He began with a rueful acknowledgment that back in the early 70s, when creating the addressing scheme for the internet, 32 bits were enough. The point of the story — we ran out of 32-bit addresses two years ago — was to illustrate how the common knowledge at the time influenced the architectural decisions the creators of the internet made.

Yet, 40 years later, the internet is still the valuable foundation of our communications infrastructure, and Cerf hopes that in building out this next generation networks we learn a bit from the creation of the internet. For example, he calls for the creation of open standards where differentiation doesn’t come from companies patenting protocols, but rather from branding their services or branding their unique implementations of a standard protocol. That’s because interoperability is important for building networks that are stable and resilient. As Cerf said: “Stability is your friend in networking environments.”

“If you want things to interoperate, standards are important,” Cerf said. “That’s not to say you can’t explore new ideas, but when you want something big to happen then you need to think about standards.”

In that same vein, Cerf also explained how as companies build out software defined networks they should consider the things that made the internet a success: the loose coupling of the gear that underlies the internet as opposed to a heavily integrated and brittle solution; a modular approach allowing new companies to develop solutions that might work between layers in the stack; and open source solutions, which are recommended but not required.

SDN can build a web for the future.

Cerf then went into some of the opportunities that SDN can offer to improve some of the shortcomings of the internet. For example, the current way we route traffic relies on the network having a physical port to send a packet to, but the OpenFlow protocol changes the destination address from a physical port to a table entry, which enables a new type of networking. One that might be more suited to the collaborative web we’re building today.

Content based routing also could be an option — something we’ve covered at our Structure conference in 2011. In content based routing you take the content of a packet and use that to determine what to do with it. It turns routing into something that’s closer to the way Twitter works as opposed to how the U.S. Postal System does. For example you would look at the content of a packet and route it to people who said they want to receive that information. It becomes multi-cast instead of a one-to-one connection.

As for the core tenet of software defined networking, separating the control plane from the data plane, Cerf said. “I wish we had done that in the internet design, but we didn’t.”

But that also means people can build new networks that resemble older networks while sneaking in revolutionary new features. Cerf is excited about the ability of those building SDN products and networks to mimic the core functions of today’s networks in order to drive adoption but then introduce something new like content-centric routing. Or perhaps they can implement better security to protect people from identity theft, from inadvertently becoming zombies in a botnet attack or from any number of security threats that exists online.

Cerf is confident that SDN can help address those issues and more. He envisions using SDN to perhaps define areas where people can access intellectual property in a controlled manner that may prevent people from making illegal copies. SDN might also be a way to bridge the divides between different networks today.

He pointed out that when the internet was developed researchers built different networks depending on the medium, so a mobile network and a wireline network today don’t look the same to software running over those networks. You can’t run traffic seamlessly across both at the same time. With SDN you could.

He closed with a few examples of how SDN is helping Google, from its implementation of an intra-data center WAN to using software defined networks to boost the utilization of spectrum through tools like Google’s white space broadband database. This example, as well as the idea of creating a unified network using different medium, has me really excited to see what Google might do with its own fiber network and a corresponding Wi-Fi network.

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It’s an update to the a physical map Peer1 did in 2011, that was also awesome, but thanks to the Android and iOS apps you can now play around with the map in a global view or a network view. The global view is like one of those satellite images of city lights at night with glowing dots representing connections. The network view is a bit more esoteric, clustering those with the most connections at one end.

The network view.

It’s pretty basic, focusing mostly on the names of the players and how many connections they have to others on the net. For example it shows Hurricane Electric and Level 3 with more than a thousand connections to other peers while Google has 59. Apple and Facebook have 32 and 17 respectively. The app also allows you to perform a traceroute to measure how long it takes packets to traverse the networks, but that function wasn’t working on the iOS version I downloaded.

A global view with provider info.

There’s also a little timeline where you can watch how the internet spreads with more providers and connection points popping up. As for why Peer1 did an app instead of a poster or even a web site, Rajan Sodhi of PEER 1 said via email:

“We decided to go with a mobile app for phones and tablets because we wanted to take advantage of the human gesturing – tapping, pinching, swiping, panning, rotating, etc – to make a more interactive and immersive experience for the user. The internet is complex, as the user can see, and we want to simplify or humanize it to make it more understandable.”

