Remember the Fairness Doctrine? It was an incredibly silly policy of the FCC from 1949 to 1987 requiring some form of "equal time" to "the other side" of controversial matters of public interest. It's a dumb idea because most issues have a lot more than two sides, and simply pitting two arguments against one another tends to do little to elucidate actual truth -- but does tend to get people to dig in more. However, despite the fact that the fairness doctrine was killed more than 30 years ago, Republicans* regularly claim that it's about to be brought back.
* Our general policy is not to focus on political parties, unless it's a necessary part of the story, and in this case it is. If you look at people freaking out about the supposed return of the fairness doctrine (which is not returning) it is always coming from Republicans, stirring up their base and claiming that Democrats are trying to bring back the fairness doctrine to silence the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the world.
But that's why it's so bizarre that Ted Cruz has taken to the pages of Fox News... to incorrectly claim that the fairness doctrine applies to the internet based on his own tortured (i.e. dead wrong) reading of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. We already discussed how wrong Cruz was about CDA 230 in his questions to Mark Zuckerberg (while simultaneously noting how ridiculous Zuck's responses were).
In his Fox News op-ed, Cruz argues that if a platform is "non-neutral" it somehow loses CDA 230 protections:
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) states: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
This is a good provision. It means that, for example, if you run a blogging platform and someone posts a terrorist threat in the comments section, you’re not treated as the person making the threat. Without Section 230, many social media networks could be functionally unable to operate.
In order to be protected by Section 230, companies like Facebook should be “neutral public forums.” On the flip side, they should be considered to be a “publisher or speaker” of user content if they pick and choose what gets published or spoken.
This is Cruz only reading Section (c)(1) of CDA 230, and totally ignoring the part right after it that says:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected
There's plenty of case law that has made it clear that moderating content on your platform doesn't make you liable under CDA 230. The very point of this section was to encourage exactly this kind of moderation. Indeed, this part of the CDA was added directly in response to the infamous Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy case, where Prodigy was found liable for certain posts in part because it moderated other messages.
Now, you could claim that Cruz is not misreading the law -- but rather he's advocating a return to the days of that Stratton Oakmont ruling being law. After all he says "Facebook should be 'neutral public forums.'" But, that's both an impossible standard (what the hell is "neutral" in this context anyway?) and basically calling for a return to the fairness doctrone.
Republicans, who have spent years freaking out about the fairness doctrine should be really pissed off at Cruz for basically demanding not just a return of the fairness doctrine, but demanding it for all online platforms and setting it at an impossible standard.
"You know, the Obama FCC has invoked the Fairness Doctrine a number of times with sort of wistful glances to the past. Nostalgia," he said. "You know if I had suggested years ago that the Obama administration would send government observers into the newsrooms of major media organizations, that claim would have been ridiculed. And yet that is exactly what the FCC did."
Amusingly, this was right after he railed against the Obama FCC for pushing for net neutrality.
So... to sum up Ted Cruz's views on the internet, net neutrality is evil and attack on free speech, but platform "neutrality" is necessary. How does that work? Oh, and the fairness doctrine is censorship, but Facebook needs to engage in a form of the fairness doctrine or face stifling civil liability.
It's almost as if Ted Cruz has no idea what the fuck he's talking about concerning internet regulations, free speech, neutrality and fairness -- but does know that if he hits on certain buzzwords, he's sure to fire up his base.
There's plenty to say about Mark Zuckerberg's first congressional hearing this week (like Senator Thune's thinly-veiled threat of more SESTA-like laws, or Senator Cantwell's strange, unfocused tangent about Palantir and WhatsApp) but one exchange stands out as so utterly ridiculous that it bears special note.
Senator Cruz used his time in an attempt to shift the focus onto Republican fears that Facebook is a liberal propaganda machine, and specifically tried to box Zuckerberg into declaring whether Facebook was "a first amendment speaker expressing your views", or a "neutral public forum" — and then explicitly claimed that being the latter is a prerequisite of CDA Section 230 protections.
This is blatantly untrue, as that language appears nowhere in the law, and Section 230 is (as we've reiterated many times during the SESTA debate) designed to encourage moderation. But Zuckerberg's reply was, well, absurd:
"I'm not that familiar with the specific legal language of the law that you speak to, so I would need to follow up with you on that."
That's the CEO of Facebook — a service that not only relies on Section 230 to a staggering degree, but just played a major role in developing and supporting a law that drastically alters it — professing ignorance on the letter of the law, as though it were some obscure statute that only his legal department would be fully familiar with.
Uh-huh.
Now, to be fair, Cruz was trying to box him in with a loaded and ultimately meaningless question — and when you're being grilled by a panel of Senators, you've got to be pretty choosy about if and when you're actually going to say "you are incorrect, that's not true" in response to one of their questions. But... could anyone in that room possibly believe him? Or any of the rest of us? SESTA — which, again, Facebook played a major role in — had already been mentioned several times during the hearing, even alongside expressions of appreciation that Facebook helped refine and ultimately supported the bill. Even if we somehow contorted our brains to believe he is genuinely unfamiliar with the language (again: uh-huh...) that would just paint an equally terrible picture in which Zuck has been only vaguely aware of his company's policy positions all year.
