Recomendaciones Específicas

In a short period of time, the Internet adoption introduced IP in all aspects of our lives, whether we know it or not. The Internet’s rapid adoption and its overall success can be credited to multiple factors but primarily to its operating and development principles. The Internet, as envisioned by its founders, is a network of networks and operates in a highly distributed, nonregulated manner. Its management and governance are developed and implemented locally by the user community. Technically, IP is developed bottom up, publicly in forums that are open and inclusive. The success of these principles is proven by the Internet’s organic growth and its ability to adapt to the rapidly evolving world of communications services.

The principles that make the Internet so successful and the mentality they instill in its user community can become a challenge to existing institutions and

9. See Marleen Huysman and Volker Wulf, eds., Social Capital and Information Technology (The MIT Press, 2004).

10. Kaisor Basar and others, IPv6: Legal Aspects of the New Internet Protocol (Euro6IX, 2005), http:/ /www.ipv6tf.org/pdf/ipv6legalaspects.pdf.

their governing policies. As its penetration increases, the Internet changes existent economic, legal, and political conditions in society. As discussed in Chapter 1, “The Business and Economic Importance of IP Communications,” the Internet is a critical and strategic resource. It enables economies to grow internally while it facilitates globalization. It increases competitiveness within industries to the benefit of the users. The law, in the context of Internet communications and services, must revisit the concepts of privacy, intellectual property defense, and criminality. Freedom of speech and access to uncontrolled content takes a new dimension in the context of the Internet. The U.S. Department of Commerce controls the root resources, even though very loosely, but is also the subject of intense and highly politicized debates over Internet ownership.

If marketing benchmarks are used to measure Internet penetration, at the end of 2007, worldwide Internet penetration stood at 20 percent with signifying mass adoption only being achieved by less than 30 percent of the world population.11 This is a measure of today’s digital divide.

ICT and Internet adoption are essential to bridge this divide and to meet the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals. It is a challenging task. At the same time, while understanding the Internet’s enabling power and encouraging its rapid adoption, governments are fully aware of the challenges faced in terms of controlling it. This is a complex and difficult problem. How would a local, centralized entity manage and control a global, distributed environment? How would it justify the imposition of such control on an environment that proved to be admirably efficient, more so than regulated environments such as the telephone system?

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN organization, took the leadership role in organizing a two-part conference that would discuss the complexities and interdependencies of the Information Society in general and, among other topics, those of Internet adoption and governance. The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) was endorsed by the UN General Assembly (Resolution 56/183) and organized in two stages (Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005). The importance of this event was significant in potentially leading to fundamental changes to the operating and governing principles of the Internet. On this highly publicized topic, the adopted resolution was a compromise pleasing

both sides: those who favor the current governance model and those who want to change it.12 Following are excerpts from the resolution:

• Paragraph 55: “We recognize that the existing arrangements for Internet

governance have worked effectively to make the Internet the highly robust, dynamic and geographically diverse medium that it is today...” • Paragraph 68: “We recognize that all governments should have an equal

role and responsibility for international Internet governance and for ensuring the stability, security, and continuity of the Internet. We also recognize the need for development of public policy by governments in consultation with all stakeholders.”

Although the need for another body to work on this topic continues to be debated,13WSIS also agreed to invite the UN secretary-general to convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. Going forward, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will have to address concerns related to Internet ownership, impact of regulations, security, censorship, and maintaining a nimble development of IP technologies.

The advent of IPv6 and its deployment has the potential to be a unique inflexion point in the context of this discussion. In an IPv6 world, we can take advantage of the full potential of IP communications and applications; we can scale the IP infrastructure to support a truly global Information Society. IPv6 comes with significantly larger address resources that stimulate adoption. The IPv6 adoption dynamic is different from the IPv4 adoption dynamic. At the origin of the IPv4 adoption, Western countries were clearly leading the technology adoption through the sponsorship of their research and development community involved in IP standardization. Today, the Internet is a worldwide technology; the upgrade to IPv6 is market segment and region dependent, with leaders yet to be identified.

12. http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc_multi.asp?lang=en&id=2266|2267.

13. “ITAA Comments to the U.S. Department of State on the Report of the Working Group on Inter- net Governance, June 2005,” www.state.gov/documents/organization/50552.pdf.

To the extent to which address allocation is a measure of interest, the difference between IPv4 and IPv6 adoption is shown in Figure 3-2.14

Figure 3-2 IPv6 Versus IPv4 Address Allocations per Regional Internet Registry

Although the IPv4 Internet runs very well on entrenched, democratic, practice-proven policies and mechanisms, the next generation of the Internet could be a fresh start in all its aspects, including management. It is thus very likely that the IPv6 world will be the primary candidate for testing IGF proposals and policies.

The Internet community that built and continues to build this resource must be a significant and active stakeholder in both the process of IPv6 adoption and the process of shaping the governance principles of IPv6. This will ensure the rapid expansion of a practical Information Society and the continued success of the Internet to the benefit of people.

14. NRO, “Internet Numbers Status Report – December, 2007,” available at http://www.nro.net/ statistics/index.html. 0% 1% 4% 7% 30% 21% 32% 49% 21%

AfriNIC LACNIC ARIN

IPv4 & IPv6 Allocations: RIRs to LIRs/ISPs

RIPENCC APNIC 5% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 45% 35% 25% 15% IPv4 IPv6 3% 33%