I posted on the issue of net neutrality in a classroom forum (for my Network Administration class at CCSF):

Doc Searls of Linux Journal wrote a column, “Saving theNet: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes,”about this issue recently.

Searls is a strong advocate of the point of view that the main reasonfor the internet’s extreme malleability and explosive growth has beenthe abstraction of applications from the underlying networkinfrastructure. To use his term, the internet is a “stupid” network: thenetwork says nothing about what applications (the networks “endpoints”)can or should be. In contrast is the PSTN, of Ma Bell fame — thepenultimate example of a circuit switched “smart” network. Searlsargues that the telcos, owners of the PSTN, yearn to exert the kind ofcontrol over the internet that they have over the PSTN, and that theyare moving to reestablish their hegemony by arguing before the USCongress in favor of doing so.

What would this mean in a pratical sense for you and I? It would meanmuch less diversity on the application side, and little or no control,or ability to develop our own solutions. Think cell phones, where it isvirtually impossible — if not illegal — to control the software on thebox. Reverse engineering the software, even if only to build beneficialnew applications, is a violation of an agreement that you entered intoin order to get phone service. This closed, proprietary software worldis a fundamentally different development (and user) environment from theworld of tcp/ip, where standards are published and vetted openly in theform of RFCs.

This is a complicated issue, but it would behoove us not tounderestimate its implications. The outcome of the fight for control ofintellectual “property” in the form of patents and copyright onsoftware, in conjunction with the struggle for control of networkinfrastructure, may very well determine whether the “useful arts”continue to flourish in the U.S., or, conversely, as we’re alreadywitnessing in both the software and telecom world, the US slips intorelative obsolesence.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2006 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Computer Science, Digital Rights / Digital Wrongs, General, Network Neutrality, Network Security, Pigopoly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.