So, that was weird. Senate hearings like this are, of course, mostly theatrical — but that clunky bit of dialogue certainly eviscerated any remaining suspension of disbelief.
Not wanting to be outdone by idiots in Congress, two idiot senators from the great state of Texas* are pushing their own "Blue Lives Matter" legislation. Senators Cruz and Cornyn have (re)introduced the Backed and Blown "Back the Blue Act," which adds mandatory minimums to any act of violence against most government officials. Oh, and for extra fun, automatic death penalty considerations for anyone charged under this act.
*Federal law requires the descriptor "great state of" to be appended to any state name, but especially Texas.
I'll get out of the way and allow Senator Cornyn to toot his own horn:
“Our law enforcement officers put their lives on the line every day to protect and serve families across Texas. Violent criminals who deliberately target those who protect and serve our communities should face swift and tough penalties and the Back the Blue Act sends that clear message. Every day, and particularly during National Police Week, we must give the men and women in blue our unparalleled support,” Sen. Cornyn said.
You hear that, you bunch of ungrateful Americans? No matter how many citizens are gunned down for holding game controllers or toddlers torched by carelessly-tossed flashbang grenades, these fine men and women are to be given "unparalleled support." They apparently "deserve" it -- a term that must be wholly divorced from the process of earning it.
Cruz and Cornyn's 2016 attempt died from a lack of attention, perhaps overshadowed by the DOJ's endless stream of scathing reports on police misconduct. With a new "tough on crime" DOJ boss at the helm and the DOJ's civil rights division neutered, the political climate seems a tad more receptive to glorifying government employees as lowercase-g gods. (But gods nonetheless.)
Several legislators have joined the two senators in stumping for underprotected government employees. Rep. Ted Poe (also of Texas) has plenty to say about the bill at his personal blog. He's all for it, naturally, but more importantly, he summarizes the harsh new penalties awaiting anyone who threatens, injures, kills, or conspires to do any of the above to a law enforcement officer.
Creates a new federal crime for killing, attempting to kill, or conspiring to kill a federal judge, federal law enforcement officer, or federally funded public safety officer. The offender would be subject to the death penalty and a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years if death results; the offender would otherwise face a minimum sentence of 10 years.
Creates a new federal crime for assaulting a federally funded law enforcement officer with escalating penalties, including mandatory minimums, based on the extent of any injury and the use of a dangerous weapon. However, no prosecution can be commenced absent certification by the Attorney General that prosecution is appropriate.
Creates a new federal crime for interstate flight from justice to avoid prosecution for killing, attempting to kill, or conspiring to kill a federal judge, federal law enforcement officer, or federally funded public safety officer. The offender would be subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for this offense.
Take a good look at the middle stipulation. This means pretty much every law enforcement officer in the nation will be covered by this law, instantly subjecting people who do nothing more than assault an officer (aka, resisting arrest, contempt of cop, etc.) to federal punishments. Almost every law enforcement agency in the nation receives some sort of federal funding. This bill would yank prosecutions out of locals' hands and, presumably, separate defendants from less-harsh local laws.
The bill also allows law enforcement officers (including those whose agencies are the recipients of federal funding) to carry weapons into places citizens can't. Nothing like adding an extra right to a long list of extra punishments.
This chaser would put two "Blue Lives Matter" bills in play, giving Congress multiple ways to make policing worse. Considering the Go Team Blue attitude on display at the White House, these bills have a home team advantage and a president dying to sign a few more citizens' rights and liberties away on behalf of law enforcement.
Eager to ignore the broad, bipartisan support net neutrality enjoys, nine GOP Senators this week introduced legislation that would kill the FCC's net neutrality rules. Senator Mike Lee's "Restoring Internet Freedom Act" would prohibit the FCC from classifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act and "from imposing certain regulations on providers of such service." In other words, it's a parallel attempt to kill net neutrality in Congress while FCC boss Ajit Pai tries to kill the rules via FCC process.
Lee didn't release the text of the bill, but it's expected to look very similar to a 2016 bill he introduced during the 114th Congress with the same 8 co-sponsors. Lee tries to argue in a statement over at his website that his bill is necessary to keep "bureaucrats" away from "engineering the internet's infrastructure":
But now this engine of growth is threatened by the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 Open Internet Order, which would put federal bureaucrats in charge of engineering the Internet’s infrastructure. That is why I am introducing the Restoring Internet Freedom Act, which would nullify Open Internet Order and prohibit the FCC from issuing a similar rule in the future.
You'll likely be shocked to learn that the only "freedoms" being restored here belong to companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T. Said companies have spent the better part of a decade and millions of dollars on a quest for zero oversight of one of the least competitive sectors in American industry.
Should the rules die, AT&T will once again have the freedom to block you from using certain services unless you subscribe to a more expensive broadband tier. Comcast can use its unnecessary usage caps and overage fees to make competing services more expensive for its customers to use. Companies like Verizon can get back to intentionally letting peering points congest to make content and transit companies pay them more money than ever for the honor of reaching Verizon subscribers.
