I'm not seeing the move of the net to "private" as much as I am seeing the net moving into the hands of quasi national entities, such as ICANN, that have almost national powers

ICANN and all proposals otherwise, are "legally" incorporated in specific political jurisdictions, thus under full control of government political whims. Same as if handed over to the UN.

but no foundation in territory (thus outside of the Peace of Westphalia formulation) or of any form of "we the people" creative act by biological humans.

Such whims of power generally do not care too much about biological humans, to wit power's wars killing and chattel keeping, of same. And more. As someone noted earlier, ICANN and other bodies like it were doomed when they started in the copyright, identity, censorship, and other regulatory games. Instead of sticking solely to the business of moving packets agnostically, and refusing all other roles.

My sense is this fragmentation of plenary authority absent strong constitutional constraints or public accountability is is going to become one of the great problems

You all gave up the promise and hope of the internet the moment you let governments blanket unwarranted mass spy all over it, when you let corporations cave to political censor pressure, when you let govcorp conspire making "laws" to prevent and $fee you from routing around all their bullshit in truly private neighbor-to-neighbor-multihomed house-to-house biz-to-biz peer-to-peer land_parcel-to-land_parcel guerrilla mesh networks around the world. By continuing to be babies handing off your proper and rightful independant P2P responsibilities as such to govcorps by paying $75 internet + $50 phone + $nn in taxes to them, instead of doing it yourselves in your localities P2P linked to other locales for less. For letting them all steal from you right under your eyes with your consent for decades... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/sprint-took-fcc-cash-for-serving... The problem is you, and yours alone.

As for the move of the net towards "private" we have to realize that "private" is really a kind of dynamic, and ever changing balance over who has the power

What you first have to realize is that you dumbshits gave the power up. Oops. Then you become actually free to think up some new ways to get things done without resorting to that.

There is always a public overlay to nominally private things.

What a load of statist sheep apologist bullshit that is. And note the creeping definition weasel words "nominally private". That's why the internet is a loss, all those sorts of self-subjugative and deprecating ideas right there. Did you know there are companies racing to create brain scanners so that your once "nominally private" thoughts become signals on forced polygraph exams? Which imples you should also be aware of... https://antipolygraph.org/

even private land can be taxed

What a load of statist sheep apologist bullshit that is. Ever think of personally giving to local charity instead? Programming that into kids in schools as the freedom preserving way to do things instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9yX248DC3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-cgs51zEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6C1M_7BzZ0 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=taxation+is+theft See also... "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".

the criminal laws of the land still apply to acts performed on that land.

Look at all the censorship... you're going to love it when they roll out and enforce use of the Great TLS Terminator MITM Spy Tool everywhere. And come to take "your" banned books from you on "your" land. And slap a muzzle on you on their way out because you don't have freedom of speech or free speech anymore on the internet either. You got exactly what you whined, cried, and complained for.

That balance will forever be shifting back and forth, based on the competition among political

That's because you keep letting them distract and play you out of your rights with their game. Hook line sinker.

And because a network is a synergy of its pieces there is "the curse of the installed base" that will act as an anchor.

They're your neighbors, don't curse, go say hi to them, advance them up out of the water so you both can travel freely. Because you gave that away too... https://papersplease.org/

So even a private internet (or as I see it, a world in which there will be multiple internets connected by highly policed bridges) will be constrained by a web of legal, financial, and technical obligations and duties.

Why is those balkan bridges, those mired restraints existing? Oh, right, because you called for and let them happen.

(I wrote a somewhat long blog entry about how I see the net fragmenting here: https://www.cavebear.com/cavebear-blog/internet_quo_vadis/ )

Personally I believe that there must be some realm in which people must be free to try out new ideas and take risks.

Right, nothing limiting you there but what you foolishly put and keep in place over you hindering your freedom.

But we have to be careful not to sweep unknowing and non-consenting members of the public into new private innovations.

If people weren't lying about that they would deprecate to and educate the "public" to make their own choices and things. Government and profit corporations are hardly in the business of doing that, it's a conflict of interest, so they lie. And you'll have to do it yourself without them.

I am giving a talk in late October on the topic of the responsibilities of private network operators as the internet moves into a world in which users believe, rightly or wrongly, that it is safe for them to depend on the proper operation of the net in matters of safety, finance, and health - in other words, as people come to view the internet as a lifeline grade utility.

Good, maybe then they will rise up and demand, better yet deploy for themselves, the vision of a true end-to-end uncensored unsurveilled fully encrypted internet.

This ought to create an image in one's mind of an internet, perhaps privately owned (at least in pieces) but owned in the same way as our today's public utilities for electricity, gas, and (in the past) "the telephone company".

"Public utilities" aka "Government utilities" are at the whim of shifting govenment political games. History has already shown them unsuitable owners or overseers of country or local internets. The amount of people now foolishly crying for "Municipal" broadband is ridiculous. Go build your own distributed version within your locales. It's not hard or expensive. (Do not ever for one second think the GFW or Social Score will not come to you, it already has, and it's well documented in the news of your respective countries. You cannot even use SneakerNet to safely move your packets across "borders" anymore without risk of confiscation and imprisonment. Nor can you encrypt your stuff inside your own countries either because they'll beat you with a wrench in contempt prison for that too.) And both Govt and "private profit companies" are generally against you to the point of making it really hard to break free from whatever [internet] shit they're doing to you. (Did you read the news that all countries are now starting up their own Internet Military War Departments, complete with Secret Attack Operations, Satellite Destruction, Censors, National Peering Kill Switches, etc. And you think those will not spark next big physical wars? Did you agree to that?) Stop crying for them to come and save you. Save yourself, do it yourself, and keep it that way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpsJKQR_ZE

And also wrapped in elevated standards of care (i.e. requiring that one operate their private bailiwick with higher than the present levels of care in order to avoid liability on the grounds of negligence.)

Technology now exists to build distributed ownership, parcel based, end-to-end internet where drop in commodity opensource routing nodes conform to a global mesh spec and route around such "poor standards" "negligience" "censorship" "control". Did you know that new technology exists that lets you route your private money packets around such bullshit too? Even over some encrypted network overlays too... https://xmr.to/ https://z.cash/ https://bitcoin.com/ + privacy tools https://blocknet.co/block-dx/ https://torproject.org/ Etc... and that's only the first generation of them... You all keep trying to set up "governance" and "regulation" for the Internet. All those legacy governmental models, over and over again, which aren't really that great and which history shows are doomed to fail. So try something completely different and novel for once... don't setup anything, just say no. Given you've never tried before, you're odds of success are at least 50%, which is monumentally better chance than everything else you've tried and failed at before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FGVKcsdafU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xau5lPZzztc https://freekeene.com/files/marketforliberty.pdf https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/the-life-cycles-of-empires-lessons-for-ame... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kZPY4lgYmM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmCNMQ7TOgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW7tWSc-FTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu4tB9hP3xc