FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE Forum 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR
ENHANCED MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
03 SEPTEMBER 2014
16:30
WS 63
PRESERVING A UNIVERSAL INTERNET: THE COSTS OF FRAGMENTATION
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>> GORDON SMITH: Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I am Gordon Smith. We will begin the panel on time. I am waiting for Vint Cerf, but in respect to you all, I thought we should begin on time. So, thank you.
So, we started this project which has led ‑‑ was shared by my colleague the foreign minister of Sweden, previous prime minister Carl Built and we are going to be having a meeting of the commission in Seoul Korea in about five weeks, six weeks’ time and the main subject, the pictures are already met once. The main subject they wanted to discuss at this meeting is that of fragmentation. So it's interesting that they wanted to start. There was considerable concern around the table and there are several members of the commission that are here. There are members also of the research network that has been created here. So what we hope we could do is build up a very interesting discussion of fragment implementation but look at how this could feed into the work that the commission is doing so there will be a follow up to this.
I want to emphasize that the work that we are doing on this commission has had a considerable degree of involvement from OACD and we are also partners with Chatam Post and that has been a wonderful partnership for us, but we really are in many ways in this commission at the beginning stages.
So what I would like to do to begin, and I intended to lead off with Vint, for obvious reasons since he was there at the creation of the first leaking of computers online, to get his thoughts about what the risks and the cost of fragmentation are, but we hope that he comes in and if he does we'll make a turn in the road to go back and pick up his views. But I'm going to ask Laura DeNardis who is the head of the research part of the commission which is the critical part to say a few words here. To say a few words to begin, and we'll let Vint catch his breath.
All right. So Laura, give us your view in five minutes or so, and we're going to try to keep the intervention short as to what we're really talking about when we're talking about a fragmentation? How do you see fragmentation ask then Vint when you have caught your breath I'm going to ask you the same question.
So, Laura.
>> LAURA DeNARDIS: A statement such as I'm concerned about Internet fragmentation really concerns a lot of inherent assumptions in it. It starts by assuming that we have a universal Internet now. It assumes to some extent that fragment station is one thing with a concrete definition. It can assume that it is something problematic or something concrete.
So I think some people would argue that we don't have a universal Internet now. I wouldn't argue that, but I understand that because there are different ‑‑ whether you approach the Internet from one language or access speed or particular environment that has different filtering or blocking we have a very different experience of the Internet. Putting my engineering hat on, at the level of technical architecture, we have certain things, common protocols. We have a common name space. We have basic enter operability. We have an end‑to end architectural principal. And these qualities have created the potential for anyone to access for provision content regardless of where you are located or where the content is located ask these technical features have also provided innovators with an opening to create products and services. Or conduct commerce or citizens to interject ideas. So I do think we have the potential for neutrality at the level of technical architecture now.
Now, of course there is no guarantee that any individual innovator will succeed or speaker will be heard but the basic design has create they had potential.
National borders are completely irrelevant to this design and that is a good thing. The architecture recognizes boundaries between networks rather than borders between countries and this has also contribute to the universal lit tee.
Now on the second question is fragmentation inherently bad, that of course requires a lot of qualification on what we mean. What on earth are we talking about here. If you are responsible on knelt work responsibility in some industry you want to design in some fragmentation in some cases. Some sectors require de‑vices, but these are instances where a choice is made by the end user and that's fine. Sometimes fragmentation is also synonymous with the issue of localization and sometimes I would assert that even sometimes localization is positive. If we think about having Internet exchange points localized in more countries, that's beneficial to technical efficiency and economical efficiently and access to knowledge or even content distribution, that works, but again, these are things that distribute networks closer to users. They're not things that hold captive data close to users.
Other types of localization do hold things captive like politically motivated requirements for data localization. So these are about content control and they can have negative effects, which I'm sure we'll talk about on this panel.
I want to mention a few other points. One is that, other types of fragmentation I would suggest have not to do with content as much as with infrastructure design and interoperability. We've had, in my opinion, threats to the domain system, especially around efforts to have stronger intellectual property rights enforcement through the DNS.
We've had some business models that are base oath lack of enter operability including app media platforms and some types of models online and I would even suggest that we are starting to have some trends from open protocols.
Now for someone like me who grew up in the environment of IBM, SNA and Decknet and we just couldn't communicate with each other if you worked in different companies, then moving from that to IP has been a major development in the last 30 years. A lot of people, I have to tell my students about the proprietary online systems of 1990's. We don't want to go back to that. I would suggest we also have to watch out for the protocol.