Somehow, Lee thinks that gutting the already too-modest rules preventing this kind of behavior will somehow increase "permissionless innovation." That makes zero coherent sense.
These abuses aren't theoretical. They've either already happened or are happening now. And FCC boss Ajit Pai's ingenious "solution" is to eliminate modest and widely supported rules and replace them with "voluntary" guidelines companies like Comcast will ignore. The idea that net neutrality is simply an issue of government "overreach" plays well to knee-jerk partisans that aren't informed on the subject, but it doesn't become any less false with repetition. In reality, the FCC has spent fifteen years turning a blind eye to the problem of limited competition, and the 2015 rules, if anything, didn't go far enough.
A few years ago, when Tom Wheeler began bucking 15 years of bipartisan FCC precedent by actually doing his job, you'll recall that Senator Ted Cruz was widely ridiculed for his claim that net neutrality was "Obamacare for the internet." Despite even Republican engineers informing him this narrative couldn't be more inaccurate, Cruz (a bill co-sponsor) took the opportunity this week to double down. According to Cruz, he was being incredibly and intentionally misleading to "raise awareness":
"My comments (equating net neutrality to "Obamacare") were intended to raise awareness of this unprecedented government power grab, which the Obama administration and its friends at the FCC were attempting to quietly accomplish. I am proud to work with my friend Mike Lee on the Restoring Internet Freedom Act, a bill that rolls back former President Obama's power grab, protects open internet principles, and recognizes the transformative effect that the internet has had on our lives, generating billions of dollars of new economic activity and millions of jobs, largely free of government’s heavy hand. We must preserve a free and open internet, and give stability to the companies and users operating within the internet ecosystem."
Yes, let's "preserve a free and open internet" by letting giant broadband monopolies cap, throttle, restrict and otherwise hamstring the endless startups, entrepreneurs, content companies and consumers that use the internet everyday. You'll notice that folks like Cruz are quick to heap praise on the miracle of the modern internet, but are comically incapable of admitting the threat that limited competition is posing to said miracle. Obviously, if you admit there's a problem, then you might just have to do something about it. And deep-pocketed campaign contributors Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon sure as hell don't want that.
As Mike just got done pointing out, net neutrality opponents have a gameplan you need to understand. Step one is for Ajit Pai to play bad cop and threaten net neutrality via FCC rollback. Step two is for Congress to come to the rescue with a "compromise" bill (actually written by Comcast and friends, of course) that promises to "solve" net neutrality once and for all -- but is packed with so many loopholes, caveats and contingencies to be worse than no rules at all. If this bill doesn't do the trick, giant ISPs will ensure there's a flood of similar proposals waiting in the wings.
So, yesterday, we noted that the Senate at least seemed to come (at least somewhat) to its senses in choosing not to include the ridiculous and dangerous proposal from Ted Cruz (and supported by Donald Trump) to block the transition of the IANA functions of internet governance away from the Commerce Department. I won't go into (once again) why this is important and not a problem, or even why Cruz's objections to it are so backwards that his plan will actually make it more likely that the "bad" result he keeps warning about will actually come to pass. You can reread the older articles on that.
However, with Democrats complaining about the Senate's Continuing Resolution and a vote on it being pushed off, the debate over the possibility of blocking the transition is still going on. Hell, Ted Cruz even pointed to Donald Trump's support of his plan as a reason to finally endorse Trump:
Internet freedom. Clinton supports Obama’s plan to hand over control of the Internet to an international community of stakeholders, including Russia, China, and Iran. Just this week, Trump came out strongly against that plan, and in support of free speech online.
Except, none of that is true. First, the plan does not hand over control to Russia, China and Iran -- and keeping IANA under the Commerce Dept. makes it A LOT MORE LIKELY that that coalition of countries is able to grab control of the IANA functions from ICANN and the US. But, uh, even more importantly, claiming that Trump is in favor of "free speech online" is laughable. This is the candidate who has repeatedly talked about "opening up our libel laws" to go after speech he doesn't like, has threatened to sue many publications for protected speech, and has flat out declared that we should turn off parts of the internet and anyone who responded with "freedom of speech" was "foolish."
But, that's still not the craziest argument I've heard recently concerning the transition. The award there goes to Theresa Payton, who was a top IT staffer at the White House under George W. Bush and now runs a "cybersecurity" firm. She wrote a bizarre opinion piece in The Hill that, frankly, calls into question whether she understands what ICANN even does. She tries to argue that the transition will somehow make it easier for Russia to hack our election... because [reasons].
Changing who controls the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) so close to our presidential election will jeopardize the results of how you vote on Nov. 8 unless Congress stops this changeover. When the calendar hits Sept. 30, a mere 6 weeks before our election, the United States cannot be assured that if any web site is hacked, the responsible party will be held accountable. We cannot be sure if a web site is a valid. We cannot be sure if one country is being favored over another. These are all the things ICANN is responsible for and has worked perfectly since the Internet was created. Why change it now and so close to the election? Why does that matter to you as a voter?
