Network of Excellence Internet Science Summer School. The theme of the summer school is "Internet Privacy and Identity, Trust and Reputation Mechanisms". More information: http://www.internet-science.eu/

1. The 'New new new' Thing:
Internet Standards and Governance,
Definitions and Disciplines
FIRST EINS
SUMMER SCHOOL
OXFORD
AUGUST 10, 2012
Network of Excellence in FP7-ICT-2011.1.6
Internet Science 288021 EINS

2. USE OF THESE SLIDES
§ First draft ‘provocation’
§ Not to be cited – ever!
§ Beginning not end of JRA4 standards journey
§ Not to be attributed to JRA4 or to any
consortium member
§ Feel free to contact author at:
cmars@essex.ac.uk

3. WHY EXPLORING “INTERNET SCIENCE”?
§ Internet development a societal and technological artefact
§ To achieve a deeper multidisciplinary understanding
Ø A starting point for a new Internet Science
§ Expected outputs
Ø Supporting political choices set to reach
Ø economic, social and environmental objectives

4. NETWORK OF EXCELLENCE PARTNERS

5. NOE ACTIVITIES OVER THE PERIOD 2011-2015
Virtual communities
ePresence
Internet as critical infrastructure Facilitation of
researcher
Internet for sustainability mobility Dissemination &
cooperation
Governance, regulation, and standards
Internet privacy, identity, trust and reputation Standardisation
Joint courses,
graduate and legislation
Towards a Emerging
theory of theories and
programmes,
Evidence
Internet design and experiment Summer
science methodologies schools Open Calls
Spreading
Joint research Integration
excellence

6. ESSEX INVOLVEMENT
§ Leading JRA4: Governance, regulation, and standards
Ø Particular interests:
Ø Internet governance;
Ø Network neutrality;
Ø Co-regulation;
Ø Standard setting as alternate form of regulation (antitrust, IP control)
§ Leading JRA6: Virtual communities
Ø Particular interest:
Ø Creation of control regimes – ‘virtual world owners’
Ø Much useful background on WoW, SecondLife, MMPORGs
Ø Facebook makes it all very relevant to real world law

7. JRA4: GOVERNANCE, REGULATION, AND STANDARDS
Particular legal interests:
Ø Internet governance;
• Hard law and soft norms
Ø Network neutrality;
• Important telecoms law issue in assigning liability and control
Ø Co-regulation
• Coordination, support, endorsement, roles of government
§ Role of Western multinationals in e.g.
Ø Role of public and private actors, notably ISPs and other intermediaries
Ø Role of hardware/software manufacturers: NO DISCONNECT
• Export licences for surveillance technologies delivered to repressive
regimes
Ø Standard setting as alternate form of regulation (antitrust, IP control)

8. LAW AS A PROACTIVE ELEMENT IN INTERNET SCIENCE
§ Regulation and governance central to Internet
policy
Ø Well understood by policy makers
Ø Legislative role – as well as juridical
§ In standards:
Ø antitrust and Intellectual Property
§ In virtual worlds:
Ø ‘constitution’ and legal framework

9. THE ‘NEW NEW NEW’ THING?
§ Internet standards as a 'new' paradigm,
Ø based on technocratic decision making
Ø exemplified in the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF),
Ø with 'rough consensus and running code'
Ø instead of kings and presidents.
Ø Leads to claims about ‘The Constitution of Cyberspace’
as if divorced from meatspace…
• When the pair are actually co-dependent

10. REPOSITORY OF STANDARDS BODY CASE STUDIES
§ To measure successful governance design for
Internet standards,
§ living catalogue of standards bodies/functions
Ø both telecoms and Internet standards,
Ø but also the complex interplays and trade-offs
Ø between the various bodies and their design choices.
§ Contrast is evident between
Ø e.g. IETF, ETSI and W3C models

11. STANDARDS CASE STUDIES
Standards Case study
Time Authors
Governance Innovation
organisation
period
IETF
General 2006-7
Brown
‘Rough consensus and
constitution
running code’
ETSI
3G standards
1998-2000
Grindley, Weighted majority voting
Salant
W3C
2005-7
Marsden
‘Enlightened dictator’
IEEE
802.11 (WiFi)
2000-9
Marsden/ Usurps HiperLAN standards
Croxford
Zevenbergen*
ITU-T
WCIT
2011-12
Governance reforms
(emperor’s new clothes)
ISO
Java
1998-2000
McGowan
China v. Sun
ICANN
DNSSec
2009-10
Mueller
US Govt maintains control
3GPP
IP Multimedia 2000-5
Waclawsky, QoS
Marsden
Subsystem

