FC: Larry Irving on domain names, censorship, regulation (fwd)

I don't usually forward POC mailings, since I'm never sure of their
confidentiality status, but I think this makes quite interesting reading 
and looks like it's fairly public.

W.B.
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Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 11:43:39 -0500
From: Don Heath <heath at isoc.org>
To: poc at gtld-mou.org
Subject: FC: Larry Irving on domain names, censorship, regulation

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>From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
>Subject: FC: Larry Irving on domain names, censorship, regulation
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>============================================
>Excerpts from transcript of press conference
>============================================
>
>Larry Irving, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, NTIA
>January 8, 1998
>Washington, DC
>
>[...]
>
>Q Larry, you mentioned electronic commerce, but can you
>tell us your progress on the green paper to privatize the
>domain name registration?
>
>MR. IRVING:  As many of you know, to my great chagrin and
>disappointment November 1st came and went without us
>releasing our green paper.  I generally don't give dates
>that we are going to release something, unless I am
>absolutely certain that we can release it.  In this case we
>failed, and I apologize to those folks who were expecting
>it, and I particularly apologize to Congress, and want to
>thank those members of Congress who have ben forbearing,
>and to those members of Congress who have gone home, and
>because they are home haven't bothered to call me to
>castigate me for not getting my paper in on time.
>
>We are working very diligently, and to be honest we thought
>it was more important to get it right than to get it in on
>time. There have been a lot of people across industry who
>have a lot of issues. And what we began to discover was
>looking just at the issue of domain name wasn't sufficient;
>you have to look at the entire - there's a - (inaudible) -
>affecting Internet governance, and there are a lot of
>issues involved here.  And we are trying hard to come up
>with a comprehensive consensus document that we can deliver
>to Congress.  I can't give you another date, but it will be
>soon.  And one of the reasons it will be soon, because I
>promised it two months ago and have not delivered it.
>Another reason it will be soon is Congress is coming back,
>and I think some of those people who requested it will want
>it on their desk at or about the time they come back and
>Congress reconvenes.  But we will have a comprehensive
>approach.  Ira Magaziner and members of my staff, Becky
>Bird (sp) and others, have done yeo person's work, or
>yeoman's work - I'm not sure which is the non-sexist term -
>but have worked diligently to come up with a product.
>They've met with literally hundreds of people and/or read
>thousands of pages of documents to get this right.  And we
>are committed to getting to the public and to the Congress
>as good  a report as we can. Anything we get is going to
>have some critics, but we do think we can get a better
>report by taking a little more time, being a little more
>careful and talking to a few more people.
>
>
>[...]
>
>Q     If you abandon control of the Internet, or try to
>minimize government regulations on the Internet, what
>happens when you discover down the road perhaps - and let's
>say perhaps dominating of the Internet by a few contract
>providers - perhaps - (off mike) - how do you recover -
>(off mike)?
>
>MR. IRVING:  I think it is better to monitor and see if a
>mistake is made then to start to regulate and assuredly
>make some mistakes.
>
>Q     Fair enough.  What do you do once a mistake is made?
>
>MR. IRVING:  You try to correct them.
>
>Q     To minimize government regulation?
>
>MR. IRVING:  We would - even if there are mistakes made, we
>will try to correct those mistakes with minimal government
>involvement.
>
>Q     What tools do you have?
>
>MR. IRVING:  You have all the tools you already have.  You
>have regulatory authority, you have litigation, you have
>legislation. There is nothing - there is nothing that I
>can't do prophylactically upfront that we couldn't do as a
>government after the fact; but at least we'd know what the
>issue is.  Right now we'd be trying to - you know, it's
>like trying to find a needle in the dark, in a 10,000
>square foot room.  What problem am I trying to solve?  And
>right now we don't know.
>
>You know, nobody knew - none of us in this room would have
>said in 1993 that in 1998 one trillion e-mails would be
>transmitted around the globe.  That's what happened last
>year: one trillion - one trillion e-mails, according to
>Financial Times, were transmitted around the globe.  What
>if I tried to do something to regulate e-mail based on what
>I knew e-mail was going to be in 1993?  I would have been
>completely wrong, because I had no clue that there would be
>one trillion e-mails in 1993. Did any of us know in 1996
>that real video would be a tool that people would be using
>around the country, that you could watch the Rolling Stones
>concert or pull up video - watch Savion Glover do a tap
>dance recital  on the Internet.  Did any of us know that?