I can’t wait to show my daughter as just one more way to explain how we’re all connected using the internet. This isn’t an app you’d use every day, but it is a beautiful way to show someone what the internet looks like.

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The new rules, which have been in the works for over a year and have been repeatedly delayed, are being administered by the Center For Copyright Information — a non-profit entity made up of theoretically independent representatives from agencies like the Internet Education Foundation and the Future of Privacy Forum, and includes Jerry Berman, a former director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge. They have partnered with five of the largest ISPs, including Verizon and Comcast.

Part of what makes this new strategy difficult to understand is that each service provider’s method for implementing the rules is different. Verizon says that after several warnings via email and popup message, users who are downloading or sharing copyrighted content will be given several options, including a temporary reduction in their internet speed. AT&T’s policy apparently says that after several warnings a user’s ability to access popular websites will be blocked until they complete a course in understanding piracy and copyright infringement.

So should you be afraid of these new rules? That depends. Are you are only worried about how they might affect you directly, or are you concerned about the ways in which private corporations are seeking to snoop on and limit your behavior? Let’s break these two viewpoints down:

Why you shouldn’t be worried:

It doesn’t affect all internet service providers: Although providers like Comcast and Verizon are huge, they don’t cover all internet users in the United States, so it’s possible that you might not even be affected by the new restrictions even if you do download a lot of copyrighted content.

You get six strikes, which is probably more than you need: Copyright owners and the Center for Copyright Information say that the intent of these new rules is to go after the most egregious downloaders and sharers of content, not the person who occasionally downloads a new song or a movie. So if you don’t do a lot of peer-to-peer file-sharing, you probably won’t be affected.

You won’t get cut off, just lectured and irritated: Even if you do get flagged for something, the worst that most of the ISPs say they will do is limit your download speeds, show you popup warnings or send annoying emails. And some have said even if you ignore them, nothing will happen (although they could always change their minds about that later).

There are lots of ways around these restrictions: One of the criticisms of such rules isn’t that they are too invasive, but that they don’t work against the really hard-core file-sharers that are allegedly the target of this strategy — since virtual private networks, proxy addresses, cloaking software and other tools can make it almost impossible to detect infringing downloads.

Why you should be worried:

Your ISP is going to be doing some heavy snooping: One of the broader risks that groups like the EFF point to in their criticism of these new restrictions is that they rely on ISPs snooping on their users to an almost unprecedented degree — and this raises the same issues about privacy that debates around technology like “deep packet inspection” have. The potential downside is fairly significant.

The new rules don’t take into account fair use: Much of the material produced by the Center for Copyright Information makes it sound as though anyone downloading or sharing any copyrighted content is breaking the law — but that’s not the case at all. There are many instances in which the principle of fair use applies, and these rules don’t take that into account.

Copyright holders are unlikely to stop here: One fear about the six-strikes process is that it is just the latest move in an ongoing attempt by copyright holders and content companies to exert more and more control over what users can do, and that allowing it to proceed only encourages them to pursue even harsher measures such as SOPA and PIPA.

This puts commercial entities in place of laws: One of the biggest criticisms from free speech and open-web advocates is that the six-strikes rules essentially allow private corporations — movie studios, music labels and large telecom providers — to set up a quasi-legal process for pursuing their copyright claims, when the legal system is the appropriate place for those arguments.

The bottom line: There’s reason for concern

In the end, while this move may not affect you directly — or may only be a minor irritation in your daily life — the fact remains that it marks another attempt by content owners to exert their influence in areas that should belong to the courts and should in principle be protected by things like the First Amendment and the principle of fair use, neither of which are even mentioned by the promoters of this process.

