IGP Blog :: US and Canadian Governments support Chinese-style censorship of DNS in ICANN

Following up my previous article about ICANN's GAC letter, here is a good article from Milton Mueller, member of the Non Commercial Stakeholder Group and author of the book "Ruling the Root: Internet governance and the taming of cyberspace".

IGP Blog :: US and Canadian Governments support Chinese-style censorship of DNS in ICANN

Milton in his article explains briefly why the tone and attitude reflected in GAC's letter is an outrage to free speech and another move to use ICANN as a regulator/controller by proxy.

I'm not sure that as Milton says, the main instigator behind this letter is the US Government, I'm pretty sure that there are many governments that have their level of anxiety growing to exert some control over the Internet.

Hard to say what is going to happen, but I'm sure that the next few ICANN's meetings will be interesting to watch. Get the popcorn ready !!!

Cheers
Jorge

ICANN's GAC has spoken

I have not been using much this blog to write about my incursions in the world of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names). Until now I've just been posting some comments on my facebook page and various email lists.

So, bare with me as I start using this space to post some comments, opinions and what is going on in the world of ICANN.

Two days ago, one of the structures of ICANN called the Governmental Advisory Committee or GAC (get used to this, ICANN is a vast sea of acronyms and jargon) sent a short letter about MoPo (Morality and Public Order)

Several people are starting to read the letter between the lines, trying to guess what the GAC is cooking behind walls.

One of the paragraphs of the GAC letter says:

"The GAC firmly believes that the absence of any controversial strings in the current universe of top level domains (TLDs) to date contributes directly to the security and stability of the domain name and addressing system (DNS) and the universal resolvability of the sytem."

Hmmm, controversial strings ???

they also say

"In this regard, the GAC believes that procedures to identify strings that could raise national, cultural, geographic, religious and/or linguistic sensitivities or objections are warranted so as to mitigate the risks of fragmenting the DNS that could result from the introduction of controversial strings."

What do you read there then ?

What are controversial strings, who defines what is or is not controversial ? and what GAC members are thinking about "fragmenting the DNS" if ICANN approves a string that they don't like ?

The last paragraph says

"The GAC therefore recommends that community-wide discussions be facilitated by ICANN in order to ensure that an effective objections procedure be developed that both recognizes the relevance of national laws and effectively addresses strings that raise national, cultural, yada, yada ..."

and ends with the cherry on the top

"These objections procedures should apply to all pending and future TLDs."

Pending ?

Do you know what is pending ?

.XXX :-)

So one can read here that GAC will most surely try to block moving forward with the agreement to add .XXX to the DNS root zone, this will be a show of power since the ICANN BoD (Board of Directors) may take the decision of ignoring the GAC advise and objections and move forward anyway.

Do you think the BoD will have the guts to do that ?

Cheers

Jorge

The Stolen Signature

A plot for a new book from author Dan Brown

Inspired by the multiple articles and reports around the recent signing of the Domain Name System root zone and the incipient deployment of DNSSEC, which for many reporters and correspondents is the source for spin and numerous gaffes related to what was really done and what still needs to be done to have a fairly secure DNS.

Since many of these reports have a dose of science fiction, wrong or fabricated information adding to the confusion of the general public and casual Internet user, I decided to exploit my own creative inspiration for stupidity and posted some comments in Facebook about a suggested plot for a Dan Brown's book that could be called "The Stolen Signature"

The Plot:

A group of cyber terrorists kidnap and torture the seven templars of ICANN to obtain the smart cards holding portions of the magic key that protects the Internet Domain Names.

Meanwhile a group of VE, CU and NK Special Ops break into ICANN's east and west facilities and steal the HSMs (Hardware Security Modules), while Sigfried and Hans Hunter from KAOS take control over the K server in Budapest used to propagate a new fake DNS root zone and redirect all financial transactions and access to critical infrastructure control systems to a secret datacenter on the dark side of the moon built by the covert Chinese Space Domination Agency.

But they didn't take in account that Rod "Astroboy" Beckstrom had a secret DNS-CERT running on his backyard and after a period of Public Comment and Policy Development Process he was able to retain the outside consulting services of Prof. Langdon and Kaminsky the Wizard SecuGeek who established an ICANN Working Group that discovered that the entire operation of the cyberterrorists was developed using a pirate version of Microsoft Windows 12, that for backwards compatibility includes all the exploits of all previous versions of Windows, something that became a "feature parity" imposed by the evil twin brother of Mr. Ballmer.

