What is the problem?

The phone companies are too far to the right and too low down. They want to be in the upper left.

Their networks are increasingly being used to transport data. In 2003, they seem to have reached a tipping point when digital data traffic exceeded analog voice traffic.

Only a fraction of that traffic is the Web (in red). The upper two thirds is peer-to-peer file exchanges, mostly of copyrighted information, mostly without the express written permission of the copyright holder.

In addition, 5% of users account for 95% of the traffic.

So the folks running the phone (and cable) companies wonder whether they can make their companies more profitable by monetizing the heavy users' behavior, which will monetize everyone's behavior.

Can they? Yes.

Should they? No, because it's bad for our economy, bad for our society, and a threat to our civil liberties.

Will they? They are corporations, so the people running them must try.

The question becomes: Will we let them?

The solution to the corporations' problem raises an issue we must debate fully.

Is the Internet a pubic good or a private good?

What is the Internet?

The Internet is not a thing. It's an agreement.

The Internet is a network of computers with several features that distinguish it from other networks:

digital as opposed to analog (C-A-T as opposed to a picture of a cat)

binary, which means two (ones and zeros; on/off pulses), as opposed to other digital systems such as DNA, which has four "letters", or our English alphanumeric system, which has about forty if you toss in a few punctuation marks.

packet-switched as opposed to the telephone's circuit-switched

distributed heterarchically like a fishnet as opposed to hierarchically like your employer's org chart

standardized on openly developed (as opposed to proprietary, secret) protocols such as transmission control protocol / Internet protocol (TCP/IP) and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)

The Internet is an open-source self-organizing adaptive many-to-many peer-to-peer international file-sharing public collaborative agreement based on human goodwill, which means it's teetering on anarchy.

In human culture, this commons has been the fertile ground of cultural innovation.

In corporate terms, an agreement to share is a threat to hierarchical control structures, like record labels.

How does it differ from the traditional telephone and cable networks?

The Internet differs from most business organizations, which are top-down, inflexible, information-hoarding, for-profit corporations with legal status.

In contrast, the Internet has no legal status. You can't sue it. You can't enjoin its behavior. It is not regulated. Maybe I should say that it's not regulable, if that's a word, although many governments are trying. Your corporate network is regulated.

The Internet is an agreement to share data packets according to openly developed protocols.

The Internet is a world of ends.

The Internet isn't complicated
The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
The Internet is stupid.
Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
All the Internet's value grows on its edges.
The Internet's three virtues:
   1, No one owns it
   2. Everyone can use it
   3. Anyone can improve it

(Searls and Weinberger)

The rules by which two computers exchange packets.

What is a packet?

Every file (text, image, sound) is broken into small packets of binary information and sent from router to router to find the path of least resistance to its destination.

A short email of 3,500 characters, or 3.5 Kb, would break into four sequentially numbered packets, which are typically 1,026 bits in size. The words of the email would be in the payload as bits, unreadable at the network and transport levels without the rest of the packets as well as the software to process the bits into English at the application level.

The Internet has no natural state. It is a built environment. It was built to be a stupid bit pipe. What we now call "Internet neutrality" was an assumption of the original protocol agreements from 1984.

Wikipedia's Network Neutrality

Network neutrality is a theory of network design closely related to the end to end principle. Under this principle, a neutral network is a dumb network, merely passing packets, insensitive to the needs of applications generating and consuming those packets. By contrast, an intelligent network distinguishes between the types of data carried on the network and treats each one appropriately according to service requirements and network state.

Who's in charge?

Each layer could be controlled (owned) or it could be free, that is, it could be organized in a commons, like Delaware Park.

If corporations can't control the content layer well enough, they try to exert their control over content at the code layer, and if they can't control that, then they'll try the physical layer.

The Internet was built to be neutral. It is stupid.

All packets are created equal. None gets special treatment.

While this is good for the Internet as a whole and for society as a whole, for individuals and for libraries, it is not good for corporations.

The content providers try to control through DRM (digital rights management) and proprietary applications.

The owners of the physical layer try to control through re-engineering the Internet to be smart, to be like the networks that the phone and cable companies are so good at providing.

The Internet is controlled at the physical layer. Someone owns all the equipment. The major idea of Lessig's efforts is to show how innovation depended on the code and content being free. He is very concerned that the dot-comming of the Internet brings in command and control lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists who having started by charging for content and are working through Congress and the FCC and FTC to lock down the code.

If that code layer stays open, all things are possible.

Lessig (left) writes in The Future of Ideas (p. 23):

Our aim is to understand how this mix produced the innovation that we have seen so far and why the changes to this mix will kill what we have seen so far.

Up until now, there has been little direct regulation of the Internet. Because it was piggybacking on the telephone industry's copper (and increasingly fiber) network and because the telephone industry was already mandated to trade their monopoly for being a neutral carrier, that regulation was working.

Then another industry got in, the cable TV companies, and they are now able to offer the same services as the telephone companies, the triple-play of data, voice, and video.

While they leave the Internet "open" for their customers, they are really walled gardens. If you read their SEC filings, they are positioning themselves to get a cut of all the interactive ecommerce online.

Two other industries are sniffing around the edges: wireless and electric power. So the question becomes:

To what extent should Congress mandate a neutral Internet and to what extent should Congress let the market's invisible hand take care of it?

Everyone claims to favor innovation. The deep-pocket incumbents say that they are best-positioned to provide the innovation that will keep the US competitive. They tell Congress, "Hands off, and we'll take care of it."

Other voices, usually without deep pockets or assets to manage or risk to assess or competitive advantage to hold, are concerned that the only regulation be the regulation that enforces neutrality.

Broadband over power lines (BPL)

A PC or any other device would need only to plug a BPL "modem" into any outlet in an equipped building to have high-speed Internet access.

How the Internet (data, voice, video)
would enter your home
via the wall sockets.

modified: May 2, 2007
by Douglas Anderson
http://RicciStreet.net/acrl/index.html