Not only that, but as my colleague Jeff Roberts notes, focusing on these kinds of efforts feels a lot like what the music industry did while it was trying hard not to innovate as the web grew bigger and bigger. The risk for copyright owners is that they rely too much on these kinds of measures, instead of working to create a market and a digital ecosystem that fosters the creation, sale and distribution of content in a way that works with the web instead of against it.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock / Cienpies and Flickr user Pew Center

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Here are some of the facts I found notable from the report, complete with accompanying charts from CB Insights:

• Of the companies that were acquired, 76 percent had not raised any investment and instead obtained funds through other avenues:

• Facebook and Google made the most acquisitions last year, doing 12 acquisitions each, with Facebook making acquisitions primarily for talent:

• Out of all the companies acquired, just eight were acquired for more than $1 billion. Those eight companies amount to less than 3 percent of all acquisitions in 2012. 80 percent of companies were acquired for less than $200 million, and more than 50 percent were acquired for less than $50 million:

• Not surprisingly, California saw the most acquisitions, although every state except South Dakota saw at least one:

• And for everyone betting on New York City over San Francisco for the best place to launch your startup, take note: New York saw the highest percentage of acquisitions of internet companies:

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There’s an obvious reason they’re concentrating their energies, too. Technology companies are incredibly powerful, which draws a lot of attention, and a lot of anger in many cases. Unfriendly administrations can be powerful enemies: from Microsoft’s drawn-out conflict with European officials — effectively running for 20 years — to the vast fines levied on companies like Intel who break competition rules, conflict with governments can be costly and distracting. So what better way to try and smooth the path than try to head off that conflict earlier in the process?

But lobbying is furtive, and tends to happen behind closed doors: only dragged into the open when big issues emerge, such as the recent furore over American tech companies paying little or no tax in the U.K.. The European Commission does run a transparency register that companies are meant to report for, but the truth is that many — including, for example, Apple — have not signed up. Shouldn’t the extent of lobbying be more visible?

What follows is a short overview to some of the power players working to influence Brussels, or other governments in Europe, on behalf of the world’s big internet and hi-tech companies. It’s not meant to be comprehensive — there are lots of companies missing, and lots of individuals not named. But consider it more of a starting place: If you know more lobbyists, and their roles, then please leave them in the comments. Eventually, maybe, we can produce a map of their activities.

Google

Google has one of the most complex European lobbying operations among Internet companies. It operates a significant team in Brussels, but also has staff in most other major European capitals — including Berlin, where it opened a new office housing seven lobbyists. Their job? To try and influence the German government over issues like privacy and copyright, where it is far stricter than most other nations.

Key players:

Antoine Aubert, head of Google’s Brussels policy team, is listed in the transparency register as the liaison between EU and Mountain View. He is a policy wonk who previously spent three years working for the Commission itself.

Simon Hampton, the company’s director of public policy in Europe, is a former AOL and Time Warner policy chief. He took up the role with Google four years ago, which he describes on his LinkedIn profile like this: “His team of 45 evangelise the economic and social potential of the Internet, and work on the regulatory agenda to help Europe tap the full opportunities of the Internet.” The transparency register claims seven people working at European level.

Annette Kroeber-Riel, European policy counsel, heads up the German lobbying effort, which has built a network of operations, including think tanks and a research institute. Her background includes VeriSign and Jamba! (the company behind Crazy Frog, which was notorious Samwer brothers).

Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel based in Paris, is a long-time hand at the company who works on international policy efforts around data and privacy. Largely operating behind the scenes, Fleischer’s profile was raised when he was one of those named, tried and convicted in an Italian court over a YouTube video of a boy being bullied. (The ruling was overturned just before Christmas.)

Sarah Hunter, head of UK public policy, was a senior policy adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Facebook

Facebook’s rocket-like trajectory in the last few years has rapidly increased its interaction with governments — rarely positive — and it is staffing up its lobbying efforts to reflect that. It seems keen to pick those with inside knowledge of the system gained from active political positions, rather than from the academic or bureaucratic side like most of its peers.

Key players:
Erika Mann, managing director of public policy (pictured) has helped build Facebook’s Belgian lobbying engine since joining in 2011, but knows Europe very well: the German was a Member of the European Parliament for 15 years.

Richard Allan, the director of policy in Europe, also has political ties. He spent eight years as a Member of Parliament in Britain (and then acted as campaign manager for Nick Clegg, the current Deputy Prime Minister) and sits in the House of Lords after being made a Baron in 2010. Before moving to Facebook in 2009, he worked as a lobbyist for Cisco.

