Regulating IP Services?

Susan Crawford blogged about a US congressional hearing where rules for IP-enabled services were discussed.  IP stands for ‘internet protocol’ — that piece of code that everything from blogs to email work. Her account of the hearing left me curious about the US Government’s unique ability to regulate the Internet. 

It’s no secret that the Internet was created with funding from the US Federal Government and one of its essential parts has been contracted to a California non-profit company by the US Department of Commerce.   This means the US government can and has claimed some sort of ownership over the technology underlying the Internet and in this sense, the US Congress has some authority to regulate it.  The US Congress could, for example, pass legislation that ICANN would be bound to comply.  No other foreign government can make such a claim.

The previously-believed “inherent unregulability” of the Internet is largely untrue.  China has shown that Internet users can be corraled not unlike cows.  After all, the average Internet user is not much more intelligent than and is as visible as a large bovine. 

What I’m waiting to see is how the US Congress proposes to regulate IP-enabled services given its unique leverage.