Take a look at recent cyber activity as it relates to the election. The Democratic National Convention was breached comprising the entire party’s strategy, donor base, and indeed, national convention. Everything the DNC had done to prepare for a moment four years in the making (if not longer) was undermined by a hacker who had been in their system for some time but waited for the optimal moment to spring it on the DNC – opening day of the convention. The FBI and other U.S. agencies, as the headlines blare, suspect Russia is responsible for the hack. Recently, Vladimir Putin went so far as to say, "Does it matter who broke in? Surely what's important is the content of what was released to the public.”
Except, uh, ICANN has nothing to do with figuring out who hacks who. Nor is it the party that's figuring out if one country "is being favored over another" or if a "website is valid." That's not ICANN's job, and has nothing to do whatsoever with the IANA transition -- which will leave the internet working exactly as it has before. Honestly, this opinion piece does nothing to call the transition into question, but does a tremendous job in calling Theresa Payton's knowledge of technology and cybersecurity into question.
ICANN does more than just assign and/or approve your website’s domain. ICANN has its own Security and Stability Advisory Committee, which “engages in ongoing threat assessment and risk analysis of the Internet naming and address allocation services to assess where the principal threats to stability and security lie, and advises the ICANN community accordingly.” They are equivalent to your security guard at the bank. Why change the security guard now when voter data is more vulnerable – and prized - than ever?
If ICANN changes hands, so do the security measures taken to protect the rightful owner of your web site. If a site was hijacked today – not an uncommon crime in the cyber world - to reassert yourself as the rightful owner, you would go through law enforcement channels, your domain provider, and yes, ICANN.
First of all, the "transition" in question isn't about transitioning all of ICANN. Just its IANA functions, which only have a symbolic connection to the US government. Second, Payton seems to not understand what ICANN does, what the ICANN SSAC does, or how internet security works. They are not the equivalent of the "security guard at the bank." You'd think the CEO and founder of a "cybersecurity" company would know that. And, after the IANA transition takes place, ICANN itself doesn't "change hands" nor does it change what the SSAC does, which isn't anything even remotely close to what Payton seems to think it does.
Don't trust me? How about Stephen Crocker, who heads ICANN's Board of Directors -- and also helped create the damn internet. You know how much of the internet was designed through "RFCs" -- "Requests for Comments" -- well, Crocker invented the RFC and wrote the very first one. I think he knows what he's talking about. And he and the head of ICANN's SSAC, Patrik Fallstrom, have responded to Payton with a nicer version of "you have no idea what you're talking about."
The SSAC is not a “security guard” for the Internet. The SSAC has no enforcement power, and the value of its advice is based on the strength of the facts underlying such advice.
The Security and Stability Advisory Committee advises the ICANN community and Board on matters relating to the security and integrity of the Internet's naming and address allocation systems. Our recent work include advisories on a wide range of topics such as internationalized domain names, protecting domain name owners and operators, best practices for domain name registrars, analysis on the changing nature of IPv4 address semantics, and advice on matters pertaining to the correct and reliable operation of the root name system and other issues (see https://ssac.icann.org/ for more details). The SSAC neither operates as a security guard for the Internet, nor does it aspire to.
The IANA transition has no practical effect on the work and activities of the SSAC. Nor does the transition have any effect on the security and stability of website owners worldwide. The risk of compromise of a website owner does not increase as a result of the IANA transition, since ICANN and IANA do not control either the ownership of websites or the content on websites. Leading technical experts, industry associations, and civil society groups agree that allowing the IANA contract to expire is the best possible way to protect and promote the continued integrity of the Internet.
There is simply no relationship between ICANN and the current U.S. election process. Assertions of this sort are misleading and irresponsible. On the other hand, attempt to connect ICANN to the U.S. political process play directly into the hands of the enemies of an open Internet who would like to see ICANN and other Internet bodies put under the control of the United Nations or, worse yet, broken up into separate, government-controlled networks that do not interoperate smoothly around the world.
So, yeah. It seems that as we get closer to the transition, and since this issue has become "political," we're seeing stupider and ever more clueless attacks -- but they seem to only serve to make the people behind them look worse and worse. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. It shouldn't be a political issue. It shouldn't be an issue. Severing the minor link connection between IANA and the Commerce Department changes nothing practical in how the internet is governed, but takes a big weapon away from Russia and China in their quest to take control over those functions.
So, just a few hours ago, the reports were still spreading that the Senate would absolutely include Ted Cruz's preferred language that would block the (largely symbolic, but really important) transfer of control over the IANA functions of ICANN away from the Commerce Department. We've explained over and over and over again why this is important -- including once this morning in response to Donald Trump suddenly taking a stand (an incredibly ignorant one, but a stand) on the issue.
And then... poof. The Senate Appropriations Committee released its "short term continuing resolution" (CR for short) and it does not include any language on blocking the IANA transition. So... all the talk and (misleading) hype was apparently a bunch of grandstanding and hot air over nothing. It may have just been posturing and used to negotiate something else. Or, maybe (just maybe) people who actually understood what was happening with the IANA transition were actually able to explain to those in charge how stupid all this rhetoric was. That would certainly be a nice explanation for this -- though it seems tragically unlikely.