Apple

Apple is one of those companies which has no presence in the transparency register, but clearly has a lobbying operation in Brussels. Steve Jobs himself was known to join meetings with European officials, and EC documents show he took part to get regulatory approval of Europe-wide pricing for iTunes. Still, its lobby effort does seem underpowered compared to rivals like Google.

Key players:

Claire Thwaites, director of Apple’s EMEIA government affairs previously helped lead Vodafone lobbying in Brussels and Washington.

Jaymeen Patel, senior government affairs manager (pictured), is another telecoms veteran, with five years at Telefonica.

Amazon

Amazon is one of a number of American technology companies that is lobbying Brussels in order to weaken restrictions on data collection. It is not listed in the joint transparency register. And yet it does have a Brussels presence to help try and secure itself a good deal across the single market.

Key players:

Andrew Cecil (pictured) has been Amazon’s director of public policy in Brussels since 2009, after he jumped from the same role at Yahoo!. Became temporarily notorious for refusing to answer a range of questions when when giving evidence to British MPs over Amazon’s tax avoidance strategies.

Saskia Horsch, the company’s senior public policy manager, previously worked for the European Casino Association.

Microsoft

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft has put a vast amount of effort into Europe over the years. according to the transparency register, it currently has 17 lobbyists working in Brussels, spending at least €4.5 million ($6 million) last year — though experts suggest that few companies accurately report their true lobbying spend.

At a national level, it operates governmental lobbying of various kinds — such as warning the British government over the adoption of open standards. And it has also funneled some of its lobbying effort through Burston Marsteller, the PR consultancy: opposing the purchase of DoubleClick by Google in 2007, for example.

John Vassallo, a former Maltese ambassador to Europe, has been vice president of EU Affairs for more than four years. He also worked in a similar position for General Electric.

Stephen Collins, the head of EU policy, recently gave evidence to British parliament over plans for a new communications bill.

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VC investments decreased substantially in the areas of clean technology and life sciences, which was balanced by significant increases in the software industry. The investments trended away from seed investments and toward early-stage (as in, the period in a startup’s lifespan beyond seed stage.)

The information is provided from the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data from Thomson Reuters. Here are some notable facts from the report, released Friday:

• In Q4, VCs invested $6.4 billion into 968 companies, a 3 percent decrease in dollars but 5 percent increase in number of deals over Q3.
  
• 38 percent fewer seed stage companies received VC dollars in 2012 than 2011.
• Software made up the largest investment sector of the year, seeing a 10 percent increase in dollars and 8 percent increase in deals over 2011.
• First-time financings in biotechnology and medical devices saw some of the biggest decreases in funding, with the lowest number of deals since 1995.
• Clean tech saw serious drops as well, with a 28 percent decrease in dollars and a 23 percent decrease in deals. The sector saw only $3.3 billion in funding, as compared to $4.6 billion in 2011.
• Internet companies saw a 5 percent decrease in dollars and deals this year, but still had the second-best year for internet deals since 2001. They made up about a quarter of all VC deals this year.

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As part of its investigation, the regulator is also probing three other unnamed companies. The perception is that ISPs in France are either under-investing in infrastructure or violating the spirit of network neutrality, the idea that ISPs should not discriminate on traffic traveling over their pipes. Yet, in France, it seems that at least some in the government are willing to make Google pay for the ability to guarantee that ISP customers can receive its bits, turning the internet into Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians, with ISPs and governments tying it down. The question is, will what happens in France happen elsewhere?

The ARCEP investigation and user complaints

Early this year, communications regulator ARCEP will rule on an investigation it opened on November 22 following complaints that video streaming services including YouTube are often too slow to watch. Now three French senators are also calling on the country’s digital economy minister to take action.

ARCEP stepped up when a survey of over 16,000 ISP customers by French consumer group UFC Que Choisir found 83 percent of Free customers, 47 percent of Orange customers and 46 percent of SFR customers were unable to use YouTube properly.

Since the investigation began, many users have reportedly noted an improvement in connection quality, but connections remain patchy.

And this issue is not limited to Google. “The quality of connection is inadequate in almost all operators,” said UFC Que Choisir’s survey, which found that France’s native Dailymotion, ironically, is slowest to access through France Telecom’s own Orange ISP, which owns almost half of the YouTube rival. And 25 percent of consumers reported slow-downs while watching broadcaster TF1′s MyTF1 catchup service.

