July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Click here if you’d like my weekly column sent directly to your inbox. It takes less than a minute to sign up, and you’ll get the stories before they’re published on VentureBeat.

Vint Cerf is one of the two or three people who can rightly claim to have invented the Internet. Now he’s worried about its survival.

Specifically, he’s concerned about the World Conference on International Telecommunications, happening now through December 14 in Dubai. At this meeting, for the first time since 1988, the countries of the world will gather to try and update international agreements on how to handle data, voice, and other communications technologies.

Now, the host of this event, the International Telecommunications Union, or ITU, knows that it needs to update the antiquated rules governing international telecommunications. In 1988, the last time they met, the Internet existed but was far from being a huge consumer and business phenomenon.

Here’s the danger: Certain countries want more control over the Internet. According to the Open Net Initiative, 42 out of 72 surveyed countries do some kind of filtering and censoring of Internet content, while 21 do “substantial” or “pervasive” filtering — and that’s not even counting North Korea or Cuba.

Lest you think this applies only to “repressive” countries, keep in mind that the U.S. is the #1 country asking Google for more information about its users. That’s not censorship, but it still could be a threat.

Imagine if you had something politically sensitive to post about corruption in Washington, D.C., so you posted an anonymous YouTube video. If the FBI asked for it, Google might give them details that could lead them to your identity.

That’s just one of the examples why openness and anonymity are still important.

Cerf spoke recently at the Egnyte Firestorm conference in San Francisco, where I was a speaker. See below for a video of Cerf’s speech, which covers the entire history of the Internet — no kidding! — in about half an hour, all the way up to Internet-connected wine cellars and the ITU threat. I was honored to meet the man, and of course I took the chance to ask him what he was working on.

(By the way, Cerf really did invent the Internet, or at least the most important part of it: Together with Robert Kahn, Cerf concocted the Internet Protocol [IP] and Transmission Control Protocol [TCP], which, together, underlie nearly all Internet communications. He’s now the chief Internet evangelist for Google.)

At the conference where I met him, he’d just returned from a meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan — the kind of dry, technocratic meeting that a man like Cerf must spend his life flying to — but the first thing he mentioned was the emergence there of a faction of countries that want to limit free speech and the unfettered ability of people to connect to the net. He expanded on that Dec. 2 in a guest article for CNN.com:

Several authoritarian regimes reportedly propose to ban anonymity from the web, making it easier to find and arrest dissidents. Others have proposed moving the responsibilities of the private sector system that manages domain names and Internet addresses to the United Nations. Yet other proposals would require any Internet content provider, small or large, to pay new tolls in order to reach people across borders.

The upshot? The next garage-based phenomena would face a steep and probably insurmountable financial hurdle in its effort to become the next YouTube, Facebook, or Skype.

Rules like this would put a huge crimp into the Internet’s “free and open” principles, which is why Cerf and others are calling for people around the world to sign a pledge of support for openness.

Maybe it’s no surprise, but I’m in favor of Cerf’s petition. Openness and transparency are critical to the Internet’s survival.

The pledge has attracted over 2 million electronic up votes to date. You should add yours.

But its real impact is probably minimal, at least in the short term: The ITU meeting will happen behind closed doors with what Cerf told me was a complete lack of transparency, and nobody at the ITU meeting is going to pay much attention to this website.

Worse, the ITU meeting only includes representatives from various national governments. It lacks representatives from companies or people who use the net, as other Internet governance organizations like the IETF or ICANN have.

Still, signing the pledge is a good way to raise awareness and, eventually, political pressure on the administrations sending delegates to the ITU. It’s also a good heads-up that these requests for control might come dressed in language that sounds much more innocuous.

For example, Cerf warned that governments would likely couch their demands for control in terms of protecting citizens — from, for instance, spam. But the upshot would be an end to the freedom we’ve enjoyed for decades.

In reality, many countries want to control access so they can prevent dissidents from using the Internet to organize, without having to shut down the entire country’s Internet access, as Syria recently seems to have done. And they want to control content for a variety of reasons: to prevent seditious material from getting in the hands of their citizens, to enforce content laws like Germany’s ban on Nazi propaganda, and to help enforce copyright law.

“History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to ‘protect’ their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression,” Cerf concluded in his essay today. “We must make sure, collectively, that the internet avoids a similar fate.”

Photo: Mandy Kakavas/Google Ventures

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Last week, a conference that aimed to determine the future of the Internet quietly took place in Baku, Azerbaijan. Sponsored by the United Nations and hosted by the Azerbaijani government, the 7th Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) focused on “Internet Governance for Sustainable Human, Economic, and Social Development.”

Meant to be a “multi-stakeholder forum for policy dialogue on issues of internet governance,” one group was notably absent — the technology entrepreneurs creating and innovating the Internet’s future.

