Ricci Street < Port 80 < Shoreline || search | sitemap | help gazette | theater | bistro

|

Internet Neutrality other pages copyright | security | taxation | regulation this page What's the Internet Doing to Organizations? Means of Control | Locations of Control

What's at stake

Our shared culture. Your ability to make money in new and interesting ways. What Benkler below calls "the deep structure of our information environment". Progress.

That seems like so much, and it is. It may take you quite a while to figure it out. So let's get started.

The Commons - grazing land, the Internet, fresh water, roads. For intellectual property, the commons is called the public domain.

What's your metaphor?

Yochai Benkler, an NYU law professor, favors the top row. Corporations and governments that need to stay in control -- of you and your behavior with their assets -- favor the bottom row.

It's all about visions
by argoff
Slashdot, January 8, 2006

To many of us, the internet envisions a future with the uninhibited unrestricted free flow of information - where all knowledge and creative works will be birthed into the world thru creative collaboration, or thru services, or thru just plain giving for free as a side effect of private interests.

To the music industry, and the RIAA in particular, the internet envisions a future where every piece of content is tagged and charged for with the promise of unlimited profit and royalty and the prospect of endlessly being able to nickel and dime the consumer to the highest order - but to impose this vision requires that they coerce upon people and technology companies, an infrastructure of control - where no piece of information can leak out and risk becoming free.

Moral: This is like an ALL or NOTHING game

People who want to play half hearted, and allow some room for copyrights in this age are only going to continue to feed the beast that is trying to enslave them. Copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off people's freedom until we cut it off at the root. One of these days people are going to realize that copyrights are not about artists, writers, developers, incentive, or "property", or even profit, they are only about control. Control, even if that means the loss of privacy, free speech, and control over our PC's.

I don't believe it's control for the sake of control. It's control because control best manages their assets and their risks and best maximizes their profit. The people running the corporations are supposed to be in charge. Certainly, they're accountable to their shareholders, and control is the best way to discharge that fiduciary responsibility. They aren't evil; they're just trying to maximize this quarter's ROI. The negative effect on our culture is not their concern because in a regulated capitalist system, the "invisible hand" is supposed to take care of those larger concerns.

From consumers to users: Shifting the deeper structures of regulation towards sustainable commons and user access
by Yochai Benkler
Federal Communication Law Journal, 2000

The emergence of the digitally networked environment makes possible the development of a robust, open social conversation in which all can participate as peers. This technological and economic possibility is not, however, preordained.

Decisions about the organization and regulation of the content, logical, and physical layers of the Internet will determine whether the digital environment will eventually, in large measure, replicate the mass media model, or whether it will indeed change the deep structure of our information environment.

The focus of the policy concerns that have traditionally justified structural media regulation should, at this time, be focused on assuring that the digitally networked environment evolves into a stable system for peer users, rather than towards a system in which commercial producers and passive consumers are the primary players. These goals suggest that we:

develop and sustain commons, wherever possible, in the resources necessary for the production and exchange of information

design provisions enabling access to the resources that cannot be sustained as commons

Such a policy focus would be a more effective means than traditional structural media regulation of securing robust democratic discourse and individual expressive freedom.

Note the content, logical, and physical layers: the content is in the applications, the logic is in the protocols, and the physical layer is made up of the copper and glass wires and the radio spectrum. If a corporation can't control the content layer well enough, they try to exert their control over content at the logical layer, and if they can't control that, then they'll try the physical layer.

E-Work
by Carl Malamud
Mappa Mundi, June 1999

Open Source defines its product by the fact that software is visible. Free software is defined by the fact that the software is free. Public works means that a valuable service is being offered to the general public. Think New York City. We need Bloomingdales and Macy's (and indeed these are part of the New York community and do public projects such as the Macy's parade). But, New York also needs public works projects like Central Park, Lincoln Center, the library, and parkways. ...

We can wait for corporations to magically build our parks. Or, we can do what communities have always done: combine social capital with human labor and build ourselves the kind of global village we want to live in.

If the Internet is a bedroom community, a place we go to make our money and then exit after the gold rush, public works don't make any sense. If we plan on living with this infrastructure for a long time, it is time to start planning our infrastructure on a more systematic basis that allows people to build the parks, schools, libraries, and other public works that make our cities places that last.

Free Culture
by Lawrence Lessig

The efficient spread of content means that content distributors have a harder time controlling the distribution of content. One obvious response to this efficiency is thus to make the Internet less efficient. If the Internet enables “piracy,” then, this response says, we should break the kneecaps of the Internet.

“Net Neutrality”: Digital Discrimination or Regulatory Gamesmanship in Cyberspace?
by Adam D. Thierer
Cato Institute, January 12, 2004

What Ever Happened to “Hands Off the Net”?

The Net neutrality catfight points to a much more troubling trend in the emerging field of cyberlaw: the rapid proliferation of requests for federal intervention in high-tech markets for one reason or another. Not so long ago, policymakers of all political stripes expressed what seemed to be a genuine desire to keep the Internet free of the sort of regulatory meddling that plagued the communications, cable, and broadcast sectors in previous decades. Years of experience had shown that regulation of those markets had stifled innovation, restricted competition, and limited consumer choice. Hence, calls for a “hands-off” approach to cyberspace were made by a wide variety of political officials and policy organizations.

Regrettably, the “hands-off” impulse has waned as governments have found ways to spread their tentacles into cyberspace. “[G]overnmental regulation of [the] Internet is actually becoming increasingly the rule, rather than the exception,” notes Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa.

