[discuss] shifts in IANA/accountability discussion: your thoughts?

Fri Jun 20 20:58:59 UTC 2014

I take the subway -- costs about $120.00/month.  No free ride here.  As for what I pay to live -- rent, food, clothing, medical insurance, etc. -- it adds up.  As for free speech and the air I breathe (far cleaner than it was 20 years ago, for regulatory and technological reasons), I pay a lot in city, state and federal taxes.  If I were somewhere else, maybe I wouldn't be paying those taxes, but I might not have free speech or reasonably clean air.

Maybe there is a model where end-users pays nothing for internet access (and nothing for a device with which to access it?).  I haven't heard anything coherent about what that model might be. All we've heard is what it isn't.  When the idea was floated that it would be paid for by the government (i.e., by taxes on the end-users), we were told that wasn't the idea.  I'm still waiting for an explanation of "free" internet.  Until I hear otherwise, I will put "free" internet in a class with perpetual motion machines and alchemy.

The last sentence is just a string of falsehoods and invective -- no need to reply to that.

-----Original Message-----
From: Michel S. Gauthier [mailto:mg at telepresse.com] 
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2014 4:44 PM
To: Shatan, Gregory S.; 'Andrew Sullivan'; discuss at 1net.org
Subject: Re: [discuss] shifts in IANA/accountability discussion: your thoughts?

Greg,

what do you really talk about? Can you please tell us how many turnpikes you pay from home to office?. How much do you pay for free speech? How much do you pay for the air you breadth? How much do you pay to live?

The internet access is to be accepted as a human right. Some time ago Vint Cerf published an RFC "The internet is for everyone" - he did not say "for everyone who pays". More simply Gene Gaines says "the internet is everyone".

How many years do you think "your" internet for the rich complicate model, hijacked by ICANN, and money making lawyers employers, will survive in front of the people's technically meshed digitalities?

M S G

At 16:52 20/06/2014, Shatan, Gregory S.wrote:
>A world in which a "free" internet is run by sovereign governments 
>(and/or an intergovernmental organization like the ITU) and paid for by 
>taxes or licenses on users seems like a huge step in the wrong 
>direction, and one that many from all sectors have worked hard to avoid.
>
>Would we then have to "nationalize" all the ISPs, registries and 
>registrars?  Or would they be paid by the government as private contractors?
>
>Or is the "Global North" suppose to subsidize the "Global South"? 
>(Putting aside significant issues of poverty and access in the Global 
>North.)
>
>This sounds like a nightmare and completely unworkable, to boot.
>
>Maybe more radical changes are needed -- are we going to eliminate 
>money and nations and have companies build free infrastructure and 
>provide free services for their unpaid workers who will go get free 
>food from unpaid farmers (who get free feed and equipment, etc.)?  
>Communes may work well on a small, voluntary scale, but a global 
>commune is the stuff of fantasy.
>
>Greg Shatan
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: discuss-bounces at 1net.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at 1net.org] On 
>Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan
>Sent: Friday, June 20, 2014 1:36 AM
>To: discuss at 1net.org
>Subject: Re: [discuss] shifts in IANA/accountability discussion: 
>your thoughts?
>
>On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 09:37:16AM -0700, David Conrad wrote:
> > it most definitely is not free. Pretending otherwise is a waste of 
> > time.
>
>I think David and I really agree, but because it's convenient to hang 
>this on his message, I observe that it is not a waste of time,
>exactly: it has worked well for many people.
>
>For instance, to return to the original analogy, the "public roadways"
>are paid for not only out of the public purse; but also in pollution, 
>despoiled lands, suburban sprawl, long commute times, lost communities, 
>and so on.  Economists call that sort of stuff "externalities", because 
>the market-feedback model doesn't capture them (sometimes well, 
>sometimes at all).  We all pay -- even those who aren't using the 
>roadways directly, and indeed even those who have tried to structure 
>their lives to avoid directly contributing to the trend of expanding 
>road networks.
>
>Now, it might well be that some technologies -- automobiles seem to be 
>one of them, and so perhaps is the Internet -- are so pervasive that 
>one nearly can't avoid them (at least indirectly -- how did you get 
>your food?).  But pretending that all these costs are not there
>-- for instance, pretending that you get to have gmail without 
>accepting the entire user-as-product model implicit in the market 
>dynamics of Google
>-- is an excellent way to make foolish policy.  Those who wish to claim 
>that "the Internet" needs to be available without cost in money either 
>need to come up with an accounting system for all these other costs 
>that does not boil down to money (there's a raft of cranky 
>sub-disciplines in economics just for this problem) or else need to 
>face up to reducing the other costs to money.
>
>If the (subsequent?) claim is that one ought to get these money costs 
>paid for from the public purse, that seems to me to be, at the very 
>least, in need of some argument stronger than saying, "Human right!
>Human right!"  I'm not sure how much taller the Benthamite stilts could 
>get and still be inside the atmosphere.
>
>Best regards,
>
>A
>
>--
>Andrew Sullivan
>ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
>
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