Sure, companies like Microsoft and Paypal were represented, but these tech giants already walk the corridors of power and set global agendas. Besides, they are hardly representative of the experiences and contributions of small tech start-ups.

Part of the problem comes from the event organizers, which invites the participation of the “technical community” as well as the “private sector”, while offering neither definitions of “technical community” nor distinction between large companies and small.

But this is only half of the equation, and the other half may lie with the lack of interest (and or knowledge) about the event itself. So techpreneurs, listen up, here’s why the Internet Governance Forum matters:

• The IGF is where world leaders come together to discuss the future of the Internet. Big names including Vint Cerf, widely considered to be the father of the Internet; Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU); Erika Mann, the Global Director of Public Policy at Facebook; and Larry Strickling, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, among others, debated Internet governance with each other as well as with audience members.
• As an attendee, you’ll get plenty of access to said leaders. Held over four days in various locations around the world (next year’s is rumored to be in Bali, Indonesia), you’ll get an extraordinary amount of access to industry leaders in the same condensed period of time. Because the IGF is a UN-sponsored “multi-stakeholder” event, it is democratic – almost to a fault. The floor is often ceded to anyone that wants to speak, with few limits or actual moderation. This provides tech start-ups a unique opportunity to network.
• It sets the global agenda on Internet governance. At its core, the forum seeks to answer the contentious question, “Who controls the Internet? More specifically, it discusses such topics as whether Internet access is a human right; new country code domain names such as .co (Columbia), .in (India), or .Is (Israel) could determine what laws of which country are applicable; and how to balance privacy concerns with cyber-security. These topics are all relevant to start-ups that are working on the space.
• The IGF is the perfect site for (subtle, non-pushy) market research. If you’ve been thinking about your next big start-up or product, what better way to gather data about your client base’s greatest pain points, needs, and challenges? Because the IGF is attended by a unique mix of ministers, businessmen, citizen activists, and end users, you can get a wide sample size of thousands of potential customers.

Of course, the real decisions do not get made at IGF, but at events such as next month’s World Congress on Information and Technology (WCIT) in Dubai, where the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will rewrite the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), the binding guidelines for how radio, satellite, and telephone services are operated internationally.

WCIT was on everyone’s minds at this forum, and several critics pointed out that while IGF was multi-stakeholder in nature, WCIT most certainly was not. That, however, makes attendance at open events such as the Internet Governance Forum even more important. IGF is essentially an open focus group for both governments and big business, who take the insights back to HQ. By not participating in the conversation, the startup community is losing its voice and its influence.

The Internet may be a force of democratization, but for now at least, the world’s corridors of power are still zealously guarded. On the rare occasions where the gates are opened, we aspirants should be pushing our way in. You may have missed this year’s Internet Governance Forum, but the word on the street is that the next annual forum will be held in Bali, Indonesia. As if that’s not reason enough to attend.

More details about the Internet Governance Forum, including participation, and how to submit proposals for workshops, can be found here.

Eileen Guo is the founder of Impassion Media, a start-up that focuses on ICTs, especially social media and mobile technology, in emerging markets and frontier environments.

Photo: Baku City, Azerbaijan by Mohammad Sadeghmo/Flickr

But Google is in Baku, Azerbijan today at the seventh annual Internet Governance Forum to make the case that a free and open internet is best for all. And with them is internet pioneer Vint Cerf.

(In case you’re wondering where Azerbaijan is, it’s east of Turkey, south of Russia, and right near all the “stans.”)

Source: Open Net Initiative

Counties the filter the internet for political purposes

The IGF is a United Nations organization. Among other things, its mandate includes fostering the security and stability of the internet, helping countries with internet governance, and finding solutions for “the issues arising from the use and misuse of the Internet.”

Over 40 countries currently censor the internet to varying degrees, as Google notes, so the company “is going to Azerbaijan to stand up for freedom and openness of the Internet.” Many of those countries, according to Google, are hoping to make those restrictions international, and are already trying via the International Telecommunications Union.

One of the conference’s sessions is titled Security, Openness and Privacy, and will include discussion on several key questions, including

• What impact can security and governance issues have on the Internet and human rights
• Freedom of expression and free flow of information: how do legal framework, regulations, and principles impact this?

Panelists on that session include a member of the US Department of State and an advisor to the Egyptian minister of communication and IT.

Vint Cerf will be speaking about freedom and openness at an event during IGF, at which the company will show a selection of “The Caucasus Triangle” – a documentary on youth media and democracy in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan:

Google acknowledges that laws and customs differ, and it has committed to obey local laws in areas it operates. The company is there, however, to add its voice to those who are advocating for openness and freedom: ”Our bottom line remains a strong preference for keeping the Net as open and free as possible.”

Image credit: Google Maps