That is my two cents there, Gordon. To me, it comes down to a question of economic and expressive liberty. Do we have a choice to connect to anyone we want? Can we access the content that we want within the bounds of law from any device and can we innovate on top of existing infrastructure? If the answer is yes, we have a degree of universality. If the answer is no, we're moving toward fragmentation.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you very much, Laura.
As I mentioned before you came in, the global Internet Governance has chosen the issue of fragmentation as the next meeting will take place in Seoul. Give us your views. You talked about this issue yesterday more than, I know, in the first session, but give us your thoughts, please.
>> VINT CERF: First of all, thank you. I apologize for being late. It's called running back and forth from the hotel to here.
Let me start out by reminding you of something. In the original ARPINET design our whole purpose was to get everything to connect to everything else. Every computer was supposed to be able to communicate with other computer. The internet design had the same objective. The theory was that you should be able to send traffic to any termination on the Internet. The theory also was if you didn't want to talk to the other guy you could throw the traffic away. We made an assumption in the early stages that it was possible for the recipient of traffic that they want to in account receive it and discard it.
This implied that there was some ability to authenticate the other party who was communicating with you to decide whether you wanted to speak with it or not.
As enterprises became part of the landscape they were not necessarily eager to have every single computer in their operation defend themselves so they came up with the idea of a perimeter defense, the firewall.
This is a weak substitute for end‑to‑end defense because it's possible to literally walk around the firewall with an infected memory stick or something, but none the less this was adopted as a common practice. It was not part of the original architecture.
So we have actually fond ourselves needing to defend ourselves against communication that we don't want. And a number of ways have been introduced to do that filtering being one of them. Identifier walls being another.
End to end cryptography where if the other side doesn't authenticate then you can refuse to communicate. But fragmentation, for me, starts out being an in ability to give myself the option of communicating with anything that I wish to, and the other guy, the freedom to say no.
Then the question is are the intervening parties between these two potential communicators delegated the responsibility and authority to filter for you. You might have chosen that your company or your ISP will do some of this filtering for you. For example, you get Email service from someone, you don't want the spam, someone else is filtering it for you. If that is your choice, and if you have the choice of who will do that, I still consider that not to be a bad problem. That's not fragmentation in its worse sense. That is a decision that you get to make. So the user got to choose whether or not there was some filtering and some diversion of traffic.
The same is true for denial of service attacks. If you don't want to or don't have the capacity to defend yourself and you wish to be protective in denial of service then you might turn to enterprise, you might turn to an ISP to defend you from that. That is not fragmentation.
What is fragmentation, from my point of view, is the denial of your ability to choose whether or not there is intervention in your Clear Channel access to any other party on the network.
It gets more complicated when national means are used without necessarily your agreement to filter and isolate you from sources of traffic or sinks of traffic that you wanted to get to.
At this point now we get, let me call it a political fragmentation of the network. This generally speaking doesn't help people because if the utility of the network was to assume that if you had an IP address you should be able to communicate with you in one if they are willing to communicate with you, if that assumption is broken then all kinds of things don't work that otherwise would work in a very casual way. And as the Internet of Things enters into this architecture, and as it is desirable to be able to talk to these devices either locally or remotely, this arbitrary fragmentation is not going to help.
If you have a house full of equipment that you want to manage and you have the means to validate yourself to you're equipment at home, you should be able to communicate. But if there are intervening parties who choose to inhibit your ability to do that, I consider that to be pernicious fragmentation.
Last point is that the reasons for intervening information the network resources to fewer political motivations to inhibit people to communicate with people freely. It is the pernicious fragmentation that I worry about most.
>> GORDON SMITH:.: Thank you very much, Vint. Let me turn to the other members of my panel. I'll start with Andy.
>>ANDY W.: Thank you, Gordon, and thank you all of you for coming here. Actually, you're part of the experiment, I think. A lot of this is evolving very quickly, ill defined as Laura suggested. We see the Internet as a huge source of growth of information so anything that gets in the way of that working concerns us.
I have some sympathy with some who say that maybe fragmentation is inevitable and is the maturing of the Internet and we should be working on adaptation mechanisms and as Vint just said some of this is by design either by policy objective or user choice so it is not necessarily bad, but I have a strong interest in having you help me try to frame what is a broad overview of this. I want to separate kind of the wheat from the chaff. Both currently and in the future.
What is fundamental here and expensive and would be a real spin in the works verses what is nice to have and maybe tolerable.
And, of course, we like to quantify it. Now, this seems like an impossible task, but I would argue that it is incredibly important to try to do so for a variety of reasons. One, it provides you with the weights I was just suggesting that you need to figure out what is important and crucial and the other is provides an evidence base so you can diffuse some of the politics and potentially special interests here.
