The Internet Should Be a Public Good
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The Internet Should Be a Public Good
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Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good
#2Most relevant Internet bodies are noncommercial organisations, like ICANN, IETF, RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, AFNIC, LACNIC, the various Internet exchanges (xxCIX), some DNS registrars are noncommercial too. But someone has to run the actual cables, manage customers, host servers, etc.
I'd say the Internet has a very good balance between commercial interests and the noncommercial "public good". So good in fact, that some very restrictive governments choose to opt out and create nationwide intranets (China, Iran, ...)
Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good
#3Most relevant Internet bodies are noncommercial organisations, like ICANN, IETF, RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, AFNIC, LACNIC, the various Internet exchanges (xxCIX), some DNS registrars are noncommercial too. But someone has to run the actual cables, manage customers, host servers, etc. I'd say the Internet has a very good balance between commercial interests and the noncommercial "public good". So good in fact, that some very…
China and Russia are doing this largely to avoid Western cultural and political influence. Their choice to opt out does not necessarily imply that we're structuring our networks in the most just or efficient way.
Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good
#4Most relevant Internet bodies are noncommercial organisations, like ICANN, IETF, RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, AFNIC, LACNIC, the various Internet exchanges (xxCIX), some DNS registrars are noncommercial too. But someone has to run the actual cables, manage customers, host servers, etc. I'd say the Internet has a very good balance between commercial interests and the noncommercial "public good". So good in fact, that some very…
China and Russia are doing this largely to avoid Western cultural and political influence. Their choice to opt out does not necessarily imply that we're structuring our networks in the most just or efficient way.
It does imply that we are structuring our networks in a way that doesn't have the capabilities for restriction that they would like.
Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
China and Russia are doing this largely to avoid Western cultural and political influence. Their choice to opt out does not necessarily imply that we're structuring our networks in the most just or efficient way.
It does imply that we are structuring our networks in a way that doesn't have the capabilities for restriction that they would like.
That's correct. We don't enforce restrictions on political speech or deviant pornography, for the most part. But we do enforce intellectual property restrictions that largely benefit Western corporate interests.
Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good
#6The internet already is a public good.
Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good
#7Most relevant Internet bodies are noncommercial organisations, like ICANN, IETF, RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, AFNIC, LACNIC, the various Internet exchanges (xxCIX), some DNS registrars are noncommercial too. But someone has to run the actual cables, manage customers, host servers, etc. I'd say the Internet has a very good balance between commercial interests and the noncommercial "public good". So good in fact, that some very…
China and Russia are doing this largely to avoid Western cultural and political influence. Their choice to opt out does not necessarily imply that we're structuring our networks in the most just or efficient way.
To me it is a testament for the resilience and sane architecture of the Internet as we know it that restrictive governments can not achieve their goal without changing the underlying structure of their part to a central controlled version. Other technologies like the radio or telephone were centralised by default, so much more "dictatorship friendly".
Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
China and Russia are doing this largely to avoid Western cultural and political influence. Their choice to opt out does not necessarily imply that we're structuring our networks in the most just or efficient way.
To me it is a testament for the resilience and sane architecture of the Internet as we know it that restrictive governments can not achieve their goal without changing the underlying structure of their part to a central controlled version. Other technologies like the radio or telephone were centralised by default, so much more "dictatorship friendly".
The U.S. government seems to have no trouble achieving its commercial and surveillance goals under the current architecture.
Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me it is a testament for the resilience and sane architecture of the Internet as we know it that restrictive governments can not achieve their goal without changing the underlying structure of their part to a central controlled version. Other technologies like the radio or telephone were centralised by default, so much more "dictatorship friendly".
The U.S. government seems to have no trouble achieving its commercial and surveillance goals under the current architecture.
Really? I only hear western governments whining that encryption threaten their surveillance powers [1][2].
[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7d57f576e3f74b6ca4cd3436fbebf...
[2] http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/24/12621834/france-germany-en...
Re: The Internet Should Be a Public Good
#10This rosey view of the public-funded Internet ignores the reality of the network at the time. As recently as the mid-1990s, the entire Internet could netsplit, like a badly-run IRC network; there was a run of a couple days where commercial sites (like Ripco, my first ISP) couldn't reach any .EDU sites.
Telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon "own" the backbone because they built it. Not just the backhaul connections they install at enormous expense, not just the hundreds of millions of dollars of switches and routers, but the very peering centers and agreements that allow different networks to interoperate. Had UUNet been forbidden from building "private" backbones, they'd have simply built a new IP network, and we'd all be using that instead.