Still thinking who could be a good female character. Somebody play by Angelina Jolie ??

OK, enough waste of time, going back to the grind ...

Cheers

Jorge

The Next Billion Internet Users

On April 29, I had the chance to watch remotely some of the presentations and panels during the INET Washington DC Conference organized by the friends of the Internet Society Chapter in DC.

The main theme of the conference was "Internet 2020: The Next Billion Users".

The agenda was packed with interesting presentations and discussion panels that went beyond just the technologies associated with Internet and telecommunications in general. There was a lot of talking about policies, regulations, politics and a vast array of issues that have substantial influence in the evolution of the network and how fast it gets more users.

Lot of juicy information that was particularly useful for some personal research I started a while ago to collect references and raw data for a book that is still on the initial stages of evolving from an idea to a more structured work related to "The Internet of Things" (obviously the first idea that got discarded was to call the book "TITS").

Anyway, one of the topics that really caught my attention was an analysis about from where we should expect the next billion of users. One of the panelists made the comment that the majority of the users will not come from the industrialized or developed world, where penetration of Internet services has been high and constantly growing for the past 20 years.

It won't come from Africa either, where there is a huge potential for growth but many issues, particularly with infrastructure and an abstract view of "return of investment" driving growth. Yes China, India, and south Asia continue to be potential areas with large populations that could drive growth, but also have many issues that will condition how fast users are added in this region.

Then what is left among other areas that has the potential to contribute new users ?

Latin America.

While Latin America may not have the same population density as other regions and hardly by itself has enough people to contribute 1 billion new users, many argue that it has the higher potential for growth given that penetration of telecommunication services in a comparative basis is still low, and despite some issues here and there the economies kept growing, and the region had somehow a period of political stability for several years.

Without digging too much for data into the numerous and never ending reports from International Organizations, NGO's, Think Tanks, etc, etc, which can get you dizzy with numbers, I have to say that I generally agree with this statement, Latin America has a big potential for Internet growth.

But I'm a geek !!! so I need data, facts, and if in a graphic format, much better ... then I found a great resource from the abominable king of search or world domination new evil (aka Google, some people are starting to refer to Larry and Sergey as Pinky and the Brain and their quest to take over the world, who is who is up to you).

If you have not seen it yet, the tool from Google is the Public Data Explorer, I found that one of the available datasets is the number of Internet Users as part of a larger dataset of World Development Indicators from The World Bank. The actual data source is from the International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication Development Report and database.

Then using this dataset on the Public Data Explorer I first created a graph showing the growth of Internet users for over a period of almost twenty years starting in 1990 for a selected group of developed countries.

On the graph is easy to notice that from the early nineties when Internet left academia and have an explosive growth the curves show an exponential trend until around 2002 when the switched to more like a logarithmic trend or slightly linear trend. In the United States is clear that besides some rural or isolated areas, there has been an incredible penetration of services and the market has reached some level of maturity and saturation.

Now lets look at a selected group of countries from Latin America.

I was expecting to see a graph where Brazil had a predominant lead given its large population (~192M), but it really surprised me to see Mexico that has about half of Brazil's number (~106M) and on top of that seeing that the curve also switched from exponential and growth seems to have also reached some plateau. It makes me wonder if the actual data is correct and complete.

Anyway, as you can see from the graph there are several countries that still show exponential growth, but as Mexico others seem also to be slowing down like Peru, Chile, Argentina, and probably Venezuela. I didn't take the time yet to analyze telecom services penetration statistics and other statistics but I still believe that there is still there huge potential for growth. Then, what's going on ? Are there any particular roadblocks that are impeding growth ?

I didn't do much research yet but based on past experiences and some indicators it is clear for me that the lack of clear regulations and a real competitive market are hurting a lot. A common denominator in several Latin American countries is the monopolistic behavior of the big telcos, probably limited capital investment in infrastructure, slow rate of adoption and regulation that facilitates e-commerce, but the one that hurts the most is the lack of a long term plan based on a strategy that takes Internet as one of the fundamental resources to drive development and innovation across the board.

Perhaps it is time to take a closer look or ask Brazil what are they doing ?

After all I was just looking for this graph ...