Laura has alluded to some of the various aspects of fragmentation. What comes to my mind is a bit of a matrix.
On one dimension you have these drivers, some of which are public policy objectives such as sovereignty concerns or economic concerns or human rights and fundamental values or preserving local values as subsets of policy concerns.
Others are side effects of trying to implement well intended public policies into code that may fall short and that is where she was referring to interventions that the infrastructure logical layer at the services layer, or even targeting end users all of which probably aren't perfect. But she also pointed to another concern that we have which is the private sector itself. Issues of traffic prioritization. Walt gardens protocols and we've been rallying for 30 years against monopolies in this area, some of which still exist.
I like to map that against users. To date most of the economic research I've seen has been looking just at the IT sector itself. That will appeal to many in the room. That makes sense. But to me that's the small cost potentially T bigger cost is around IT using sectors which are huge now. The whole economy runs on this.
I just think about the banking sector if we get fragment station through data localization and other means I don't know how fraud detection techniques currently deployed are going to work this that sector just to raise one example.
And I break it down and I'm almost done, between multi nationals, which are inherently using these global networks, and we'll obviously be affected but what worries me more the SMEs who sometimes if you fragment this it may lock in the large incumbents because the SMEs won't be able to grow and get the economies of scale to provide them with the resources to deploy multiple redundancies around the globe which is what some of this fragmentation would entail.
Let me end there.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you very much Andy. Let me turn next to Bertrand de La Chapelle.
>> BERTRAND de LA CHAPELLE: Thank you, Gordon.
I am the director of the project. I want to make a few quick points. The first one is when you look at the way the Internet was built as Vint explained it started with the assumption that it was intended to become a global unified for fully interoperable system that was A, territorial. Not based on tear tore usual distinction.
This is the reason why most of the governance tools or institutions in the ecosystem that we have are global institutions or regionalized institutions but with patterns. If you look, for instance, at centre as a coalition of CCTLDs, it groups CCTLDs that are not only in the European region. They can be somewhere else because they like better to be connected to centre.
This is a picture of decision making that was on the basis of domain names, addresses and so on that were not tear tore usual by principal. When we talk about fragmentation we seem to forget that the reality of the legal environment is a reality of fragmentation.
That is the fundamental basis of the international system is a fragmented legal system. It's called, if I remember correctly, the nation state. And the system of the nation state, which fortunately has many benefits is the separation of legal systems and Sovereignties is based on non interference with others and basically my law in my Country, my geographic criteria, your law in your geographic criteria in your Country.
When we talk about fragmentation we need to understand that it's the reverse problem than the situation we are on the technical layer. The technical layer has been conceived as global and has to copy with some technicalities like putting cables in certain places or routers in others. But the legal is the reverse.
The second point I want to make is when I was speaking about an illusion I think Laura alluded to that a little bit. There are two interpretations about fragmentation that come to mind. The first one is this is awful because we had this nice unified legal system that was like the technical structure ask when you scratch the unified structure was on a fundamental principle which is if law of the Country of incorporation of the platforms applies worldwide. In many cases the fact is through the terms of service and the other things is the jurisdiction for the United States for the major platforms but it could be the jurisdiction for other countries. We have to be careful that the ideals model that we have in mind of this unified legal environment is problematic in some aspects because it produces effects of extra tear tore usual application of national sovereigntys on the basis of the moderator. Oh yeah, the location of servers matters. Well, no so much. And then you get into trouble. But the Symmetry is equally interesting. It says this is sad but fragmentation is the cost of being able to exercise sovereignty.
This is a trend that we've seen relatively recently because of the first element was mentioning because of a certain number of events that happened last year and the revelations of Snowden and so on. The reaction was a desire to retort in a certain way and that localization is one dimension of this effort.
Those are the two facets and I think we need to be aware that the two ways of understanding should not be pushed too much. What we want to reserve is the capacity to go from one place to the other. That doesn't mean we should have one single legal framework. And exercise sovereignty on shared spaces does not mean reestablish go present precise borders because in many cases the rules and the responsibilities overlap because the spaces are shared.
So the next one quickly is when you have the reaction, some of you know I used to be the representative in the French Foreign Affairs Ministry so I've seen this problem from the other side from the way I see it now.
Exercising sovereignty is legitimate. There is no capacity for government to have any role internationally without exercising sovereignty. The problem is with the Internet the exercise with your softener tee has an impact on other countries and this is contrary to the principal of sovereignty.