>I didn't know in 1996 that in 1997 I could do that. I'd be
>trying to regulate something I had no clue as to how it is
>going to progress, and I might be stifling the progress.  I
>don't think that's good policy; more importantly, the
>president and vice president don't think that's good
>policy; Secretary Daley doesn't think that's good policy.
>Let this thing grow at the rate it should grow as opposed
>to.
>
>Internet telephony - 1995, 1994, who of you writing about
>Internet telephony and talking about it as a real central
>competitor, reducing prices and increasing opportunity for
>entrepreneurs and for consumers?  Have you thought - and
>there were those calling to regulate Internet telephony.
>The investments made would not have been made had we
>started doing something when we were requested to with
>regard to Internet telephony.  We come down - I feel
>strongly we have come down on the right side of this
>debate.  And I think that the people who are making
>investments and who are building this industry, building
>this economy, building this technology, feel strongly that
>we should keep a relatively hands-off approach. That
>doesn't mean we don't have guiding precepts.  That doesn't
>mean we are ignoring what's happening.  It does mean we are
>trying not to get in the way of a great success story
>globally.
>
>[...]
>
>Q     Larry, do you think that the present deregulatory
>policy carved out for the Internet will hold insofar as
>Internet service providers can withdraw from the universal
>service - (off mike)? And then there's a growing debate
>between federal policymakers and mayor and governors, both
>that you met with and talked with, about taxation.  That
>issue won't go away, and it all gets to, you know, if and
>how the Internet gets regulated. Is it always going to be a
>hand-off approach, or will that just not hold and - (off
>mike)?
>
>MR. IRVING:  We're going to try to be as hands-off as
>possible. The Internet, again, we have said this, and we
>are going to continue to, the Internet has grown - has
>rapidly grown precisely because of a lack of government
>involvement in its regulation, in its structure, in its
>future.  And we are going to continue to try to make sure
>that this is private sector-led.  As frightening as some
>people - as frightened as some people are of state and
>local involvement - and the tax issue is an issue that I
>think is resolvable.  I mean, there is a way to resolve
>that. And when you talk to people it's at the margins, but
>there are ways to resolve that.
>
>I'm more concerned about the international implications for
>regulation.  I am very concerned that there are people
>around the world - you know, in the United States and
>Washington we are not scared of the Internet - we think
>it's a good thing.  We want the entrepreneurs to go out
>there, we want them to build it.  As you go around the
>country there are people who are scared about the Internet,
>and there are people who say that there should be
>international governing bodies of the Internet.  We don't
>want that, and we are going to have to - you know, we are
>going to have to make sure that people in Brussels, and
>people in Geneva, and people in Paris, and people in
>various capitals of the world don't get involved in
>governing the Internet.  There is, however, in industry and
>among most of the nations that use the Internet, a
>consensus that the Internet should be private sector-led,
>developed, and industry should have development.  There are
>issues such as indecency, where there has to be some
>government involvement to  make sure things like parents
>know where the good stuff on the Internet is - parents are
>given the tools to protect their children from bad things
>on the Internet.
>
>They agree within the Department of Justice and (IFPS ?) is
>one instance where working with the government we can try
>to find ways that children don't have access to things that
>are inappropriate in it.  Those are positive things that
>have to happen.
>
>With regards to censorship or developing guidelines to how
>the Internet - (inaudible) - to go - we don't want that.
>With regard to domain name system, we don't want that.
>With regard to privacy, we have said repeatedly,
>consistently, we need the private sector to step up to the
>plate and come up with comprehensive plans to ensure
>protection of privacy of users of the Internet.  Those
>things I think are consistent and we can continue.
>
>With regard to access charge and other fees charged by
>Internet service providers, we have been very careful to
>say that as this industry is a nascent industry they should
>not at this time be charged those kinds of fees.  We've
>also said we should continue to monitor and look at the
>debate.  There is a difference between whether or not an
>economic entity should be treated the same as other
>economic entities in terms of some kind of a fee structure,
>and saying that we want to govern that entity.  We do not
>want to govern the Internet.  We in Washington - and we are
>going to work diligently - we are going to fight any effort
>by others around the globe to start regulating the
>Internet.
>
>[...]
>
>
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-------- Logged at  Wed Jan 14 13:42:13 MET 1998  ---------