Internet Governance: It's not just about the "namespace"

As we pointed out in our AFCEA Cyber Committee paper: AFCEA Cyber Committee: The Future of Internet Governance, there are significant changes occurring on the way the Internet is "governed".  Much of the attention in this regard has been the announcement that the US Department of Commerce is planning to give up oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers (ICANN).  ICANN is the organization that coordinates the Internet's global Domain Name System (DNS) that provides the critical web address name to Internet Protocol (IP) address translation, as well as the assignment of IP addresses to service providers and organizations.

Much of the focus of Internet governance has been focused on a combination of the control of key Internet infrastructure elements (e.g., DNS and IP addresses) or focused around and "Internet Bill of Rights-like" approach which being driven, in large part, by the unauthorized disclosures of US Intelligence Community activities involving the Internet and Internet-based services.

However, these are missing one critical element that surfaced this week.  The AFCEA paper identified four items that were critical to Internet Governance.  Two of them are related to the above, but the other two are related to what is likely to have the most global impact.  These are, of course, about money.

The recent focus in the news has been on the impact services such as Facebook and Twitter on political discourse. This includes Twitter and YouTube bans in Turkey.  At first, these seem related to the desire of the ruling class to control political discourse and to derail dissent.   However, it is likely that underlying this, in large part, is the money aspect of the services.  Social Networking companies have built empires and valuations in the hundreds of billion dollars.  Just yesterday, Turkey's Finance Minister made a statement that Social-Media companies must pay taxes. 

What Turkey is asking is essentially "Where is the Money?".  There is a service that is being used within its country that generates revenue, but virtually none of it is invested back into the country.  There is certainly investment in Internet infrastructure to support the services us (e.g., mobile 4G, fiber, etc.) but the service itself likely housed in a datacenter thousands of miles away. 

So, it is all about control.  It's not just all about who controls DNS or keeping prying eyes off people's personal information.  It's also about the money, and of course if there is money being made, how can it can be taxed.