This is why the Council of Europe in 2011 thanks to work that was done by a small group of people that participated in has adopted two recommendations of his council of minister regarding the principal of non transboundary harm due to national decisions. It states the sovereignty to not have a transboundary that will be harmful for the citizens of another Country.
And this restraint is not natural. The natural behavior of sovereignty is not to be restrained except by wars and conflicts. So we have the challenge today in Civil Society, in business and in governments to understand how the exercise of sovereignty can be legitimate and respectful in an environment where shared responsibilities occur.
And here we are confronted with a problem, which is the low of intended consequences. There are many situations where very simple apparently rational decision at the individual level looks perfectly legitimate and the cumulative effect of all these decisions is not scalable and is actually harmful for what we want to protect. And I think it can be a sort of segue to the discussion on data localization where the rules that apply to access to data can be either scalable positively or nonscalable positively in that regard. But I stop there.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you, Bertrand. That is very useful and I hope we'll provoke you in this room and those of you who are listening online to post some questions or to make some observations, but we have one more short presentation from the panel and that's from Sunil Abraham?
>> SUNIL ABRAHAM: Thank you. I start by the new interest on fragmentation on the part of the state. And as you said the state is now back in Internet Governance. The first imperative is wanting to exert jurisdiction private actors say your jurisdiction does in the apply and therefore we will not abide by your law.
And the state wants to apply jurisdiction. Second, as in the Europe Union, some of the fragmented proposals are supposedly to protect human rights to protect the privacy of European citizens.
The third imperative is taxation. Most of these Internet giants are experts at taxation and nation states wants to extract tax from these organisations. And according to national tax law, if transactions happen within the jurisdiction, then they're legitimately taxed.
The next one is efficiency. And the final one is preferential market access. So what I'm going to do is take some of the most horrible suggestions that states make and try and redeem them and see if we can examine them in more positive light. And I feel if we can address the concerns that states have through technically sound proposals, then they won't take ‑‑ they won't hopefully make mistakes. So the first horrible idea is the national Internet idea.
If we were to make it clear to governments that really what you want to protect is military communication and other state communication that deeply implicates national security, then perhaps you should consider a proposal by Garabaga that says whenever cable is late and since carrying capacity of fiber has increased dramatically because of the implements in termination devices, maybe some fiber should be allocated or given to the government. So the government on the existing network will have network that is completely distinct of the physical layer and they can use that for all the sensitive communications that don't necessarily have to reach the Internet.
The second is looking at preferential market access. So we've heard stories of the U.S. government banning the purchase of equipment for government agencies. At one point the U.S. government advised that you shouldn't be buying equipment from boat these Chinese manufactures but that proposal didn't go through.
Australia leaked documents that Australia has banned all the equipment from being involved in the build out of the national broad band network. And in some senses to go to the Indian government and say don't fragment the Internet, you will pay a huge price in terms of JDP. Sounds a bit flawed no matter what numbers you throw to them because the Chinese government has, in a sense, fragmented the Internet, and there is no perceivable difference to their GDP. They seem to be doing much better than we are doing.
So we go back to the promise made of Bipol to the Developing Countries. Sign all these maximal list IP treaties and we as Developed Countries will engage in technology transfer and there is enough literature published there has hardly been any technology transfer. So threats of fragmentation proposals help with kind of evening the playing field between international players and domestic actors. Fragmentation each as pure rhetoric help convince large corporations that they should comply with domestic law, et cetera.
Finally, if you use the argument that various types of censorship then the Indian government will say the U.S. government has already been fragmenting the Internet because of the position on IP. Access to knowledge in their view is a pre‑condition to free speech. And if the U.S. government can fragment the government based on intellectual property then why can't we fragment the Internet using repression of political speech or other types of speech
So I'll stop there because I don't want to take too long, but surely legitimate concerns of government can be addressed by people that know how the technology works by providing solutions that won't necessarily break Internet protocols, et cetera, but address their concerns. Thank you.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you very much Sunil. I hope that has provoked you in the room and those of you who are online to make some observations and responses to the points that have been made.
>> VINT CERF: I'm levitating. I didn't mean to interrupt the rest of your speech, I just wanted to let you know I'm levitating. Thank you.
>> GORDON SMITH: Why don't you ago you head. Please.