Anyway, if you are interested in reading one of the many reports that provide this type of information here is a recent one from Development Sector of the ITU (ITU-D), Measuring the Information Society, 2010, abstract:

"The latest edition of Measuring the Information Society features the new ITU ICT Development Index (IDI) and the ICT Price Basket - two benchmarking tools to measure the Information Society. The IDI captures the level of advancement of ICTs in 159 countries worldwide and compares progress made between 2002 and 2008. It also measures the global digital divide and examines how it has developed in recent years. The report also features the latest ICT Price Basket, which combines 2009 fixed telephone, mobile cellular and fixed broadband tariffs for 161 economies into one measure and compares these across countries, and over time. The analytical report is complemented by a series of statistical tables providing country-level data for all indicators included in the Index."

Cheers
Jorge

Nuevo Blog sobre Internet en Argentina

Para facilitar compartir los avances en el proyecto de reconstruir la historia de Internet en Argentina, hoy inicio un nuevo blog dedicado exclusivamente a este tema.

El blog está abierto a comentarios y va a ser uno de los canales de distribución para algunas de las historias, imágenes e información que vayan surgiendo de este esfuerzo.

El URL del nuevo blog es: http://blog.internet-argentina.net/

Desde ya muchas gracias a quienes poco a poco se van sumando a este esfuerzo y queda abierta la invitación a aquellos que quieran contribuir con sus anécdotas, opiniones, sugerencias y críticas.

Atentos Saludos
Pete

Deja Vu

Tratando de retornar al pasado, resulta interesante la experiencia de reencontrarme con viejas memorias e imágenes de aquellos días en los que frenéticamente buscábamos la forma de conectar Argentina a Internet y que no fuera para el beneficio de unos pocos.

En el proceso de reorganizar viejos archivos, volver a leer después de tantos años, cientos de mensajes de correo electrónico, propuestas y proyectos que lograron concretarse y otros que solamente quedaron en papel, recordar viejas conversaciones y porque no discusiones sobre como seguir adelante pese a la falta de recursos, comienzo a sentir que quizás en nuestra mente maravillosamente se preservan todos esos “bits” a los que uno no está acostumbrado o entrenado para recuperar con facilidad.

Que fantástico sería si los muchachos de Google inventaran algo que permitiera hacer un búsqueda en ese vasto repositorio de conocimientos y experiencias que tenemos bajo el cuero cabelludo, que en mi caso ya queda poco y no ayuda para evitar que se evaporen los recuerdos.

Mientras leo esas reliquias de la experiencia que me tocó vivir, me transporto y pierdo la noción del tiempo, a medida que esos recuerdos retornan al presente ya se me hace cotidiano sentir la sensación de “déjà vu”, que pese a convertir mi bocho en una licuadora termina resultando una sensación placentera al recordar viejos amigos y anécdotas que difícilmente alguna vez vayan a parar a /dev/null.

Por otro lado con la objetividad que ahora proveen el tiempo y la distancia, comienzo a asombrarme y a admirar lo que tras el trabajo conjunto, muchas veces sin alguna coordinación o plan maestro se logró concretar.

El trabajo de recompilar esas memorias y poco a poco registrarlas en un texto escrito, a veces resulta un poco extenuante, pero tengo que agradecer sinceramente a un viejo amigo, Eduardo Suarez de la Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, que no solo me esta dando una mano con recuperar y recomponer una gran cantidad de material sobre la historia de redes en Argentina, si no también que me “hace la pata” casi en forma cotidiana en extensas charlas nocturnas, altas horas de la madrugada para Eduardo, donde de la conversación se estimula el search engine natural y las piezas de un complejo rompecabezas empiezan a tomar su lugar.

Gracias Edu, nos "vemos" en la noche :-)

Jorge aka pete

Historia de Internet en Argentina

Hace rato largo que varios amigos y viejos colegas me sugieren que me ponga escribir sobre la formidable experiencia en la que tuve el privilegio de formar parte allá por mediado de los años 80, en los que un grupo de geeks to be contribuímos con los primeros pasos para que Internet se convirtiera realidad en Argentina.

Si bien suelo ser bastante "verborragico", el escribir no es una de mis mejores cualidades, pero creo que sí es realmente importante el aprovechar estas herramientas con las que contamos hoy en día para preservar un poco de nuestra historia y transmitir la experiencia a otras generaciones.