But, for the short term, this means a very dangerous thing for the internet, pushed for by Ted Cruz (and, as of yesterday, Donald Trump) has been avoided. It's possible that the House could try to somehow move to block the transition, but that seems unlikely. So, we may have actually won one here and narrowly avoided political grandstanding mucking up a piece of the internet. Phew.
We've been explaining this since it was first proposed two years ago: but the IANA transfer away from the Commerce Dept. is a good thing on a variety of important levels. Earlier this year, we did a more thorough explaination on why it was a good thing, and then a further post earlier this month explained why Ted Cruz, who was leading the charge in blocking the transition, was basically wrong on every point about it. And not just wrong, dangerously so. Cruz keeps claiming that the transition makes it easier for Russia, China and the UN to "take control" over internet governance. The exact opposite is true. But we'll get there.
I was working on another post about some of the issues related to this... and while I was working on it Donald Trump decided to turn this into a Presidential campaign issue by releasing a statement more or less echoing Cruz's factually incoherent position:
"Donald J. Trump is committed to preserving Internet freedom for the American people and citizens all over the world. The U.S. should not turn control of the Internet over to the United Nations and the international community. President Obama intends to do so on his own authority – just 10 days from now, on October 1st, unless Congress acts quickly to stop him. The Republicans in Congress are admirably leading a fight to save the Internet this week, and need all the help the American people can give them to be successful. Hillary Clinton’s Democrats are refusing to protect the American people by not protecting the Internet.
The U.S. created, developed and expanded the Internet across the globe. U.S. oversight has kept the Internet free and open without government censorship – a fundamental American value rooted in our Constitution’s Free Speech clause. Internet freedom is now at risk with the President’s intent to cede control to international interests, including countries like China and Russia, which have a long track record of trying to impose online censorship. Congress needs to act, or Internet freedom will be lost for good, since there will be no way to make it great again once it is lost." - Stephen Miller, National Policy Director
First of all, here's Trump going on and on about "internet freedom" and "free speech." And yet... this is the very same candidate just a few months ago who talked about "shutting down parts of the internet" and mocking those who would say "oh freedom of speech" claiming anyone who fell back on that claim were "foolish people."
So, apparently it's okay to shut down parts of the internet, and those talking about free speech are "foolish people," but a symbolic effort over who controls the domain name system must be stopped because internet freedom and free speech are too important.
More importantly, almost everything the Trump campaign says in those two short paragraphs about the transition is wrong. And it's a really, really stupid and dangerous position to take for the internet. First off, as we've explained, the current link between the Commerce Department and ICANN and its IANA functions is more theoretical than real anyway. The US government really doesn't have any official control here. It's symbolic and that symbolism is doing a hell of a lot more to hurt the internet than to help it. Yes, Russia and China have, in the past, tried to take more control over internet governance via the UN/ITU, but that was stopped. But -- and this is the important part -- a big part of their rationale for trying to do so was the US's "control" over IANA via the Commerce Dept. That is, keeping this small bit of internet governance loosely connected to the US government adds fuel to the fire for authoritarian governments to seek more control over the internet. And that doesn't even get into the backlash that it will create if we go back on our word and refuse to complete the transfer of IANA away from the Commerce Dept (again, a largely symbolic move anyway).
But, don't trust me. Trust basically anyone and everyone with any actual knowledge on the situation. Here's Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the web itself, explaining why the transition must go forward and why Cruz (and, by extension now, Trump) are totally wrong:
The global consensus at the heart of the Internet exists by virtue of trust built up over decades with people from all over the world collaborating on the technical design and operation of the network and the web. ICANN is a critical part of this global consensus. But if the United States were to reverse plans to allow the global Internet community to operate ICANN independently, as Sen. Cruz is now proposing, we risk undermining the global consensus that has enabled the Internet to function and flourish over the last 25 years.
Contrary to the senator’s view, ICANN is no “mini-United Nations.” ICANN is a vital part of the voluntary, global network of private organizations that provides Internet stability and the ability to innovate free from government interventions around the world.
Berners-Lee makes it clear that going back on the transfer will put the US gov't in the same kind of dangerous category that Cruz (and Trump) put Russia and China in:
But by forcibly undermining the global Internet community’s ability to make decisions about ICANN, the United States would stoop to the level of Russia, China and other authoritarian regimes that believe in the use of force to limit freedom online.
Tim Berners-Lee not good enough for you? How about Vint Cerf, recognized as one of the creators of the internet itself. He's in favor of the transition too and has explained why people should stop freaking out about it.
If not them, how about Kathryn Brown, who runs the Internet Society. She also argues that delaying the transition is what helps the case for Russia and China, rather than the other way around:
Some warn that if the plan to transition authority on Oct. 1 is delayed, countries like Russia and China could try to shift domain name responsibilities to the United Nations, giving those nations more influence over global internet policy.
"Any delay would add a degree of instability and make the prospect of government control of the internet more likely, not less," said Kathryn Brown, president of the Internet Society, a nonprofit organization that advocates open internet policies.