>>VINT CERF: First of all, please remember that the network is designed and presently operates in a layered way and so basic connectivity lies at very low layer, the Internet protocol layer and a lot of the interventions that take place actually occur above that level. And one of the most dangerous forms of fragmentation is to mistakenly intervene at the wrong layer in the architecture to prevent all communication as opposed to trying to inhibit some kind of communication and that's the intellectual property question. The issue is not blocking the communication channel, it's doing something about access to content that you believe other parties have to show a few days to get to
The other point I want to make about jurisdiction is that one of the dangers of all of this is that to assert jurisdictional rights is and then to extend them in an extra tear tore usual way is very tempting and it often happens and this is also not entirely acceptable.
>> GORDON SMITH: Very calmly put. Comments around the table. I was going to ask you to introduce yourselves which I did very quickly at the beginning of this session. Who would she ‑‑
Pinder, you're pointing. Yeah, please speak up into the microphone.
>>AUDIENCE: I thought you were No. 1.
My name is Shnin from Indonesia. I think it is very interesting about the application at the beginning. We can say I don't want this letter, I don't want this Email, I don't want this whatever. I can decide what I want. And even the government can decide what she wants, what the government wants in their jurisdiction.
Unfortunately that is not the case today. Now, betting in mind development of cases and if we look at the previous ‑‑ our previous history of our previous experience about the GPS system, when we build, when the U.S. built their GPS system, it's very useful. It is for global. Everybody can use it. But then not all group like that. For sake of security, for the sake of many things, they do not want to use the GPS. So the Europe set up the Galileo, but then they enjoyed their system and so on. GPS navigation system. The global navigation system it has been fragmented because queue cannot get an international system of navigation system. We don't have multistakeholder organisation for looking after and operating navigation system.
Now, just want to get Mr. Vint Cerf's comment if we cannot do that for the people in the world how can we do that in the global system of Internet system.
>> GORDON SMITH: Bertrand, go ahead and ask.
>> VINT CERF: I'm sorry. I didn't hear correctly. You were talking about what system you said if we can do it for this system I could not hear exactly what ‑‑ can you please repeat it.
>> GORDON SMITH: GPS global positioning system.
>> VINT CERF: I thought that is what I heard, but I was not sure.
>> BILL WOODCOCK: ill Woodcock. I understand the overall point you're making, but I would argue that in that example this is a beneficial redundancy of the kind that Laura was referring to with exchange points for instance.
We now have four systems which are under different con troll all available to anyone in the world and you can get a single chip which is a receiver for all four systems and compares the results of them. So if one of the four operators decides to false au identify the results as the U.S. government for instance has made clear is their policy position to reserve the right to do, you have three checks against that. Three other things that will let you know that that has gone wrong.
So, I think we need to be really careful about this notion that all die verge an says, all changes are fragmentation and bad. Right. I mean this is something that both I ran and Brazil have been criticized for when they follow the same path that for instance the United States and Western Europe have in building out more Internet Infrastructure. When we congratulate ourselves for doing it but criticize someone else for doing it, that doesn't seem like fragmentation to me.
But, to be clear, there are many other things that are fragmentation ask that are bad.
>> GORDON SMITH: Yes, I see a hand down there. Please.
>> Van: I am Van, Ambassador from (inaudible).
Who wins with the fragmentation of the Internet? What is it in for the one who promote it?
>> GORDON SMITH: Could you repeat that question. It wasn't really audible.
>> VAN: Who wins from the fragmentation of the Internet?
>> GORDON SMITH: Who wins?
>> VAN: Yeah. There is a fragmentation, but who is winning?
>> GORDON SMITH: I thought you said Google was the winner and they said no, we're not.
Everybody. Okay. So the answer to this question is that parties who do not wish to permit freedom of expression and access information and sharing of information, those parties win if they succeed in fragmenting the Internet in the pernicious way that I mentioned and others have mentioned and that is not a win for any of us.
There are parties of course that win by preventing communication from each other. That is not a value in my system.
>> BERTRAND de LA CHAPELLE: What I was saying regarding the model, without being pedantic, it dates back to a situation of huge wars. The 30 years’ war in Europe were intense blood shed and it was sold by this principal of separation. Say my territory, your territory and no overlap.
We are now in an environment where this notion, which organizes the physical world pretty well is in conflict with the way people interact naturally in the Internet. We have two choices and none of them are appropriate. One is the complete harmonization at all levels to have the global space and if we cannot achieve that, the only other solution is to reintroduce separation.
I believe that is not ‑‑ it is personal but I don't believe that is not the way you should ask the question. The real question is how do we manage the rules for co‑exist tense? We have to find the rules for co‑exist tense and it is not easy and as said before there was period that because a platform was located these days were over. The local laws did in the apply. They were over in 1995 with the Yahoo case first. Then we got rules that spread everywhere, as a solution whether it is good for not is another debate, but then the notion that local laws do apply to a certain extent, especially in speech related issues, is now accepted how it is implemented and to what extent is a completely different problem than how do we repartition.
