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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
"Ruling the Root" documents the sorry tale of how the Internet was brought to heel.
Jun 14, 2002 | In the annals of the Internet, few topics seem as boring, arcane and inscrutable as the domain name system. Yet, in Milton L. Mueller's hands, the story of how the Net came to be administered is riveting, illuminating, depressing and enraging. In effortless, lucid prose Mueller documents and explains precisely how "Internet governance" has evolved from the enlightened despotism of a technological elite into a tool of special interests intent on protecting and expanding the control of intellectual property online.
It is a sad story, in the end, this "taming of the Net." In "Ruling the Root," Mueller, with all the precision and economy of a masterful prosecuting attorney, demolishes the techno-libertarian myth of the Internet as a new space for human interaction that is uncontrollable and inherently independent. Despite the widespread belief that the Net is so decentralized and distributed as to be able to elude governments and even nuclear devastation, there is a central point of control -- the so-called "root."
The root is not a single computer or set of computers, but rather, as Mueller puts it, "a cluster of functions" that have to do with the management of the Internet's name and address system. The bedrock of the Internet is a set of "name-serving" computers that help resolve the numbers that are Internet addresses into the domain names that identify Web sites for human comprehension (and vice versa). But who has authority over the highest level of those names -- such as the dot-com or dot-net domains? And who gets to operate the root servers that distribute the information?
Once upon a time, a handful of geeks made the decisions; in fact, for many years a single person, Jon Postel, had an extraordinary amount of power to decide such things as who might be responsible for an entire nation's regional domain name system. Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, Postel was in charge of allocating the numerical addresses for Internet domains. Those geeks often had idealistic, utopian ideas as to their responsibilities and the potential of the Internet.
Today, a coalition of special interests whose primary concern appears to be trademark protection runs the show through ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN was originally formed in late 1998 as part of an agreement between the U.S. Commerce Department and a coalition of interested parties, including companies such as IBM and MCI, several foreign governments and groups representing the original technologists such as the Internet Society.
The Commerce Department has yet to relinquish ultimate "policy" authority over the root, to the dismay of foreign governments, but for all intents and purposes a governing structure has been set up that is beholden only to itself and dead set against allowing any significant level of public input or influence.
The fact that established corporate interests would be determined to protect their trademarks is not surprising. One of the fascinating sub-themes of "Ruling the Root" is Mueller's explication of how new technologies can create new spaces in which property rights emerge and are contested. Intriguingly, the Internet's historical identity as a primarily self-regulating system run by a technological elite did allow it to escape the more traditional regulatory regimes that govern other forms of telecommunications. ICANN is a strange new bird, an international regime that is not bound by specific treaties or founded on a clear legal framework.
But what is surprising, and disturbing, is the process by which control over the domain name system has been used to extend intellectual property rights to new heights. Ultimately, the free-speech utopia of cyberspace is evolving into a domain where corporate interests have more power to control speech than they have had in other arenas.
For example, Yahoo gets to trademark not only its own name, but at least 30 misspellings of its name. And it can prevent other groups from registering domain names with the word Yahoo in them, even if they are not competing in any way with Yahoo's business. In both cases, Internet practice goes beyond established legal precedent.
Mueller documents and explains this process of evolution in absorbing detail, without raising his voice or lapsing into outrage.
That job belongs to his readers.