It vaguely suggests that the transition might create “an opportunity for an enhanced role for authoritarian nation-states in Internet governance,” but provides no evidence as to how or why it does. In fact, if the U.S. is forced to abort the transition now it would play right into the hands of authoritarian states. Killing ICANN’s reforms through impulsive and arbitrary American action would fatally undermine the global Internet governance model rooted in nonstate actors. It would strengthen the case for national sovereignty-based Internet models favored by authoritarian states. “Look,” they will say, “the U.S. wants to control the Internet, why can’t we?” ICANN’s independence from unilateral U.S. government control is a logically and politically necessary consequence of its independence from all governments. By getting in the way of that, it is the Congressmen, not the Commerce Department, who are creating an opportunity for authoritarian states to enhance their influence in Internet governance.
The Congressmen suggest that “this irreversible decision could result in a less transparent and accountable Internet governance regime.” But how? No reference is made to the actual reform plans. In fact, the transition brings with it major corporate governance changes that would significantly improve ICANN’s accountability and transparency. The transition brings with it a new set of bylaws that gives the public enhanced rights to inspect ICANN’s books, the right to remove board members, and the power to prevent the board from unilaterally modifying its bylaws. Under U.S. government supervision for the past 18 years, ICANN has been almost completely unaccountable – yet this is the status quo they want to retain. By opposing the transition, the Congressmen are getting in the way of reforms that address the very things ICANN critics have been complaining about.
The congressmen claim that “Questions have been raised about ICANN’s antitrust status.” Well, what questions, and what are their implications for the future of Internet governance? No answer. This is a phony issue. ICANN is not, and never has been, exempt from antitrust liability.
And so forth and so on. Part of the attempt to throw a wrench into the transition was Cruz claiming that Congress needs to approve the transition, as it has the power to determine if the government can "dispose of... property." But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) just released a report basically saying that doesn't apply here and the Commerce Dept is free to move ahead with the transition. Specifically, the GAO finds it to be ridiculous that the entire domain name system should be considered "property of the US government" because it's not.
It is unlikely that either the authoritative root zone file—the public “address book” for the top
level of the Internet domain name system—or the Internet domain name system as a whole, is
U.S. Government property under Article IV. We did not identify any Government-held
copyrights, patents, licenses, or other traditional intellectual property interests in either the root
zone file or the domain name system. It also is doubtful that either would be considered
property under common law principles, because no entity appears to have a right to their
exclusive possession or use.
In short, there's a legitimate concern that Russia and China would like more control over the internet. But that's the only point that Trump and Cruz get right. What's astounding is that their preferred course of action -- delaying or even blocking the IANA transition away from the Commerce Dept actually supports Russia and China in their efforts to gain control over the internet. So if you care about the future of the internet and how it is governed, could someone please educate Cruz and Trump that they're doing exactly the kind of damage they claim to be trying to stop?
Just a few months ago, we wrote up a decently long post explaining why the upcoming "transition" of a piece of internet governance away from the US government was both a good thing and not a big deal. You can read those two posts on it, but the really short version is twofold: (1) the Commerce Department's "control" over ICANN's IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) was always pretty much non-existent in the first place; and (2) even having that little connection to the US government, though, only provided tremendous fodder for foreign governments (mainly: Russia & China) to push to take control of the internet themselves. That's what that whole disastrous UN/ITU/WCIT mess was a few years back. Relinquishing the (non-existent) control, with clear parameters that internet governance wouldn't then be allowed to jump into the ITU's lap, helps on basically every point. It takes away a key reason that other countries have used to claim they need more control, and it makes it clear that internet governance needs to remain out of any particular government's control.
As we noted, this is all a good thing.
But for unclear reasons, Senator Ted Cruz keeps insisting that this "transfer" is about the US giving control over the internet to the UN. He's ramped up this rhetoric lately as the transition gets closer:
"Today our country faces a threat to the internet as we know it. In 22 short days, if Congress fails to act, the Obama administration intends to give away the internet to an international body akin to the United Nations," Cruz said in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday. "I rise today to discuss the significant, irreparable damage this proposed internet giveaway could wreak not only on our nation but on free speech across the world."
Except that's hogwash. The plan does exactly the opposite. We've made this point over and over again, and thankfully others are doing so as well. Fusion has a long and detailed article that highlights that Cruz's claims are a fantasy and have no basis in reality. It goes through the whole history of IANA (if you don't know the story of Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds, and how the two of them basically kept the internet running in their spare time for a few decades, you should...), but then points out that Cruz is just wrong:
To be clear: ICANN has about as much control over the internet as Ted Cruz has a grasp on how DNS actually works–which is to say, very little. But the perpetuation of the fiction that ICANN controls the internet is representative of the completely understandable human impulse to try and assign control of the internet to someone or something, particularly in a time where the systems that shape most users’ experience of the internet are increasingly opaque and unaccountable to users.