Obviamente lo que logre escribir va a ser un relato de como me tocó vivir esta experienca desde el punto de vista personal y no la "historia oficial". Fuimos muchos los que contribuímos a esta experiencia que también se extiende al resto de Latino América y el Caribe, y solo con la participación de los principales actores sería posible lograr reuinir esta información, un esfuerzo que mi viejo amigo José Soriano viene tratando de impulsar desde hace tiempo.

A veces el mayor obstáculo que encuentro es que tengo que escarbar en mi memoria para sacar a flote viejos recuerdos y buscar que documentos, fotografías y otras piezas de colección sobrevivieron varias mudanzas.

Pero pese a todo, y en particular gracias a mis largas conversaciones nocturnas via chat con un viejo colega de la Universidad de La Plata, Eduardo Suarez, muchos recuerdos estan reflotando en mi memoria y ya retomé la rutina de ponerme a escribir cotidianamente sobre esta experienca.

No tengo la menor idea de cual vaya a ser el resultado final, inicialmente voy a comenzar a publicar poco a poco lo que vaya logrando terminar en pequeños capítulos en una sección de mi website personal, y a medida que avance aparecerán otros capítulos.

Como siempre digo a varios amigos, correcciones, adiciones, sugerencias y crítica constructiva son bien recibidos. Quejas a otra parte ...

Aquí va entonces a modo de anticipo la primer versión de la página de introducción

---

Introducción

Ya se han cumplido más de veinte años desde que un grupo de entusiastas dábamos los primeros pasos que culminaron con la incorporación de Argentina a Internet.

Realmente poco o casi nada se ha escrito o hecho público sobre esta experiencia formidable desde un punto de vista histórico.

Desde mediados de los años ochenta, y por más de diez años, antes de partir hacia el norte, tuve el privilegio y la oportunidad de estar involucrado con el incipiente desarrollo de Internet en Argentina.

Estas páginas no las escribo con el objetivo de obtener algún tipo de reconocimiento a nivel personal. Siempre trato de evitar el tema cuando otras personas se refieren a mí como uno de los padres de Internet en Argentina. Realmente el esfuerzo colectivo de un gran número de personas y una secuencia particular de eventos en los que tuve el privilegio de formar parte, fueron los que dieron pie a la incorporación de Argentina en Internet.

Aparte de quizás contribuir a preservar un poco de nuestra historia, en realidad estas páginas son en reconocimiento a quienes contribuyeron para que Internet en Argentina se convirtiera en realidad.

Esta historia tiene muchas caras y muchas voces, y estoy seguro, como siempre ha sucedido en el pasado, la misma va a generar algunas controversias (después de todo tenemos sangre latina, no?), pero voy a poner mi mejor esfuerzo para representar los hechos en forma objetiva pero desde un punto de vista personal.

La historia cubre el periodo desde mediados de los años ochenta hasta mediados de los noventa cuando comenzaron a aparecer los mayores proveedores comerciales de servicios de Internet permitiendo el acceso a todos (bueno … casi todos :-) ).

Dado que ya ha pasado suficiente tiempo desde aquellos días, y que actualmente no estoy asociado con ninguna de las instituciones que formaron parte de esta experiencia, (algunas de las cuales ya no existen), para hacer la historia más completa e interesante, por primera vez voy a incluir comentarios e información que no creo que hasta ahora se haya hecho pública, sobre el trabajo detrás de bambalinas para que ciertos eventos se concretaran.

Es importante también tener en cuenta el contexto en el cual se desarrollaban estos eventos, como la situación política del País, la infraestructura y regulaciones de los servicios de telecomunicación disponibles en ese momento, y la disponibilidad de recursos.

Sin duda, con el pasar del tiempo mi memoria haya perdido algunos bits de información (aparte de mi cabellera) y seguro me olvide de mencionar nombres y eventos, así que desde ya mis más sinceras disculpas.

Correcciones, adiciones y crítica constructiva son bienvenidas para quienes quieran aportar a esta historia.

De más esta decir que todos los comentarios y opiniones son propios, y no representan en principio la posición oficial de las organizaciones en las que estuve involucrado o de aquellos con quienes tuve el privilegio de
estar asociado.

Jorge Amodio alias "pete"

Online Collaboration

If you have read some of my previous posts you already know that I’ve been around in the ‘net for a long time. In those old days we didn't have such a vast collection of services and tools, the most advanced service we had for a real time conversation was writing to somebody’s else terminal or the Unix talk utility.

