrastructure and protocols.

On Thu, May 26, 2022 at 10:56 AM Richard Hill via Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

Dear Ted,

Unfortunately, national laws are such that content which is legal in some places is not legal elsewhere (e.g. selling Nazi memorabilia is legal in the US, but not in Europe). So entities may have to take steps to restrict access to content in some jurisdictions. This was first litigated in 2000, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo! 

This does not violate the UDHR or the ICCPR, because certain restrictions on speech are allowed under international law (in particular, restrictions on hate speech).

Best,

Richard

From: Ted Hardie [mailto:ted.ietf at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, 26 May 2022 16:46
To: Richard Hill
Cc: ISOC Chapters
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Digital sovreignty and splinternet

"The Internet is borderless by design" is shorthand for a set of technical characteristics of the communications enabled by the Internet.  A slightly less shorthand version might be that if we define the Internet as the reflexive set of network nodes which are reachable by IP, we can observe that this set is not congruent with or affected by national borders.  The corollary is that any node reachable by IP can offer resources or services to any or all other nodes without regard to those same borders.  That insight is what makes the World Wide Web world-wide; if you have a browser and can identify the right node, you can get the resource from anywhere.

Digital sovereignty does not change this technical characteristic, but creates a regime in which specific services must be sourced within specific regions (mostly national but sometimes at the level of supranational region).  If I could access a resource currently offered in the Netherlands but the provider must offer it to me in Portugal, the service can no longer take advantage of the Internet's characteristics.  

Carried to its extreme, this results in a splintering of the reflexive set of network nodes reachable by IP into a number of subsets.  Each subset has nodes using the same technology,  but they are no longer able to provide or access services to all the other nodes. "Splinternet" is the very short shorthand for this condition.

Whatever the shorthand, the result is bad both for the network and for its users.  At its most extreme, it could be read as a violation of Article 12 and/or Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights <https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights> .

regards,

Ted Hardie 

On Wed, May 25, 2022 at 11:08 PM Richard Hill via Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

I refer to this post which was recently brought to our attention:

https://www.internetsociety.org/action-plan/2022/digital-sovereignty/ 

I’m puzzled by this bit: “The Internet is borderless by design.”

All telecommunications are designed to facilitate cross-border communications flows. In fact, the ITU was created in 1865 precisely to facilitate the cross-border flow of telegrams, and subsequently facilitated the cross-border flow of other forms of telecommunication.

While base telecommunication protocols (e.g. TCP/IP) are indeed designed to be borderless, the physical facilities that implement the protocols, and that provide services based on the protocols, are subject to national law, for example criminal law, copyright law, etc. (Recall that offline law applies equally online.)

In addition, there may be telecommunications-specific regulation. Traditionally, those were heavy, and, in many jurisdictions, provided that only state-owned or authorized monopolies could provide certain services.

That ended in the 1980’s, with the introduction of liberalization and privatization.  But certain specific laws still exist. For example, in the US, CDA 230 creates a liability regime for certain Internet services that is specific to the Internet.

Names and addresses were traditionally assigned on a national basis, and this was carried over in the domain name system in the form of the ccTLDs. However, in keeping with the tenets of privatization, most ccTLDs are not state-owned, and in keeping with the tenets of deregulation, many ccTLDs are not regulated.

IP addresses are handled differently: they are assigned on a regional basis.

And Internet routing is not based on national borders. 

Here is a more detailed discussion:

  http://www.apig.ch/Internet%203-characteristics.doc 

But the most important difference regarding the Internet is its funding model for many services: monetization of personal data through targeted advertising. This has had some unwanted side-effects, see for example:

http://boundary2.org/2015/04/08/the-internet-vs-democracy/ 

  http://www.boundary2.org/2018/02/richard-hill-knots-of-statelike-power-review-of-harcourt-exposed-desire-and-disobedience-in-the-digital-age/ 

  http://www.boundary2.org/2018/10/richard-hill-too-big-to-be-review-of-wu-the-curse-of-bigness-antitrust-in-the-new-gilded-age/ 

  http://www.boundary2.org/2021/04/richard-hill-the-curse-of-concentration-review-of-cory-doctorow-how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/ 

Since the Internet now underpins most aspects of our lives and economic activities, it seems to me inevitable that governments will evaluate whether they should be more involved in its governance (e.g. by enacting data privacy laws, and/or by enforcing anti-trust law). 

Obviously there is a risk (and not just in non-democratic states) that government intervention could have unwanted side-effects. So it seems to me that it is important to provide information to governments that will enable them to make sensible decisions.

Regarding the specific issue of splintering, I fear that it’s not just the Internet that might splinter, but the world as a whole. I fear that we are moving to a new version of the Cold War which some of us are old enough to have lived through. 

Best,

Richard

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