The Economics of Net Neutrality: Why the Physical Layer of the Internet Should Not Be Regulated (635 KB .pdf)
by Christopher S. Yoo
Progress & Freedom Foundation, July 11, 2004

Panel Discussion: Should the Net’s Physical Layer be Regulated? (250 KB .pdf)
by Randolph May, C. Lincoln Hoewing, John Nakahata, Adam Thierer, Joe Waz, Richard Whitt, and Christopher Yoo
Progress & Freedom Foundation, September 14, 2004

Congress has taken up the issue of Net neutrality as they try to determine how to update the T of 1996 to balance the always-on world of consumer-generated media and the interests of large corporations trying to protect their business models.

Net Neutrality
Full Committee Hearing
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
February 7, 2006

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, which are in the information industry (NAICS    ) as opposed to the telecommunications industry (NAICS    ), and are thus not regulated by the FCC. While they leave the Internet "open" for their customers, they are really walled gardens and 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 they 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. The most articulate voices in front of the congressional committee:

arguing for minimal regulation to enforce Internet neutrality

Mr. Vinton Cerf
Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

Mr. Lawrence Lessig
Professor of Law, Stanford Law School

arguing for no regulation at all

Mr. Kyle Dixon
Senior Fellow and Director of the federal Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics, The Progress & Freedom Foundation

The testimony reveals some opposing viewpoints:

Nuances:

Where does innovation come from? Incumbents or new entrants?

An abundant resource can be made artificially scarce.

Who should regulate?

How Countries Are Regulating Internet Content
by Peng Hwa Ang
Proceedings, INET 97 Conference, June 24-27, 1997

Table 1. Regulatory framework

Far right column added by me to show relationship to PEST and Lessig's means of control.

The Internet: What Is It Doing to Organizations?

It's changing information. Information is no longer locked up in atoms. It's on a stupid network that doesn't do much except transport bits. Copies are trivial, not assets with incremental costs.

To the extent that all information is always available everywhere, power will no longer come from having information that other people don't. Conversely, the way to preserve power now is to control information. To the extent that all information is always available everywhere, power will come from sharing well, from collaborating.

Above all, organizations have choices to make. The public Internet stops where it connects to the organization's private network. Remember, the Internet isn't a thing; it's an agreement. It's a built environment, not a natural environment. If it was built, it can be un-built or re-built. The public Internet was built as an open, stupid network. Most organizations are building closed, smart intranets for their private network. They want to control information flow.

If code is law, then an organization can use code that extends the open traditions of the original Internet, a commons that produced great innovation. Or an organization can use code that monitors at any degree of granularity it chooses to, right down to the keystroke or iris movement. It can then look for anomalous patterns and catch you! What happens to innovation?

Is control that important? Can leaders adapt to what feels out of control, anarchic, chaotic according to their old command-and-control hierarchical mindsets? Or is command-and-control the only effective way to lead?

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig suggests that the struggle is between old control and new control. Old business models vs new business models. He sees a third way: less control, much less.

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World - web site

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace - excerpt | conclusion

Creative Commons

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society
articles by Lawrence Lessig

Means of control

Learn more

Locations of control

What can be regulated?

Drawing on the ideas of Yochai Benkler, "From Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation," Federal Communications Law Journal 52 (2000), Lawrence Lessig asks us to look at the three layers or locations of control that make up a communications system: physical, logical, and content. Each layer could be controlled (owned) or it could be free, that is, it could be organized in a commons, like Delaware Park.

Delaware Park is free at the physical layer because you don't need permission to use it, though the golf course and tennis courts may require scheduling. The Park is also free at the code layer because the language used (whether English or anything else) is free as is anything you say there, the content layer.

On the Internet:

physical - computers, copper and fiber optic wires, radio spectrum and satellites

code - the "logical" layer, the operating systems, file formats, and transport protocols

content - text, images

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.

The forces trying to close the code come from four directions:

Music United's Parent Page: What Every Parent Should Know About Illegal File Sharing

Stealing music on the Internet is every bit as wrong as stealing goods from a store. Yes, it’s against the law. And, yes, offenders can be prosecuted in criminal court and sued for damages in civil court.

But what if the offender is a minor? Well, for one thing, that doesn’t make the activity any less a crime. For another, it may subject the offender’s parents or guardians to legal action.

Yes, the Internet is that big a threat to the powers-that-be. They're that scared, which means their business model is that vulnerable.

Note that laws, market regulation, norms, and code correspond directly to the political, economic, sociocultural, and technological parts of a PEST analysis as I'm asking you to do one at the Roundtable for your FOMI project.

Lessig 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.

Which organization do you want to work for, open or controlled? How controlled? In whichever organization you do work, to the extent that it is computer-mediated, then computer code will set the limits of acceptable behavior. In that sense, code is law.

The consciously designed and built features of that code will greatly affect the corporate culture and your options as a leader. Wise leaders will be deeply involved in the design (not the building) of corporate computer code. You want to be the architect, not the engineer or the carpenter. However, you will have more confidence and credibility if you have actually used a hammer once or twice. Give some serious thought to learning enough HTML to read it and write it.

I am always doing what I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
-- Pablo Picasso

Larry Lessig's worst fears

Infranet Initiative - Moving Beyond the Internet - a "selectively open networks" proposal by Juniper Networks and Lucent Technologies

In only a few years the Internet has changed communications forever – but has it all been for the better?

The Internet burgeoned because it provides widespread connectivity at low cost. But with low cost comes marginal performance, low value, unreliability and a lack of security – the very characteristics that restrict the potential of the network to meet today’s business and consumer needs.

What is needed is a new type of public network that provides the flexibility of the Internet, but that moves beyond today’s Internet ‘quality.’ What is needed is a public network that is not just ubiquitous, but also predictable, flexible and secure.

Slogans and Mantras

the network is the computer

hyperlinks subvert hierarchy

what do you think?

What's the copyright policy on Ricci Street? You'll find it on Ricci Green in the Principles section under Ideals.