But I’ve been always convinced since then that the internet technologies (that’s the name of one of the companies I founded many years ago) were a very important factor to enable and facilitate collaboration and teamwork.

Since early January and part of February I spent a considerable amount of time participating in the online Vanishing Point Game.

This game was commissioned by Microsoft as part of their launch campaign for Windows Vista, and it was developed and run by the company 42 Entertainment.

The game consisted in a set of four puzzle boxes (one for each week), each box contained a dozen puzzles and was opened at the start of each week and a fictional character named "Loki" (the “Enigma Director”) guided us through the game history line and providing clues.

Besides the clues embedded in the actual puzzles and the ones provided by “Loki”, additional clues were provided with real world events around the world, starting with a spectacular light show in the dancing waters of the Bellagio Casino Hotel fountain in Las Vegas, skywriting in Sydney and other US cities, impressive digital projections over the façade of landmark buildings in Canada, Singapore, Germany, England and the US.

The grand prize ? A suborbital flight to the edge of earth’s atmosphere aboard the Rocketplane vehicle.

Besides the attractive prizes (which I won none), and the challenge to solve the puzzles, my real interest was to experience first hand the actual state of the art of online collaboration in a complete different context, not work related, completely unknown people of different ages and background around the world.

I’ve been always involved in discussion groups via e-mail lists, such as NANOG, IETF, technology forums, etc. In this particular instance after some searching I joined the Neowin.net community where I found some interesting information exchange related to the game.

Over 80,000 registered to play the game, hundreds if not thousands were participating in forums such as Neowin, or unfiction.com, real time chats on IRC, etc.

Since the early Internet days we had some sort of implicit and self imposed net etiquette, that if you recently had a chance to participate in some IRC chat rooms seems to have been completely lost.

To my surprise and enjoyment, the experience I had with the Neowinians was in all terms excellent, while the forum has moderators there was no need for them to get involved, a great exchange of information an ideas with a sharp focus to solve the puzzles and have fun playing the game was a constant.

I’ve not seen one message with obscene content or inappropriate language and the level of collaboration, also including exchanging information with the unfiction folks, was tremendous. The puzzles that were supposed to be solved in a week time frame got solved in just a couple of hours.

And it was really fun to be part of that (well what do you expect, I’m a geek!!), at one time we had one Neowinian from the UK streaming audio with great music and live comments about what was going on in the game.

After the game was over we had a chance to join a webcast conference with the Rocketplane folks and learn more about their pioneer work in developing commercial human space travel. Few days later another webcast with the 42 Entertainment folks about their experience and challenges putting the game and events together.

My prize ? I got to join a great new online community with interesting and talented people that openly exchange ideas, experience and information about Information Technology and other matters, and a great demonstration that online collaboration is still alive and a powerful way to get great things done (open source somebody ?) .

Cheers

Internet en Argentina y América Latina...

Los Primeros Pasos

Hace unas semanas atrás un viejo y querido colega y amigo me contactó para participar de una iniciativa que él viene promoviendo desde hace tiempo, y que consiste en cierta medida en preservar la memoria histórica de quienes como José dice tuvimos el privilegio de ser algo así como "los pioneros" en el desarrollo de Internet en América Latina.

Couple of weeks ago a long time and dear colleague and friend contacted me to join an initiative that he has been promoting for some time, it has to do somehow with preserving the historic memory of whom as José says had the priviledge of being some sort of "pioneers" in the development of Internet in Latin America.

José Soriano, entre otros, fué una pieza importante para el desarrollo de las redes en América Latina y en particular en su natal Perú donde con mucho esfuerzo y limitados recursos dió vida a la Red Científica Peruana (RCP).

José Soriano among others was an instrumental piece for the development of networks in Latin America and in particular in his native Perú where with a lot of effort and scarce resources he gave birth to the Peruvian Scientific Network (RCP).

Esta historia tiene muchas caras y muchas voces, inolvidables recuerdos y anéctodas que vale la pena rescatar, así que me siento halagado por la invitación de José y espero contribuir con gusto viejas memorias y lo que ha sido ésta experiencia desde mi punto de vista personal.

This history has many faces and many voices, unforgettable memories and anectodes that are worth to preserve, I feel flattered by José's invitation and I hope to gratefully contribute those old memories and what has been this experience from my personal point of view.

Pioneros Internet

Gracias José por tu invitación