[discuss] Boundaries and sovereignty

Sat Feb 1 18:47:18 UTC 2014

At 11:18 01/02/2014, Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro wrote:
>Imagine countries and territories fighting for over Country Code top 
>level domains. Imagine for a moment, if Brazil and Brunei were to 
>fight over something like .br .This is merely a hypothetical 
>situation as we know Brazil is assigned .br

This is the ICANN created case between Bulgaria and Brazil: 
http://www.circleid.com/posts/string_similarity_case_of_the_bulgarian_cyrillic_idn_vs_brazil_cctld/

>This adds a level of politicization if countries and territories 
>would start fighting over names placing the burden of assignment an 
>administrative nightmare. To prioritize a country over another 
>becomes political. It is complex because countries and territories 
>go through self determination, annexes which result in names 
>constantly in flux. New countries are borne, such as South Sudan or 
>former colonies become countries such as New Hebrides (former 
>condominium) to Vanuatu. You can see the change history here: 
>http://www.statoids.com/w3166his.html
>
>The ISO 3166 takes away that layer of politicization from IANA. As 
>the burden to select which country gets which country code is 
>determined by the ISO, see: http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes
>
>Whilst there will always be conflicts over country codes, the 
>political risk is mitigated and minimised.

Salanieta,

This decision occurred in 1978 and it was for this very reason that 
there is ".uk" and not ".gb" as per ISO 3166. The idea was that each 
technology vendor could introduce its own naming plan (i.e. TLD set) 
with a resulting cacophony for the users.

This idea also prevailed in the addressing plan. This was X.121 and 
by end of 1985 the entire world was mapped with a consistent name and 
number system, except the internet (which was the sole State owned 
connected private net) where conversion between names and numbers was 
at the gateway: this conversion was symbolized by the "dot" at the 
end of the names. (*)

This also introduced the problem that we face: both sides understood 
their face of the "." quite differently.

- on the International/global side, it symbolized one of the 
equal-footed gateways to one of the many national and corporate 
connected systems 
(<http://intlnet.org/INTLHIST.HTM>http://intlnet.org/INTLHIST.HTM) of 
the world's global system.
- on the Internet it was the symbol of their global namespace that 
their technology was first intended to support (IEN 48).

This introduced a political split between two different logics, and 
not the technical union of two different naming and numbering 
syntaxes as was intended. This is because Tymnet was then acting as 
the MS international registry:
- on behalf of the FCC for all the US operators for the naming and as 
per OSI global standards for the addressing.
- and tacitly for the rest of the world as having provided the 
technology of 100% of the initial international liaisons.

At that time, the US was very active at the CCITT (ANSI, BBN) pushing 
for the CCITT (ITU) OSI model in order to stabilize an equal-footed 
MS approach among communications leaders (States, Manufacturers, 
TransNational Corporations). Users were represented by the fact that 
Tymnet was a user support oriented company and that the actual 
registry was maintained by the Intlnet non-profit. This was roughly 
the situation that the I*coalition is trying to restore.

The technical analysis of what spoiled it for merchant/political 
motives (**) and why political moves where influential (***) tells us 
what we have to do.

Basically, I see two key lessons there for us:

1. we did not go deep enough in the e-empowerment anchoring. France, 
which was the logical leader, went deep enough with the Telematics, 
but the Minitel was a terminal, not a client and certainly not a 
peer. WSIS gave us the clue: the information society MUST be people 
centered IF it was going to work.

2. cyclades and internet were architectural proofs of Pouzin's 
catenet concepts. This concept was (as IEN 48 shows it) twofold: 
global internetting and multitechnology oriented. Cyclades was closed 
in 1978 when Tymnet started deploying the multitechnology support on 
a global basis. The former Cyclades team pursued its BBN/Telenet 
alliance in order to finalize the catenet architecture as a mature 
networking standard that eventually failed because it was overly 
telecommunication oriented, but that Tymnet also deployed on a 
worldwide basis. This gives us the second clue: multi-interuse 
support is required. The network proposition MUST be trade/end-user oriented.

OpenStand (****) has ended the internet global phase of the proof of 
concept in acknowledging "the economics of global markets, fueled by 
technological advancements" and not the sole IAB vision, "drive 
global deployment of standards regardless of their formal status". 
Snowden has enforced the idea by ending the trust people had in the 
idea that the current internet system is not broken. The current 
internet is not broken, it is uncompleted. We entered in the second 
phase of the Internetting project, the phase of its second motivation 
which is to internetwork technologies, trades, services, and people. 
The focus is no longer on the hosts and ends because this part works 
and works well enough. A good example of this transition towards an 
"intertech" and then a subsequent "interuse" strata is the support of 
the internationalized domain names. We are back to the need of a 
network ecosystem that is equal footed on an MSism basis.

This is why the solution to our debate is outside of it, but 
enlightened by it. It consists in providing each person and 
utilization a full command on their relational behavior in continuity 
with their command of their decision process through their operating 
system, applications, and databases. This means, atop of the OSI 
pile, a network oriented OS continuation of Posix. For years, 
considering a Netix Posix continuation could have been at odds with 
the network stability. For many reasons, including the awareness 
embodied in this list, that is no longer the case. This is why I will 
call for a NetixBarCamp this July at the RMLL 
(<https://2014.rmll.info/?lang=en>https://2014.rmll.info/?lang=en) to 
consider the status of the art and a roadmap and the HomeRoot project 
example ("give back everyone their root's data").

jfc

NB. An example: several countries (including most US States) have 
dropped the handwriting priority at school in favor of keyboards. 
This means that the practical scripting and orthotypography will be 
decided by the most character encompassing mecalanguages. This means 
most probably the IDNA Table will become the writing table of 
reference that everyone will locally need for many purposes

(*) I found some mails that were exchanged during the organization of 
this gateway 
<http://intlnet.org/wiki/1984_Mail_exchange_about_TCP/IP_Tymnet_support_and_Gateways>http://intlnet.org/wiki/1984_Mail_exchange_about_TCP/IP_Tymnet_support_and_Gateways. 
I would be very interested in finding more, as most of our issues 
today root there.
(**) Tymnet was acquired by McDonnell Douglas which (1) did not 
understand the potential of cyberspace and (2) favored the 
Unix/Internet US military-industrial complex technology and a network 
centered vision instead of an equal footed MS one.
(***) IMHO, these political motives explain much of our political 
debate, which will lead to nowhere if we make it a priority. What we 
want is the technical stability in a non-conflicting political 
context. The technical aspects being the longer term one, as it is 
better to give them the primary feasibility attention, to check their 
societal acceptability, and then to consider their long-term 
political viability.
(****) "In this [modern] paradigm standards support interoperability, 
foster global competition, are developed through an open 
participatory process, and are voluntarily adopted globally. These 
voluntary standards serve as building blocks for products and 
services targeted at meeting the needs of the market and consumer, 
thereby driving innovation.  Innovation in turn contributes to the 
creation of new markets and the growth and expansion of existing 
markets." I could endorse that if every relational space was 
considered without having to be a global market, and if an ethical 
appeal process was included in order to avoid self-ordering 
criticality phenomena.

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