Is it under-investment or a desire to make content companies pay?

UFC Que Choisir says these symptoms may be caused by under-investment in infrastructure as well as commercial tensions between ISPs, which deliver web services to the end user but which don’t pay for the infrastructure. It has called on the government to define quality-of-access rules, in part by allowing the competition regulator ARCEP to build a quality-of-service observatory. Similarly, in the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission is also trying to figure out how to measure the quality of a broadband connection beyond just looking at speeds.

Inter-company tensions do appear to be at play. A case before another public agency — France’s competition regulator, the Autorité De La Concurrence — in September illustrates how ISPs eager for revenue from web content companies can hold the user experience hostage.

Cogent, which handles YouTube’s peering interconnections, had complained to the competition authority that Orange had refused its connections, wanting more money to add ports to connect Cogent traffic to its networks. Much of the interconnections between large ISPs, CDNs and web content companies are negotiated by private deals, so it’s rare to see the government get involved, or even to hear much about them publicly. In the U.S., when Level 3 and Comcast became embroiled in a public peering fight after Level 3 started sending Netflix traffic over its connections with Comcast, the FCC refused to get involved, and both parties settled the disagreement.

But in this case, the competition regulator said one ISP was within its rights to charge more money from services hoping to reach its subscribers. This so-called double-sided business model has been sought by ISPs who argue that companies such as Google are freeloaders making huge profits off the pipes of owned by the ISPs. In contract, Google and other content companies argue that their services are the reason customers upgrade to higher speeds and continue paying ISPs money.

And in France the ISP argument has gained at least one supporter in the Autorité De La Concurrence. The authority says France Telecom is offering interconnection prices significantly below market value, and it has accepted the telco’s undertakings to ensure transparency.

French policymakers generally are generally in the mood to extract more money from Google. They have already set such wheels in motion around taxation and copyright fees. Now infrastructure could be the next arena. But its unclear how far France will go.

It’s one thing to try to ensure that consumers have an acceptable connection to support online video, through implementing some kind of standards. It’s another to get between participants in peering disputes, and to possibly start setting rates.

The U.S. fight is bigger than France’s

But such fights are becoming more common as the stakes over the internet and web video get higher. ISPs are worried about the cost of delivering video traffic over their networks, while also losing out on the ability to charge users for pay TV packages that significantly boost their revenue. Meanwhile, consumers are demanding more video online because they can choose what to watch, when they want to watch it, on any device.

The French competition authority’s earlier investigation referred only to two individual companies at loggerheads in a specific peering fight. But the new inquiry by the communications regulator is much wider, looking at industry-wide practices around infrastructure and interconnection. And it comes following consumer outcry — identified in UFC Que Choisir’s survey — to which politicians may be keen to respond.

The outcome will be important because Google is already facing having to pay to re-use news content in some parts of Europe through both commercial agreements and possible new legislation that suggest excerpting is chargeable. That could set new precedents for the online content economy.

The French broadband outcome will be important because it will set up a precedent for other telecom regulators who are struggling with similar issues. Creating standards to ensure that customers have a quality online video experience is no simple task and may well require investment by ISPs, especially those on older technologies or oversubscribed networks.

As for the peering issues, if the government decides to step into the fray there, it could be setting the internet up for regulations that put governments in the role of determining who can connect to whom and how much they can charge. The OECD recently made a convincing argument that such regulations and government involvement would hurt the web and the economic development of companies dependent on the web. So what France does here might have influence far beyond its borders.

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But it’s not just their love lives that French officials find tough to negotiate: the internet, too, gives them plenty of heartache.

One example? A series of offensive Twitter memes that swept through France over the past couple of weeks has provoked a strong reaction at the highest levels.

First came #UnBonJuif (“A good Jew”), which became the spark for a volley of anti-Semitic jokes. Then there was #SiMonFilsEstGay (“If my son was gay”). You can guess the rest. Clue: it wasn’t nice. France has a particular sensitivity to hate speech, and the torrent of Twitter abuse prompted Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the Minister for Women’s Rights, into action. In the pages of Le Monde, she denounced those spewing racist and homophobic messages and said she plans to start a consultation involving Twitter in the New Year to see what can be done to stop the tide.

