Ruling the Root or Dollar and Yen

Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace

Author: Milton L Mueller

In Ruling the Root, Milton Mueller uses the theoretical framework of institutional economics to analyze the global policy and governance problems created by the assignment of Internet domain names and addresses. "The root" is the top of the domain name hierarchy and the Internet address space. It is the only point of centralized control in what is otherwise a distributed and voluntaristic network of networks. Both domain names and IP numbers are valuable resources, and their assignment on a coordinated basis is essential to the technical operation of the Internet. Mueller explains how control of the root is being leveraged to control the Internet itself in such key areas as trademark and copyright protection, surveillance of users, content regulation, and regulation of the domain name supply industry.

Control of the root originally resided in an informally organized technical elite comprised mostly of American computer scientists. As the Internet became commercialized and domain name registration became a profitable business, a six-year struggle over property rights and the control of the root broke out among Internet technologists, business and intellectual property interests, international organizations, national governments, and advocates of individual rights. By the late 1990s, it was apparent that only a new international institution could resolve conflicts among the factions in the domain name wars. Mueller recounts the fascinating process that led to the formation of a new international regime around ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. In the process, he shows how the vaunted freedom and openness of the Internet is beingdiminished by the institutionalization of the root.

Table of Contents:

1	Introduction: The Problem of the Root	1
I	The Root as Resource
2	The Basic Political Economy of Identifiers	15
3	The Internet Name and Address Spaces	31
4	The Root and Institutional Change: Analytical Framework	57
II	The Story of the Root
5	Growing the Root	73
6	Appropriating the Root: Property Rights Conflicts	105
7	The Root in Play	141
8	Institutionalizing the Root: The Formation of ICANN	163
9	The New Regime	185
III	Issues and Themes
10	ICANN as Global Regulatory Regime	211
11	Global Rights to Names	227
12	Property Rights and Institutional Change: Some Musings on Theory	255
13	The Taming of the Net	265
	Selected Acronyms	269
	Notes	273
	References	303
	Index	311

See also: Cases in Advertising and Marketing Management or Basic Training for New Managers

Dollar and Yen: Resolving Economic Conflict between the United States and Japan

Author: Ronald I I McKinnon

From the mid-1950s to the early 1990s, Japan grew faster than any other major industrial economy, displacing the United States in dominance of worldwide manufacturing markets. In the 1970s and 1980s, many books appeared linking the apparent decline of the United States in the world economy to "unfair" Japanese practices that closed the Japanese market to a wide range of foreign goods.

Dollar and Yen analyzes the friction between the United States and Japan from the viewpoint of exchange rate economics. The authors argue against the prevailing view that the trade imbalance should be corrected by dollar depreciation, saying that adjustment through the exchange rate is both ineffective and costly. Stepping outside the traditional dichotomy between international trade and international finance, they link the yen's tremendous appreciation from 1971 to mid-1995 to mercantile pressure from the United States arising from trade tensions between the two countries. Although sometimes resisted by the Bank of Japan, this yen appreciation nevertheless forced unwanted deflation on the Japanese economy after 1985--resulting in two major recessions (endaka fukyos).

The authors argue for relaxing commercial tensions between the two countries, and for limiting future economic downturns, by combining a commercial compact for mutual trade liberalization with a monetary accord for stabilizing the yen-dollar exchange rate.