[discuss] Questions regarding business sector participation

Tue Dec 24 10:11:44 UTC 2013

Gregory,

You are right, of course, that there are multiple business sectors. About a month ago we had a discussion around this in BASIS where we came up with a distinction not only between infrastructure providers and users but subdivided providers also into infrastructure, content, service providers etc and users into e.g. manufacturing, financial services, business consulting and other services, to name just a few. 

Personally, I have long argued that the user industries often depend on the Internet in a way that is not explicit, but that the continuing functioning of the Internet as we know it is built implicitly into the assumptions of their business models, supply chains, etc. 

While most of these businesses are largely absent from the IG space, they are nevertheless dependent on us to ensure that the Internet continues to provide those services and infrastructure stability as they have come used to. And we also need of course to guard against capture by any specific industry group just because they have an intrinsically closer relationship to e.g. the infrastructure business or the DNS system. 

Regards

Peter H. Hellmonds
<peter.hellmonds at hellmonds.eu>
+49 (160) 360-2852

On 24.12.2013, at 08:47, "Shatan, Gregory S." <GShatan at ReedSmith.com> wrote:

I think the examples you give are still users of the Internet, albeit active and sophisticated users of the infrastructure.  I didn’t intend user merely to mean those who look at screens and send/receive email.  I meant to distinguish users (no matter how) from infrastructure providers and related service providers.  Applying this paradigm to railway shipping, the railroads, freight yards, logistics companies are “infrastructure” while the companies sending and receiving goods on the railroad are users, no matter how dependent they are on rail shipping or how sophisticated they are at using the rail system.

From: Nick Ashton-Hart [mailto:nashton at ccianet.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2013 2:40 AM
To: Shatan, Gregory S.; 'Avri Doria'; discuss at 1net.org
Subject: Re: [discuss] Questions regarding business sector participation

Actually, I don't think the underlying premise - that most businesses are simply users - is really true. For example, the supply chain of much of industry is now dependent upon the Internet. Many companies interface their supply chain 'hooks' into their production and logistics systems. Services, which are a majority of the developed world's economy, are tradeable because of the Internet - which means that a very large number of business are reliant upon the Internet for the delivery of their products.

That doesn't mean that industry cannot have sub-groupings to represent different sectors - and in fact this is true now, there are trade associations that focus on Internet services' issues, ISP issues, etc.

The divisions in ICANN are understandable at least to some extent - registries and registrars have different interests to everyone else on many things thanks to contractual relationship with ICANN.

"Shatan, Gregory S." <GShatan at ReedSmith.com> wrote:
I think there are fundamental differences between infrastructure providers (e.g., registries (ccTLDs and gTLDs), registrars, DNS providers and ISPs) and the general business community.  The vast majority of businesses are "users" -- they plug into the internet and take it as they find it.  They will use it to allow the rest of the world to find their website, and to conduct business and payments, and to send and receive emails, but the Internet itself is more or less a "black box."  Infrastructure providers have a fundamentally different relationship to the internet as builders and maintainers of the Internet and sellers of internet services of various types (domain names, connectivity, etc.), in addition to their "business user" relationship.  The question is how and where does those infrastructure issues, interests and concerns find representation?  These concerns are irrelevant to the rest of business (except to the extent that business, like civil society,
individuals  and every other user depends on the "black box" to work).  Furthermore their approach and desired outcomes to IG issues, interests and concerns may be significantly different from (or even diametrically opposed to) those of business users.  For these reasons, shoehorning them into "business" is an uncomfortable fit.

Of course, anytime you try to divide a complex ecosystem into 4 parts, you will have a range of views within each of those parts.  But I think this "fit" issue is a fundamentally different one, because infrastructure providers have a direct and unique relationship to the Internet that is fundamentally different from those of business users (or any other users).  While the business stakeholders can represent infrastructure providers' generic concerns as "business users" of the Internet "black box," whether and how they should represent their concerns as infrastructure providers inside the "black box" is entirely a different matter.

Greg
Shatan

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at 1net.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at 1net.org] On Behalf Of Avri Doria
Sent: Monday, December 23, 2013 9:06 AM
To: discuss at 1net.org
Subject: Re: [discuss] Questions regarding business sector participation

On 20-Dec-13 11:16, Neuman, Jeff wrote:
 Sometimes technical is also including.  But many of the infrastructure providers, including registries (ccTLDs and gTLDs), registrars, DNS providers and ISPs are left out of the mix.

For the most part, in the larger scheme of things, aren't they, for the most part, businesses.  I would think that at the scope of 1net, business would include all of these as sub-groupings and would need to deal internally with that diversity.

This is the same way that CS is now grappling with
the problem of trying to be inclusive of all perspectives and grouping of organized civil society.  Etc.

avri

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