So I think that the reason why, and I like Sunil's comment that sometimes the fear is triggering unilateral reactions to something that might be fragmenting is sufficiently worrisome to force people to find the rules of co‑exist tense. But I think that is the right way to ask wrath he have than saying we need to restructure on a tear tore usual basis.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you, Bertrand.
Before I go to Andy and Sunil, who want to comment on this, let me ask Carolyn and Samantha whether there is anybody online looking to ask a question.
>> CAROLYN: We have one question and the question is coming from Casper Boden. The question is: Why don't countries sign a treaty for privacy rights?
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you.
Let me now go to the two I mentioned. So Andy, you can reply to that if you want.
>> ANDREW W.: I would rather come back to will Google be the big winner.
It is not so much about Google what I worry about is we really ruin the global network economies here and it is not so much about Google it is about the next Google ticket that comes from more of Annie merging economy is going to face, just not going to be able to scale with the same efficiency that Google was able to scale if these barriers are in place. To me it's that unborn that I worry about.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you. Let me go next to Sunil, and then the gentleman in the blue shirt.
>> SUNIL A.: I want to examine another proposal by the national security coins ill. Mandatory domestic traffic. If you remove the word mandatory and said domestic routing of domestic traffic that doesn't sound that bad. Two possible ways you can do this and Rudolph pointed out the difference. One is you can start tampering with routing tables and change the way the Internet protocols work and the other is throw money at the problem and put more fiber into the ground and have no exchanges. Both measures roughly accomplish the same goal.
I would like to disagree with the authoritative government really doesn't benefit. Rojan says that there is a king governing the law. Wherever dictators have tried to sensor the Internet and do wholescale censorship of the Internet they have usually fallen. Those Governments have usually fallen after that and king is the king from Nepal. There is a description that describes the man March situation but I can't imagine for an authoritative government heavy control and censorship of the Internet will actually serve their purpose in the long run. Thank you.
>> GORDON SMITH: Yes. Hi. I wonder how long sometimes the long run is. Maybe that is too pessimistic. Gentleman in the blue shirt. I thought you asked ‑‑
>> VINT CERF: This gentleman over here. He has a blue shirt, too.
>> GORDON SMITH: I see that.
>>AUDIENCE: Hi, everyone. My name is (inaudible), and I am the Ambassador from India.
On the panel we talked about Internet fragmentation. It's growing day by day. Technology is one of the solutions that can help. But what does the panel think where are we going from here now? Are we thinking that technology is the only thing that can help solve this problem or there has to be some bodies like IGF, ICANN which can help resolve at a global level involving the local garments also. What does the panel think on this?
>> GORDON SMITH: Anybody want to have a crack at that question?
>> BERTRAND de LA CHAPELLE: I'll jump in.
>> GORDON SMITH: Okay. Please.
>> LAURA DeNARDIS: I would like to push back a little bit about a theme that Governments didn't have sovereignty and now they do. They have had sovereignty. They have had jurisdiction.
I think about the things that have always already been located in borders. The telecom infrastructures, the ISPs, equipment companies, registries all of these things Um completely subject to law and even companies who are in another Country are subject to the law in which they do business. So this idea that there was not Sovereignty is that there suddenly this is not quite right.
I also wonder why ‑‑ IO ref arguments from other people that governments stepping in are the solution to so many of the problems that exist right now because if you just look at the last five years, governments I'll just be a little bit provocative intentionally don't have a great track record when it comes to the Internet.
We have governments cutting off access. We have governments, many Governments engaging in surveillance. We have governments engaging in filtering and sensor. So the balance of power is much better solution than turning to this issue of jurisdiction and government solutions
Just one more point to heap on to what you said. These are very technically complex system. We have systems that have hundreds of billions of transactions a day. Moving from an environment where the decisions are based on technical expediency to politically driven decisions, I think can have unintended consequences and I don't think we should take for granted the stability that we've had thus far.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you, Laura.
Bertrand.
>> BERTRAND de LA CHAPELLE: And for once, which is not that frequent in our discussions in general to introduce new answer.
The word fragmentation is extremely loaded, just like Balkanization and so on. And whenever I see it, I know that to Art Riley who used to work at Cisco. In one of the first IGFs I had a workshop and he used, it was in Rio. He used a word that says you need to be careful, people need to have the same vernacular; I e you need to make sure they put the same thing behind the same words because otherwise there is no way they're going to find a solution to the problem. And so to exercise what you're trying to do here is behind the word fragmentation there are many representations and sometimes very visceral representations.