Saying any one group controls the internet is as absurd as saying who “controls” capitalism or globalization itself. But everyone has their version of control. Silicon Valley billionaires may insist we surrender to the invisible hand of the network, which simply chooses disruption and convenience over accountability and ethics. For the federal government, it’s far easier to accuse the private sector of being in control and thwarting national security than admit that mass surveillance is an expensive and incompetent tactic. For critics (or those who’d prefer that control be in their hands), it would be far simpler to point at a single oligarch or Bohemian Club or ICANN that needs to be overthrown; it might redeem what today at times seems like a fractal trainwreck of an internet, and somehow bring us back to John Perry Barlow’s never-realized promise of an independent cyberspace.
And it also points out that the biggest "threat" to how internet governance is handled is if Cruz actually succeeds in blocking the transition:
Mostly, when I asked people at ICANN about worst-case scenarios with the transition, they pointed to Ted Cruz’s efforts. The transition not going through–either through a blocking action from this current Congress through some legislative action or Congress just delaying until the next president comes into office–would not only undermine the work that a lot of people have already put into the transition plan, it also would create even further mistrust and frustration among countries like Brazil that continue to be frustrated by US control. Maybe that would be enough to justify a fragmentation of the root zone. Or it could just make it harder for the multistakeholder model to function by undermining trust in the community as a whole, making consensus harder to achieve. Which is kind of to say it could start to look a lot more like the US Congress.
In other words, as we've explained before, Ted Cruz's concerns over the internet here are completely backwards. Up is down, black is white, night is day kind of stuff. Keeping the IANA connection to the US government is the kind of thing that opens up the possibility for Russia/China to exert more control over internet governance by routing around ICANN and its flawed, but better than the alternative, "multistakeholder" setup. Moving ICANN away from the US government, with strict rules in place that basically keep it operating as is, takes away one of the key arguments that foreign countries have been using to try to seize control over key governance aspects of the internet.
If Cruz fears foreign governments taking control of internet governance, he should do the exact opposite of what he's doing now. Let the Commerce Dept. sever the almost entirely imaginary leash it has on ICANN. Otherwise, other countries' frustration with the US's roles is a much bigger actual threat to how the internet is managed.
Fresh off the news that Mike Huckabee finally settled the copyright infringement suit over his use of a Survivor song at his Kim Davis rally, we have now learned that the campaign for Ted Cruz has apparently also had an issue with properly licensing music for its campaign. There's a degree or two of separation here to be aware of, with the Cruz campaign having hired an ad agency to handle its digital advertising, and with that ad agency apparently flouting the licensing rules of the music it acquired with pretty stunning abandon. Still, while accusations of infringement by musicians against politicians so rarely are simple cases of infringement, instead fraught with politics, this one, as Eric Goldman notes, appears to be pretty straightfoward.
Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign allegedly hit the copyright infringement bullseye. (All of the following facts are allegations from the complaint, but the defendants’ motion to dismiss doesn’t challenge any of them). The Cruz campaign’s ad agency, Madison McQueen, downloaded two songs from Audiosocket, which I would categorize as a stock music agency. The songs are “Lens” by Sarah Schachner and “Fear of Complacency” by Brad Couture. In each case, the ad agency agreed to Audiosocket’s standard Small Business License Agreement, which prohibited any use “for political purposes” and included a $25k liquidated damages clause. Audiosocket attached unique IDs to its downloads that fingers the ad agency as the downloader of these songs.
Despite the license restrictions, the campaign used both songs in promotional material. Lens was used in the “Victories” video (apparently offline), viewed 78,000 times on YouTube. After the campaign was told that its use was unauthorized, the campaign nevertheless broadcast the video 86 times on Fox Business News (if criminal copyright infringement were being prosecuted, which it won’t be because the DOJ would never go after a sitting Senator for such things, would this fact provide the necessary willfulness?). Fear of Complacency was used in the “Best to Come” video, viewed 12,000 times on YouTube.
It's typical for these types of complaints to be layered in nuance and interpretation, with a dash of one side or the other misunderstanding how licensing, copyright, and the rights that surround public performances work. This does not appear to be one of those cases, as the agreement Madison McQueen agreed to is fairly straightforward and specifically forbids the exact use for which the music was incorporated. As Goldman notes, whereas most campaigns would simply apologize and pay to have all of this go away, the Cruz campaign instead offered up a motion to dismiss. That motion didn't rebut any of the allegations. Instead, Cruz's lawyers argued that the musicians had only applied for copyright registrations and had yet to have that process completed, that it's unclear how many times it should be said that the campaign infringed on the copyrights for the songs, that Audiosocket can't stack its copyright complaint alongside its breach of contract complaint, and that all of this is a moot point because -- not making this up -- Cruz lost and gave up on his candidacy.
The court, predictably, denied every argument in the campaign's motion to dismiss. Which means it's settlement time.
Now that the plaintiffs survived the motion to dismiss, I’d expect the parties to revisit a settlement. The sticking point may be computing damages, especially the liquidated damages where the parties may disagree about how many times the license was breached. If Audiosocket accepts $25k per song, it should take $50k or less to buy them out–easily doable (especially if he still has $9M cash on hand). Audiosocket says it’s not claiming each of the 90k+ streams count as individual breaches (which would lead to over $2B of liquidated damages), but I’m not sure what their compromise position will be, so it’s hard to guess how far apart they really are.