12. ALTERNATIVE MODEL OF ‘BENEVOLENT DICTATORSHIP’
§ ‘New’ thing:
Ø 1990s New Approach ETSI
§ ‘New new’ thing
Ø IETF (since 1986!) rough consensus approach
§ ‘New new new’ thing:
Ø W3C under Tim Berners-Lee
§ Claims“sunk into corporatist capture”?
Ø Corporate
membership at a fee
Ø OOXML, P3P, royalty-free issues

13. WHY IS STANDARD SETTING EXCLUDED FROM ECONOMICS?
§ In both IETF and W3C
Ø dominant corporate interests are claimed to
Ø freeride and otherwise 'game' the system for
stockholders' benefit
Ø e.g. W3C: OOXML and Microsoft,
Ø IETF: Cisco and multicasting
§ This is perfectly rational economic behaviour – if true

14. 'NEW' PARADIGMS ARE SET AGAINST EXISTING BODIES
§ General standards-setting bodies (ISO)
§ International Organization for Standardisation
§ interesting corporate-state negotiation in Internet standards
Ø Sun, China and Java
Ø Microsoft and OOXML
• ECMA-376, ISO/IEC's Joint Technical Committee 1: 29500:2008
Ø McGowan: Third Way?
§ Telecoms and ‘new’ approach
§ European Telecoms Standards Institute ETSI
Ø claimed in 1990s to be a 'new' method of standard setting
Ø Note critique of most controversial standards ‘state-firm diplomacy’
Ø 3G standards – Grindley/Waverman/Salant paper
Ø But US any better? Qualcomm military-industrial diplomacy

15. INTERNATIONAL ELECTROTECHNICAL COMMISSION
§ Commission électrotechnique internationale (CEI)
§ non-profit, non-governmental international standards organization
Ø power generation, transmission and distribution to
Ø home appliances and office equipment, semiconductors, fibre optics, batteries,
solar energy, nanotechnology and marine energy as well as many others.
§ The IEC inaugural meeting on 26 June 1906,
Ø began at the 1900 Paris International Electrical Congress,
Ø 81 countries are members; 82 in the Affiliate Country Programme, which is not
§ CISPR (Comité International Spécial des Perturbations
Radioélectriques) International Special Committee on Radio
Interference –founded by the IEC.
§ ISO, ITU and IEEE cooperation agreement in 2002,
Ø amended in 2008 to include joint development work.
§ ISO/IEC 26300,
Ø Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0
§ IEC is made up of national committees, and each NC represents
its nation's electrotechnical interests in the IEC.
Ø 90% of those who prepare IEC standards work in industry.

16. MODERNISATION OF ‘NEW’ MODELS
§ Yet as faults are found in
Ø IETF 'new new' and
Ø W3C ‘new new new’ models,
Ø is modernisation creeping into the old 'new' models?
Ø notably in the increased
Ø formal transparency and multistakeholder participation
Ø 2012 by International Telecoms Union (ITU).
§ ‘Old whine in new bottles’?

17. THIS RAISES A SIGNIFICANT DESIGN QUESTION
§ Is the 'new new' model of IETF and W3C still fit
for purpose?
Ø Can they successfully [further] evolve?
§ Does a 'new new new new' model
encompassing more formal user involvement
Ø offer more transparency or
Ø threaten to further ossify a standards design process
Ø that is already creaking under the weight of
Ø many more participants than originally intended?

18. CONCLUSION: EXPLANATORY POWER OF CASE STUDIES
§ It is use cases that represent the ability of
§ Internet Science to explain
Ø governance and regulation of the Internet as a whole
Ø but also of other rapidly developing technology-led sectors
Ø with a potential legitimacy gap between
Ø best practice design and socio-political trust in expert design.
§ Essential governance questions will be identified
throughout the duration of this task
Ø meaningful analysis based on developing methodologies.