Propos homophobes sur Twitter : en contradiction absolue avec les valeurs de notre République. Inacceptables et punis par la loi française.

— Najat Belkacem (@najatvb) December 22, 2012

Homophobic remarks, she said, were “in absolute contradiction with the values of the Republic”.

Of course she’s right — homophobia is vile. But it will be interesting to see where this goes. Is it grandstanding from a politician, or will there be a genuine policy that gets produced? The way the government chooses to act could be indicative of its approach to the internet… and it could go either way.

After all, seen in one context, this is yet another attempt by French officials to “civilize” the internet. That’s been a regular refrain from French leaders, first with Sarkozy and now under the man who replaced him. The internet — an American invention — is a debasing force on France, a threat to l’exception culturelle, and a powerful disruptor that must be kept in check.

But it’s not just France that feels this pressure. In another sense, this is just one small part of the much wider struggle between Europe’s establishment and the social media. Governments across the continent have been sent into a tailspin over internet freedoms. Germany has struggled with Neo-Nazis on Twitter, and Britain probably has the best — or worst — form on this. It’s thrown people in prison, dragged silly court cases on forever, and held parliamentary investigations into how social media up-ends the order of things.

And the battle between Twitter and free speech is isn’t just an issue in Europe, or in censorious regimes. The same questions are appearing, if in slightly altered forms, in America. Take the unmasking of Reddit troll Violentacrez, or the decision to publish the addresses of registered gun owners. Even in America, people are beginning to understand that “free speech” doesn’t mean “speech without consequences”. Exercising your right to say what you like to extremes doesn’t mean you won’t get held accountable.

Perhaps it’s all to be expected.

It’s nearly a year since Twitter announced that it would censor tweets in some jurisdictions — an agreement that it largely got blasted for, even if it was sensible. Now officials are trying to flex their muscles.

However, when new legislation gets mooted (as it inevitably does) we need to remember that almost every country already has ways of dealing with hate speech in real life, they just need to understand sensible ways of applying those laws in the online environment. For example, when Twitter users falsely accused a British politician of being a child abuser, I pointed out that legal recourse to tackle was already there. Lord McAlpine has wasted no time acting on that.

At the same time, ordinary people — who have suddenly been granted a super power — need to understand where social media slots into the spectrum between private conversation and public broadcast. After incorrect — and potentially dangerous — information rebounded around the network after the Sandy Hook shootings, I argued that if Twitter allows anyone to become their own media outlet, then we should all assume individual responsibility for what we tweet.

Nothing changes, but we need to navigate this course very carefully. Let’s see if France decides to take the high road or the low.

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The report, which can be found in its entirety online here, looked at 472 private technology companies estimated to be worth $100 million or more. Here are a couple of interesting points that caught my eye:

• Big companies still cost big money: It might be fairly cheap to build a software app and do a startup (as the Lean Startup approach advocates), but growing that business to larger valuations and a potential IPO still costs money. Of the companies the report evaluated, the median funding per company is $75.8 million, with an average of $84.7 million. 
• Selling to businesses over consumers pays: 80 percent of the companies in the study target their services at other businesses, as compared to strictly consumer businesses.
  
• Mobile and telecom come in behind internet for top sectors: Internet companies dominate the list, making up 229 of the 472 total, but mobile and telecom companies, like those focused on wireless connectivity and broadband services, are doing well too, with 76 companies represented.
• New York and Massachusetts vie for second place: California still tops the list of where the companies come from, but the two northeast states are essentially tied for second.
• It takes time to grow a company: Not surprisingly, the companies topping the list weren’t built overnight. One-third of the companies raised their first financing more than seven years ago.

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As we described in a post earlier this year, the controversy stems from a meeting of the UN’s International Telecommunications Union or ITU — a body that is made up of representatives from all the countries that belong to the United Nations. The core mandate of the group, as its name implies, is to get national governments and regulators to agree on rules that govern the way telecommunications networks operate between different jurisdictions. Now, the ITU wants to extend its oversight to the internet, and it is asking members to vote on new rules that would govern the global computer network.