To me, the most interesting unresolved question is how this lawsuit and failed motion to dismiss will change any of Sen. Cruz’s positions about copyright law. I’m not familiar with his IP platform, but he now has a first-hand brush with copyright infringement that ought to make him more empathetic towards other well-meaning and honest Americans who find themselves unwittingly staring down the barrel of a copyright infringement shotgun. Unfortunately, if past politicians’ response to being accused of IP infringement is any guide, the chances of Sen. Cruz becoming a champion of user rights are remote.
The more interesting question to my mind is exactly how all of this would play out if Senator Ted Cruz was instead local mailman Ted Cruz, without the legal team and political cache that he enjoys to back him up? We talk a great deal around here about citizens who are engulfed in questionable copyright actions, yet here is a Senator who will be able to pay some sum of money that he has at his ready to make all of this go away.
You would hope that this would lead to some kind of empathy in the halls of government, but naaaaaaah.
A little over two years ago, when the Commerce Department officially announced plans to "relinquish control" over ICANN's IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) we tried to explain why people should stop freaking out. There were a bunch of people up in arms, claiming that the US government was "giving away the internet." That was, and still is, complete hogwash. There are two important things to understand in this. First, the Commerce Department's "oversight" over ICANN and IANA is already basically non-existent. It was always more on paper than in reality, as the Commerce Department, rightly, took a totally hands off approach. Second, there has been a big effort by foreign governments, mainly Russia and China, to take control over the internet, and strip it from ICANN, and putting it in the ITU, a confusing mess of an organization that's a part of the UN, but heavily controlled by governments without input from actual technologists or public interest groups.
A key part of the Commerce Department's "transition" plan was that it would basically erase the almost entirely imaginary link between IANA and the Commerce Department, but only if a plan was created that kept IANA independent and not as a part of the UN or any organization that would lead to mostly government control, as opposed to what everyone (unfortunately) likes to call a "multistakeholder process" (which just means not just government in the room). And with that plan in place, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) has now come out in support of this plan.
The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced today that the proposal developed by the global Internet multistakeholder community meets the criteria NTIA outlined in March 2014 when it stated its intent to transition the U.S. Government’s stewardship role for the Internet domain name system (DNS) technical functions, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.
The announcement marks an important milestone in the U.S. Government’s effort to complete the transition of the Internet’s domain name system and ensure that the Internet remains a platform for innovation, economic growth, and free speech.
For the last 18 years, the United States has worked with businesses, technical experts, governments, and civil society groups to establish a multistakeholder, private-sector led system for the global coordination of the DNS. To accomplish this goal, in 1998, NTIA partnered with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit, to transition technical DNS coordination and management functions to the private sector. In 2014, NTIA initiated the final step in the privatization process by asking ICANN to convene global stakeholders to develop a plan to complete the transition away from NTIA’s remaining legacy role.
Now, you would think that "small government" types would be happy about the US government completing its "privatization" of internet governance. But, that's because many "small government" types are only small government types when it suits them. Senate Ted Cruz and Rep. Sean Duffy have rushed out a bill, called the "Protecting Internet Freedom Act" that would block the Commerce Department from completing the privatization of the internet. This is both silly and counterproductive.
The Commerce Department's flimsy and never really used "control" over NTIA is basically meaningless yet it's frequently used by foreign governments and the ITU/UN as a reason for taking complete control over the IANA process. And that's only ramped up in recent years due to concerns about the NSA and surveillance. In other words, the US having any official control over internet governance is actually helping authoritarian governments by making the argument that US "control" over the internet is only helping the NSA. By separating IANA from the US government, but keeping the overall process as one that is not controlled by any government, you actually have a better chance of keeping the internet functioning in an open manner. Leaving it under the US government control, no matter how flimsy that link really is, only gives foreign governments useful fodder for a more complete move to take over control themselves.
Eli Dourado, who has spent a ton of time digging into and being involved in internet governance issues, has a great and detailed post about why this transition is a good thing and should be supported. It has all of the relevant history here (including my favorite point about how prior to ICANN, the IANA functions were controlled one dude, Jon Postel, who more or less declared himself the czar over how the domain name system was managed). But he also gets directly to the point: Congress forcing the US government to keep this "control" over IANA would do much more harm than good:
In truth, authoritarian regimes would love nothing more than to see the IANA transition fail. It would give them another shot at taking the issue to the ITU, this time with the added ammunition of pointing out that the United States does not keep its word regarding Internet governance. Oddly, this places Cruz and Duffy on the same side as Russia and China, against the world’s democracies, the Obama administration, sober Republicans, virtually every US tech company, the Internet Society, and virtually every freedom-loving intellectual or activist I have met who has participated on a US delegation to the ITU.
Separately, he also points out that for all the hype over this, the IANA function is actually not nearly as important as some make it out to be. The US government losing whatever sense of "control" it had over it is unlikely to have a huge impact on the internet itself. So the "costs" to this transition are basically nil. The cost to keeping the paper control in place, however, may be very large, in that it provides tremendous ammunition to foreign authoritarian regimes to push for much more extreme changes to internet governance that would be much, much worse.
