Key theme of this contribution: Why Abundance is a necessary policy goal for internet governance.
Via the Berkman Centers Publius Project on ‘constitutional moments of the internet’
So far, we have been very lucky at the P2P Foundation, in the sense that we always have had civil dialogue, and we have done this with a minimal amount of explicit rules, but rather relying on the general civility of our participants.
This is neither a general rule (cfr. flaming wars and trolls in many places), but neither is it very exceptional.
The absence of rules is therefore a function of the implicit presence of accepted norms.
What follows is a debate on norms vs. rules, with David Weinberger defending norms, and a number of follow-up contributions stressing that norms-based communities may be oppressive to outsiders, and therefore rules should not be seen an necessarily oppressive.
1. Norms vs. Rules and its dependence on Trust
That rules may be failed norms is a point made in an excellent starting piece by David Weinberger, which is followed up by a number of internet luminaries, and from which we quote, starting with David’s contribution:
“Governance, as an explicit social structure, codified and implemented, arises when tacit governance fails. At its best, explicit governance is a response to a breakdown. It rarely restores a society to its prior, unbroken state.
Governance is made explicit as a scar. Scars are useful. They can even be honorable. But they generally mark wounds. The lack of explicit constitutions and explicit rules often is a sign of health.
The vastest stretches of the Internet’s surface are as yet unblemished by explicit governance. Tacit governance, however, is the surface of the Net. The Net is most of all a new social space in which people gather in groupings familiar and odd. All human intercourse has some form of governance, for otherwise the participants have no way to talk. Conversing (in its broadest sense) requires not only a common language, but also some set of core expectations about the boundaries of the conversation. Those expectations steer the conversation; “governance” comes from the Greek for steering.
The expectations that steer human intercourse are rarely laid out, in the real world or on line. Since our interactions always occur within some context, we assume the norms of that context: In Boston, we’d be fine with our cab driver spontaneously expressing support for the Red Sox, but we would be surprised if the cab driver pulled over, unasked, to show us how well she plays the tuba, no matter how well she plays it. There is no explicit rule about this because there doesn’t need to be. If, however, cab drivers start regularly giving curbside tuba performances, a “You are entitled to a tuba-free cab” rule will be posted. Rules can also be useful guides to norms when we can anticipate cultural strangers may be coming along for the ride.
The fuzziness of norms is their strength. We need the looseness of norms to enable us to be with one another in surprising ways. The narrower, more explicit, and less ambiguous the norms, often the deader the social interaction: “Come now, Marjorie, you know that we raise our hands before speaking.” Norms are not rules that have yet to mature. Rules are norms that have failed.”
In one of the follow-up discussions, Esther Dyson makes a caveat, that reminds us of the ‘tyranny of structurelessness‘:
” Tacit rules are inherently hostile to outsiders and to trouble-makers – and ineffective with them as well. Weinberger’s tacit rules are benign, but most tacit rules are not so benign. And if they were explicit, they could be more easily condemned and repudiated.
Even if the rules are good, their implicitness makes them harder for newcomers to understand. Yes, newcomers can observe and learn, but the burden that imposes should be acknowledged. And finally, tacit rules are harder to spread, since they can’t be easily transferred to other communities. That’s unfortunate, because ideally communities can learn from one another, either by copying one another’s rules, or by having members who bring effective rules with them.”
This is of course why explicit online constitutions, such as the famous Ubuntu Code of Conduct, are important.
Echoing that point, Kevin Werbach stresses how many explicit, but hidden from view because embedded in the technical infrastructure, are in fact not only there, but highly necessary to the overall good functioning of the internet:
“a great deal of cyberspace involves not software, but infrastructure. And that infrastructure is chock full of rules. The days when researchers built the Internet as a communal activity are long gone. Backbone networks and domain name registries link together through written contracts: explicit governance through and through. The same goes for technical standards. As norm-driven as the Internet Engineering Task Force may be, its function is to systematically surface and formalize those norms into rules. There are right and wrong ways to write the technical documents known as RFCs, to populate the header fields of an Internet protocol data packet, and to advertise routes across interconnected networks. And those infrastructure rules matter. Bad route advertisements recently took YouTube off the Internet worldwide, after Pakistan attempted to block it locally.
The Internet’s rules rule because the old norm-based approaches no longer serve the huge and diverse Internet community. Gone are the days when @Home, a cable broadband service with no subscribers but good relationships, was allocated as much address space as all of China. Moreover, the norms of those building networks and those using them are increasingly mis-aligned. Many of the staunchest defenders of tacit governance in cyberspace are the loudest advocates of explicit non-discrimination rules governing how network operators deliver their packets. Network neutrality is, at bottom, an effort to surface a norm and make it into a rule. It may well be a worthwhile endeavor. Either way, it shows the danger of an uncritical preference for tacit over explicit governance.”
He argues that there are two factors that determine whether we can rely on implicit norms rather than explicit rules: 1) trust and 2) abundance.
On trust:
“Trust is strongest when dealing with those we know or share values with. Small groups, like the engineers who built the original Internet or the inner circle of top-tier Wikipedia editors, are more likely to trust each other. The larger the sphere of governance, the more likely interests will diverge, and the less likely that norms will suffice.”
2. On Abundance as a Policy Goal:
Kevin Werback continues:
“The cyber-solution to this governance dilemma is to fight the constraint that produces all the tensions: scarcity. Abundance trumps governance. There is no need to worry about resource allocation when there are more than enough resources to go around. And those who find their norms ill-served can choose a more suitable environment, because the costs of forming new groups and institutions are so low.
The good news is that cyberspace – if we let it – can be the greatest engine of abundance the world has ever known. From the billions of search clicks that Google pairs with targeted text ads to the millions of WiFi devices using shared wireless spectrum to the hundreds of thousands of books along Amazon.com’s long tail, abundance is the driving force of the Internet economy. It should be an abiding goal of Internet governance as well. Furthering the historical analogy, it was territorial expansion, to the Western edge of the continent and beyond, that channeled and checked the tensions of the nascent American constitutional republic.
If cyberspace is to be well-governed, therefore, it must grow. We must resist the temptation to look back nostalgically to the frontier homesteading days, when norms dominated because so many of them were shared. Let us, as David urges, embrace the Internet’s wondrous chaos. At the same time, though, let us sing the praises of its well-designed rules. The shared enemy is not structure, but exclusivity and other barriers to choice and connectivity.“