“Our protocols were designed to make the networks of the Internet non-proprietary and interoperable. They avoided ‘lock-in,’ and allowed for contributions from many sources. This openness is why the Internet creates so much value today. Because it is borderless and belongs to everyone, it has brought unprecedented freedoms to billions of people worldwide.” — Vint Cerf

One of the things that makes this issue so difficult to pin down — which in turn has caused a lot of fear-mongering and hyperbole about the outcome — is that the ITU doesn’t make its meetings public, nor does it release much specific information about the proposals that are going to be considered by the group during its meetings over the next couple of weeks. As a result, most of the information we have comes from leaked documents and second-hand or third-hand reports about the discussions. The internet’s current governing body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has been accused of being secretive in the past, but it is an open book compared to the ITU.

As a number of sources have pointed out, there are a wide range of proposals from dozens of different countries who belong to the UN, and most of them will never see the light of day or become international law. But the proposals that should be of concern to users — and have drawn criticism from Vint Cerf, now a Google evangelist, as well as a multi-party group of U.S. legislators and other agencies — fall into two large buckets:

Limits to free speech and the free flow of information

One of the reasons to be afraid of what the ITU might do is that some UN member states — including Russia, Turkey, Iran and others — would like the power to restrict speech and information, and their proposals to the UN body are aimed at making it easier for them to do that. Obviously, China and other countries have shown that they are capable of creating national-level firewalls and systems that can monitor and block whatever forms of communication they wish, so the ITU’s approval isn’t necessary for this to happen.

If regulations were changed, however, the fear is that it could become even easier for countries like Egypt or Syria to filter and block specific online content, rather than having to use brute force to shut off the internet altogether — something that is much more obvious than a secretive filtering or controlled-access scheme, and therefore easier to criticize or defend against.

“Governments are trying to use a closed-door meeting of The International Telecommunication Union that opens on December 3 in Dubai to further their repressive agendas. Accustomed to media control, these governments fear losing it to the open internet.” — Vint Cerf

Changing who pays for the internet, and when

The second major reason to be concerned about the ITU’s plans is less philosophical and more technical: since one of the core functions of the group is to set policy around how telecommunication networks connect to each other — and the terms on which those connections occur — many of the proposals before the committee involve extending the same kind of approach to the internet. If you’ve ever experienced the nightmare of international roaming charges for a cellphone (which one estimate says can be more expensive than getting information from Mars), you probably have a sense of why this could be a bad thing.

As my colleague Stacey Higginbotham explained recently, the internet is in many ways a loose collective of national and trans-national networks — all of which connect to each other and share information based on what are called “peering” arrangements. These relationships are based on mutual advantage, and therefore they don’t usually involve money changing hands. In a very real sense, the internet is the first peer-to-peer network, and that has had a tangible impact on everything from telecom competition to the startup ecosystem, since it keeps the costs of cloud computing low.

The internet works, it doesn't need to be regulated by ITR treaty. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. #WCIT12 #EU on.ft.com/WvBFgV

—
Neelie Kroes (@NeelieKroesEU) November 29, 2012

The threat that the ITU poses is that a number of member states want to move to a system called “sender pays,” which is more like how telecom networks operate. The main reason they want to do this is that it would mean a significant new source of revenue for some countries — countries that believe they are currently helping to subsidize the growth of the internet for others, without getting much from it themselves. As a recent report from the OECD argues, making this change could derail many of the benefits that the global economy gets from the internet.

Among other things, this could jeopardize the principle of “net neutrality,” which is designed to ensure that data flows without consideration for who produced it or how much they paid a specific network to carry their bits. As MIT’s Technology Review has pointed out, the Internet Society — a non-profit co-founded by Cerf — has called the proposal an attempt to continue the “scams and arbitrage” that plague the traditional communications model, and says that the model the ITU is considering runs the “serious risk of fragmenting the internet.”

Whether the UN body accepts any of the recommendations or proposals that have been submitted to it remains to be seen, but unfortunately — given the secrecy with which the negotiations are being conducted — we may not know the answer until it is too late.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Jason Parks and Ryan Franklin

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