SAN JOSE, California -- The Internet is just too young for government regulations.
That's the theme of INET 99, the annual Internet Society global summit that seeks to unravel the influence of the Internet on technical, social, and educational issues.
In what has become a familiar refrain among Internet pundits, keynote speaker Dr. Irving Wladwasky-Berger equated the impact of the Internet on global society with the discovery of electricity and the Industrial revolution.
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"The process of change with electricity took 100 years and the change with the Internet will take 30 years -- and we are in only in our fifth year of that process," said Wladwasky-Berger, the general manager of IBM's Internet division.
His words were simultaneously translated into French and Spanish for the many international delegates in attendance.
Wladwasky-Berger said that we have no idea what the Internet will look like, and how it will have affected society, at the end-stage of that process. Therefore, self-regulation, not governmental regulation, is a more appropriate means of managing the medium's growth.
The tension between industry regulation and state regulation seeped into many different sessions scheduled on the first day of this four-day event.
In a discussion on "Private Sector Coalitions Shaping Internet Policy," an international group of panelists agreed that governments are by and large taking their cues from the private sector rather than setting the Internet policy agenda.
"The best thing about the phrase 'Internet governance,' is that the word is 'governance,' not 'government,'" said Michael Nelson, an executive in the Internet division at IBM, and former adviser to Vice President Al Gore on Internet and technology issues.
According to Nelson, it is clear to governments around the world that technology is moving way too fast to monitor, and consequently it's too difficult to regulate it effectively.
Nelson said that governments are looking to the policy positions of such industry trade groups as the Global Internet Project and the Computer Systems Policy Projects. Both organizations are made up of leaders and CEOs from some of the world's largest computer and networking systems companies.
Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, now senior vice president of MCI WorldCom, and Piper Cole, lead counsel at Sun Microsystems, largely echoed Nelson's sentiments.
The only noncorporate panelist, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, raised the issue of public interest.
"From a societal perspective, we haven't decided how important [Internet issues] are yet," said Tara Lemmey. "We can't have decided on the specs yet because we don't know what we think."
As for Internet governance, Lemmey said that the EFF believes that public education is leading to proactive, front-end solutions "for protection against 'bad actors,'" which she said was preferable, whenever possible, to regulatory intervention.