I can't give you a very concrete example. I come from France, I worked in the French government in the past. In the military doctrine of the French government, the notion is an extremely strong word. The nuclear power is about making a sanctuary of the territory. When I talk with French people including in the military sector and we talk about fragmentation and Balkanization, it does have a bad meaning but not only a bad meaning, but it also evokes these other words of we are protected. And we have to be very careful because when we talk about that, what is a bad thing for one may feel also as a positive thing for others. The good thing about this discussion is it tries to single out different elements. The portion that I deal with on a daily basis on the issues of jurisdiction are different from the issues that people deal at the technical layer or the one whose multiply as Bill was mentioning ISPs and so on. So we need to understand that when we address this thing and this is an answer to your question, where do we move from there, the first thing if we could move forward on several tracks rather than a single track regarding fragmentation that would be wonderful.
What Andy was saying regarding startups, the unborn, is absolutely true. It is pushing too far if you launch a start-up today. And Laura you were right the lose are always there. Let's be Frank. A lot of companies in the early days could get au with answering we are based in this Country so it is our Country law that applies, and not yours. And it took some pressure and it took some deliberation to try to find a balance and we are beginning to find a balance. So finding the different tracks and I think the commission and the network as among its benefits to potentially identify those tracks, but moving forward needs to identify where, basically harmonization is not possible but interoperability is possible where some structuring of cyberspace is useful also on a legal basis, where it should not be promoted, et cetera. Introducing nuances is one of the biggest benefits that the IGF and the commission could bring.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you very much, Bertrand.
Other comments or questions, including online? There is one down in the back of the room and one to my right.
Please.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Sergio. I am Brazilian. I come from the telecom regulator, but I am here with IGF.
I wanted to address a committee from someone to the U.S. maybe to Mr. Vint Cerf or Laura. Brazil is being one of the cases. It has been one of the cases on fragmentation in this word that Mr. Bertrand vocalization. In the U.S. I have looked into the history of this word in the United States and it was firstly used in 19 18 and since 1940 it has been used by the supreme court to explain some ‑‑ to address some of the issues of the interstate commerce clause which basically allows some states to have different jurisdictions within the United States itself. And then it has brought some issues of start United States into Internet companies there. We have seen lifts and several even Dezla with some legislation being proposed for example in North Carolina that would not allow Dezla cars to be sold online
I would like to see how you address, how you for see this issue of being handled in the United States itself. Some of the companies are allowed to operate in one state and they're not allowed to operate in others. It is different from the architectural level that we have touched but at the self‑level it is pretty important for it to understand how this comes up in the United States as well. Thank you.
>> GORDON SMITH:.: All right. I'll combine two questions here and then I'm going to ask the panel to reply to yours and but then while bringing other panelists and we'll aim to wrap up in about five minutes.
The person on the far right side here that indicated they wanted to speak. I thought there was one down there. Please, then you go ahead. By the way, this lady here, please, yes.
>> AUDIENCE: Audrey Plonk with Intel. Bertrand already addressed that seemed that there was a bit of a disconnect between political fragmentation and policies around what equipment can cross‑border and, you know who wants to buy what from whom verses sort of technical fragmentation of in terms of whether the infrastructure will enter operate so I was going to see if the panelist would react to those separations but Bertrand so I don't want to divert attention from other topics.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you. And there was much nodding of heads to my right I saw with your comment.
Anybody else? Yes, this gentleman.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. My name is Sjuski. I'm from Russia. I represent Mr. Vint Cerf what this fragmentation, what is not, but I have an example in mind which was not covered.
I always thought that Internet was cemented to interconnect the networks and I think today we have the single situation, probably some applications would be considered as networks, like social networks, like Skype, face time, its applications for their own stake of protocols over the Internet which they use to interconnect to a certain in interconnection base.
Some of these applications are vocalized in state borders like the government. It's fragmentation or not? I think not.
I think we need the definition of what is the fragmentation. I don't know what is it. What is the reasons for real fragmentation. It is, I think, I suspect it is the luck of transparency in the administration of critical sources of Internet. And lack of lawful regulation. And lack of security of business continuity abilities. I propose to think about the definition here. Thank you.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you very much. We have at least I find up here I have no idea what is going out there, but it's producing an enormous amounts of noise which doesn't make hearing up here any easier. What I'll do then now is just giving them each a minute if I may x the panelist toss reply to such questions as they wish to reply to and make any last comments and I'll start on my left with you, Sunil.
