Testimony from June 16, 1999

Prepared Testimony from Esther Dyson, Edventure; ICANN

I would like briefly to address two topics today: The first is the role of the government on the Internet. The second is the role of the non-government organization I currently chair, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The glorious future

Over the past couple of days, you have heard a lot about the glories of the high-tech world, and particularly about the promise of the Internet.  Indeed, I have written an entire book on that topic, Release 2.1: A design for living in the digital age.  (Many of you have received copies, and it is easily available – including through Amazon.com, of course!)

The premise of the book (and of much of my thinking) is that the Internet pre-sents us not just with opportunities but also with responsibilities. It gives each individual much greater choice over his or her life; it allows each of us access to what amounts to the world’s greatest real-time research library; it lets us communicate with friends, business partners and strangers at low cost and with high convenience. It changes the balance of power – mostly by equalizing access to information and the ability to spread information – in favor of consumers against corporations, small companies against big ones, em-ployees versus employers, citizens against their governments, audiences versus mass media. More than that, it removes the advantages of economy of scale, and empowers individuals not just as consumers but as producers – enabling them to set up in business with little more than a Website and a product or service to sell.  It gives people power over their own lives without giving them power over one another; generally, the Net erodes power rather than transfers it to some other center.

But there’s a downside to all this (even for people who don’t find the devolution of power to individuals troubling!): Many individuals will find the profusion of choices and opportu-nities confusing. Who determines whether the individual with his own news service is telling the truth? Can you trust Alice’s home-baked pies to be fresh and healthful when you order over the Net? Will they arrive at all? What about the proliferation of information and misinformation on the financial trading sites? Is Juan in the diabetes chat room really an MD, or just a charlatan promoting a cure in which he has an interest?

I’m speaking to you today as government officials, wondering about the appropriate role of government in all this.

Trust the people, but educate them first

The basic answer is the traditional American one: Trust the people!

The American approach is generally to leave as much up to the market as possible. On the Internet especially, that means not just the commercial sector, but the basic notion of individual choice. There are information markets (information shared  “free”) as well as commercial markets. People can choose for themselves, whether it’s information sources or suitcases, schools or health clubs, churches or temples.

(Parenthetically, I believe the government can probably do far more for education by giving parents information about and communications channels with their schools through the Net, than by giving kids access to the Net.)

Thus, I don’t think government needs to get deeply involved in the administration of the Internet. It seems to be doing fine by itself!  But in order for the Net to reach its potential for its users and the communities they live in, those people must be educated and in-formed. That is a proper role for government: It does need to help its citizens get edu-cated, both so that they can manage their own increasingly complex lives, and so that they can have the capability of filling the increasingly knowledge-based jobs that will re-sult from the Internet’s growth.

That doesn’t mean teaching kids how to use the Internet (which they can figure out for themselves!), but teaching them how to read, write, calculate…and to think for them-selves. I don’t really want the Federal government telling people what to read, watch or buy – but I don’t want to leave that choice to Microsoft or AOL either.  The Net gives us great freedom, but we have to have the will and the knowledge to exercise it.

In most of the troubling issues raised above – everything from offensive content to truth-in-advertising – the best response is often disclosure and consumer choice. But I’m hopeful that the disclosure can happen mostly as the result of educated consumer de-mand, rather than rigid regulations that adapt poorly to the rapidly evolving Internet.

So, if the government does have a role, it’s primarily education, both in schools and elsewhere.  The recent experience with personal privacy protection has been instructive and illustrative.

Personal data control as an example

In very short form, the Net-based marketing industry is moving towards policies and practices that will give consumers choice and control over the use of their personal data. Some call this self-regulation.  I prefer to call it consumer regulation – wherein the forces of  informed consumer demand and market competition gently push vendors to fulfill consumer preferences.

Sometimes, this doesn’t happen entirely smoothly. In this case, let’s be candid, industry needed a little push – the threat of government regulation.  Labeling/enforcement serv-ices such as TRUSTe and BBBOnline had trouble attracting licensees without the threat of government regulation. But the outcome now before us – a lively market in data prac-tices rather than rigid, one-size-fits-all policies – looks likely to afford the maximum in consumer satisfaction, following varied personal privacy preferences and leading to maximum marketing efficiency within the constraints of consumer desires.

That makes a lot of sense, because individuals have different preferences: Juan may want to keep his medical condition private but doesn’t care about having his income dis-closed; Alice doesn’t want phone calls from anyone.  Personally, I want British Airways to know how much I fly with American, but I’d prefer to keep my exact destinations pri-vate.

But there’s one aspect to all this that’s still just underway – the need for consumer edu-cation and personal tools to control the use of their data.  It’s not enough simply to make the choices and the information available; it needs to be easy for consumers to learn about, to understand and to exercise those choices.  Again, the market should work, as companies come to see disclosure and personal-data management as a business op-portunity rather than as a duty. That is beginning to happen; privacy tools are a hot cate-gory in Silicon Valley and elsewhere (including in my own portfolio). I would welcome questions on this topic.
 

And now, all about ICANN….

Now, I would like to turn my attention to ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. (I have included as part of my written testimony two documents concerning ICANN. One is my response to a recent letter of concern about ICANN from Ralph Nader, which outlines the political realities we face. The other is a more detail-oriented, internally focused progress report to the US Department of Commerce.)

ICANN is an important initiative fostered – in the right way – by the US Government.  The Government wisely decided that the time had come to turn administration of the Internet’s technical infrastructure over to a private, not-for-profit, international corporation that would be subject to public oversight – in fact, to oversight from the many Internet-based communities that it serves.

Previously, these technical issues – the Domain Name system, the IP address system (those numbers you sometimes see hiding behind the user-friendly names on the Inter-net), the Internet protocols that enable any computer to talk to any other computer on the Internet, the root server system that ties it all together – had been handled by an individ-ual called Jon Postel and by a private, for-profit corporation called Network Solutions.  Although both were operating under government contract, neither had in place predict-able formal policies for managing disputes, for responding to public oversight, or for adapting to the Internet’s astonishing growth and rapid scale-up.  (Unfortunately, Dr. Postel died unexpectedly last September, or he would now be a key part of ICANN.) And Network Solutions, the monopoly operator that until now handled all domain name reg-istrations in .com, .org and .net under a lucrative government contract…Network Solu-tions is alive and well, although it is understandably resisting ICANN’s efforts to intro-duce competition into what was previously its exclusive turf.

In addition, some parties fear that we will become some kind of world government. I can assure you that this is a role that we do not want, and that most of those who have watched our self-organizing creation, including the US Government, will not allow. On the other hand, there are other groups that do want us to become a world government – with themselves in charge.

But the time has come for change, sometimes disruptive change.  ICANN is in charge of managing that change for the Internet’s technical (not governance) infrastructure, and of setting up an organization to adapt to such change over time.  That reality – of change and resistance to change - is behind many of the debates concerning ICANN’s role.

However, there are many parties – including those of you here in this room - with a le-gitimate interest in ICANN’s future, its structure, and the policies it adopts. We are eager to help them become more educated about the Net, and about ICANN and its technical role in helping the Net to run smoothly and reliably even as it doubles in size each year. We are trying to work with all of them and with you, and I welcome your questions about our goals and our progress towards meeting them.