[wg-c] "Public" resources

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

Ross Wm. Rader wrote:

> Regardless of our different views on economic performance is
> the larger
> question of whether TLDspace should be administered as a
> public resource or
> not.

Let me take a crack at this.
If we use language carefully, the only truly "public" resources
are ones that are not scarce and require no allocation or
exclusivity.

For example, the works of William Shakespeare are in the "public
domain." No one owns them. There is no scarcity--if I read,
republish, or perform Shakespeare, I do not in any way reduce
the works' availability to you. Shakespeare himself is long
dead, so no one needs to administer or restrict its use on his
behalf.

That's a public resource.

As soon as a resource becomes exclusive or scarce, its use must
be administered, and it is no longer truly "public" in
character. We say that the US National Parks are "owned by the
public." But this is not true. The national parks are owned by
the US government and administered, if all goes well, *on behalf
of* the citizens of the United States, which is a relatively
small part of the global "public." All other forms of "public
property" also refer to small segments of the public--townships,
counties, states nations--and are actually owned by
oganizational entities that purport to act *on behalf of* these
collective entities, but often do not.

It is quite obviously wrong to say that the public "owns" the
parks, or that a public is capable of owning anything at all.
Ownership means exclusive control, and the right to sell or
transfer control. I am a member of the public, but I cannot sell
Yellowstone Park or build a house upon it and live there. So, I
do *not* own it. The US federal government owns it. I can, along
with millions of other people, attempt to influence what they do
with it. But that is not usually a very satisfying or meaningful
form of ownership.

When you say the domain name space is a "public resource" I
interpret it in this way:
1) you do *not* mean that any memnber of the public should be
allowed to exert ownership control over the root, i..e, add or
remove TLDs.
2) you *do* think that the domain name space should be owned
entirely by ICANN and administered in the name of a "public."
Just who this public is is never specified very well. When I
look at ICANN's DNSO I see a group of no more than 200 people
actively involved. Most of them represent very specific economic
interest groups: TM/IP owners, ISPs, IBM, ccTLDs, NSI,
registrars.

But let me give you the benefit of the doubt.

If we say that the name space is a "collectively administered"
resource and that the administrator is ICANN I can partially
agree, but there are also implications or interpretations that I
strongly disagree with.

The agreeable part: there are aspects of domain name
administration that require broad coordination across a variety
of Internet stakeholders. There must, for example, be
collectively agreed-upon rules for adding TLDs to the root. So
it is fine for the businesses and user groups who are actively
involved with and interested in Internet administration to come
together and negotiate, via ICANN, some basic decisions about
how the domain name space is coordinated, allocated, and
assigned.

The disagreeable parts:

Collective ownership/administration by Internet industry groups
should not be equated with "public" ownership. The latter is a
pretentious and misleading claim of authority that does not
exist.

If by saying the TLD space is "a public resource" you are
expressing an ideological hostility to profit-making business
and market competition, I reject your contention.

If "public resource" rhetoric is used to deny that ICANN can
facilitate competition and innovation in Internet services by
allocating property rights in TLDs to private businesses, then
the premise is wrong and so is the policy. It is clearly
*possible* for ICANN to delegate exclusive administration rights
to TLDs. Some strong arguments hae been advanced as to some
possible public benefits that might come out of it. These
arguments must be dealt with on the merits. They cannot be
dismissed by repeating an ideological mantras about "public
resource."

You complain about the "monopoly" power of private owners but in
reality the most significant monopoly in the picture is ICANN.
And ICANN's monopoly power is not made any less dangerous or
easier to manage by dressing it up in the language of "public"
or "community" ownership, as Javier always does. The "community"
is divided. That should be obvious. We accomplish nothing when
one faction claims that it "is" the community and thereby
continues to deny that other factions, other ideas, and other
legitimate interests exist.

  --
m i l t o n   m u e l l e r // m u e l l e r @ s y r . e d u
syracuse university          http://istweb.syr.edu/~mueller/