>>SUNIL A.: I'll Pass. I don't have any concluding comments.
>> LAURA DeNARDIS: I'm a professor, so I always have other comments all the time.
I would like to react to this statement about separating the policy layer from the technical layer because you can't separate the policy layer from the technical layer. It is not that we shouldn't, it's that we can't because technical design can be a form of public policy. We don't have to look any further than accessibility standards for the disabled. In good ways and bad ways. The basic thesis of my work is arrangements of technical architecture are also arrangements of power at the same type. That's why it's so important to look at this intersection of what Governments are saying what we should do about infrastructure. The converse of that is also the layer can very much affect infrastructure. So I think bee have to look at those as being a little bit more connected than we would want them to be.
>> GORDON SMITH: Yeah, I see this gentleman here in the T. shirt or the green ‑‑ I'm not sure if it green or yellow with my eyes, but it is bright. If I could ask you to be brief because we're going to otherwise run out of time. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm very brief. (inaudible) While commenting on the technical policy, we do have a problem with the top level sub domains not operating in (inaudible) and not being able to operate due to some fiscal and public issues so public does affect policy, and I have witness of that right now. But you cannot separate these issues like the general said. They do impact. If you cannot make a payment for services you cannot connect to the host Country so you have. They are forced to send traffic to Russian IPs because they have no other choice. Not because the whys are in there because the money cannot be sent. That is pretty much all my comment. Thank you.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you. Vint, I'm going to save you for the end.
Bertrand, and then Andy.
>> BERTRAND de LA CHAPELLE: The idea of the definition is what I was alluding to identification of the different dimensions. I think it is more important than trying to find the definition, but sorting the different dimensions. I want to open the dye Bate on the separation of policy and technical. It's not I think that it's not because they are overlaps that the two cannot be considered as separate entities, but that is a discussion that we've been having with Laura for a while. To quote the Baroness, she was saying that when those things overlap it is a little bit when you do cream from milk, you can activate the milk and then at one point it becomes cream but you don't know when one has gone into the other. Still, there is something called milk and something called cream. So there is something called policy, there is something called technical and in between there are technical impacts of the policy and policy impacts of the technical, which is what Anett M. said.
Finally, I fully agree that actually there are different dimensions for those of you who may have noticed it, this is the second workshop in a track of three workshops regarding fragmentation. There was one on Tuesday on the technical damage and led by ISOC. This one is covered some of the economic dimension and cost by CG as the Internet & Jurisdiction Project. We have a third one tomorrow at 2:30 in room 2 on the legal dimension and so on and you're of course, cordially invited to attend.
>> GORDON SMITH: Thank you, Bertrand.
Andy.
>> ANDREW W.: Thank you, Gordon. I guess I am taken by the unintended affects and I think the way it was intended is you do one thing here and three other things happen that you really didn't know about it and it what Bertrand was talking about the enter technical regulatory. The effect of creating a political economy built then it creates an environment that is right for other mischief vows behavior and you end up with a slippery slope where things get worse and worse½.Í
Helping to sort that out would be, you know, I again welcome the expertise in the room for thinking whether that is a real concern or maybe something that I don't have to worry about.
>> GORDON SMITH: Okay. Thank you very much, Andy.
Vint, you get the last word.
>> VINT CERF: Thank you. I will try to keep this short.
There is some kinds of fragmentation that you need to overcome ask technology will help. One of them in radio world for example you get into radio shadow, other kinds of impairments occur and there isn't any communication. There are protocols that recover from that kind of fragmentation and that is a good thing.
I think that the problem we run into is this policy and technical interaction. There is some kinds of fragmentation that are abused. The ways of achieving them are abusive. For example domain seizure to shutdown everything at a particular website is a clumsy way of dealing with a much more refined problem.
The technologists may actually have to help the policy guys find less disruptive and more ways to achieve a legitimate objective.
On the other side there are times when fragmentation is intended to prevent what would otherwise be thought legitimate communication.
This is the John Gill more case. John described the Internet interprets censorship as essentially damaged and the rights around it. What you find is where people object to being prevented from communicating they find technologies to get around that censorship and around that intervention. And we see that all the time, virtual private networks, end to end cryptography and a bunch of other things. It's a antimissile kind of scenario and it is going to stay that way for as long as I can imagine.
>> GORDON SMITH: Well, thank you very much, Vint, and thank you all the panelists.
I would ask you all to give them a hand of applause. I think we have had an interesting discussion. I know we could have gone on for longer.
Thank you all.
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This is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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