(I guess it's about time I set down this bit of history. In the context of the Net Neutrality debate it seems like something which ought to be made public, and as the youngest participant in these events I may eventually become the last surviving eyewitness. Photo to right is me in 1979 with hair and everything.)
In 1979 I was a junior at Franklin and Marshall College. I was also a fledgling Science Fiction writer with several professionally published stories, a libertarian activist who had worked on a couple of campaigns and formed a chapter of Students of a Libertarian Society and also what passed for a hacker in those early days of computers. Somehow that summer I lucked into the perfect internship in Washington, DC. Because I attended the right high school and with some pull from my mother, who worked for Senator Mac Mathias, I got an internship as a writer and editor for What's Next newsletter published by the Congressional Clearing House on the Future, which was largely under the oversight of a dynamic young Congressman named Al Gore.
Gore and I had both attended St. Albans School in DC, about 10 years apart. At that point he was in his second term in the House of Representatives and he had decided that his way to make a mark was to become the leading Congressional voice for the emerging world of high tech. The Congressional Clearing House on the Future was his vehicle for doing this. It basically brought in information from the frontiers of science, analyzed it and put it into a form where busy politicians could figure out what to think about it. My job was to do research and write introductory articles on a wide variety of topics, including satellites, solar energy, microwaves, charged particle beam weapons, space exploration and research, and the frontiers of computers and communications. I was good at taking technical topics and summarizing them for a more general audience and got lots of practice at it while I was with the CCF.
As a lowly intern I really had very little direct contact with Congressman Gore. He did call on the phone a few times and I got to field a couple of technical questions in areas where I had some expertise. Apparently somewhere along the way someone must have passed on to him that I knew more about computers than anyone else on staff and I guess I had proved pretty adept at using LexisNexis (one of the very first major online databases) for research, plus I had a background in computer typesetting. So I got pegged to do a lot of work relating to a series of meetings called the Chautauquas for Congress sponsored by CCF and Rep. Gore. These meetings had begun in March and I came in towards the end. They brought together experts from private industry, government, the military, academia and the press to discuss emerging aspects of technology. One of those was computers and communications, and it was the results of that meeting which gave Al Gore some claim to having invented the internet, though to be fair his role in sponsoring the chautauquas was more that of a facilitator who brought the work of many inventors together than that of an actual inventor.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Clavos
The most recent ruling by the FCC stands a good chance of creating a two tier Internet wherein those with money will have access not only to better download speeds, but also to much more and better quality information than those who cannot pay what will almost certainly be much higher rates for premium services.
2 - RJ
Absolutely excellent article, Dave. Thanks for the interesting background.
3 - Dr Dreadful
It's not just here in the US where moves to "control" the Internet are being made. I was reading on the BBC yesterday that the UK government wants to prevent users from accessing porn sites unless they specifically opt in (which would almost certainly involve forking over money, although that's a separate issue). If that can be accomplished, I doubt it will take long before the government starts looking at what other sorts of material it ought to restrict access to "for the public good".
4 - Dan(Miller)
Judge Tatel of the D.C. Circuit, who wrote the Comcast decision holding that the FCC lacks statutory authority over various aspects of the internet, delivered an interesting lecture to the EPA last year about how agencies exceed their statutory authority. I tried to append a quotation from his address but couldn't get much of it past the BC comment preview. It's well worth reading. His comment "read the statute, read the statute, read the statute" pretty much summarizes it.
The FCC "net neutrality" business is in its very formative stages and network neutrality means different things to different folks. Whether the FCC will move on the really draconian stuff is an open question. Should it do so, I suspect the new Congress will do its best to block it.
Dan(Miller)
5 - zingzing
4chan to the rescue. take em down.
6 - Dan(Miller)
Maybe our beloved Congress could take some lessons from the Scottish Parliament.
Nah, probably not.
Dan(Miller)
7 - littleadv
The titles of the FCC rules is misleading, they couldn't go further off of neutrality with those rules. Allowing IPS's to police the user actions and punish them as they wish (bandwidth, pricing, disconnecting)? Unheard of!
8 - Doug Hunter
The internet is a utility and the common carrier approach that has been the de facto standard is proper. I don't understand how the right got on the wrong side of this issue, perhaps they enjoy being the lapdogs of Comcast, et al. ISP's are jealous of the money content providers are making off of "their service"* (although they seem to forget that no one would want their service in the first place if not for those same content providers--it's a symbiotic relationship that they want to sacrifice for short term anticompetitive profits). Utilities were subsidized to get them to rural customers and in many other circumstances in the past, if we need subsidies to build out the network or improve the capacity or create an Eisenhower internet superhighway type project to keep up then so be it. What we don't need to do is hand over the keys to the major ISP's.
*** The theory being that the low margins of simply being a utility provider don't allow them to expand service properly, if they were allowed to certain anticompetitive practices they could wrestly money from the content providers and spend it on creating a better network. Bullshit, it'd simply go towards profit with little noticeable improvement and as Clavos noted likely leaving many providers and customers on a lower tier which would in the long term decrease the appeal and usefulness of the internet itself. Short term profits at the expense of long term good.
Now, I've read these debates before and the common refrain is, well, if you don't like what Comcast is doing go get someone else (as if there were a giant wad of cables coming into my house in the first place). I see where you're going with it so I propose my own free market alternative. If Comcast doesn't like the way the internet is, then perhaps they should create from scratch their own alternative network call it Comcastnet where they can charge whomever chooses to be a part of it whatever they want and cutoff service and throttle competitors and do with it as they please. Let's see how that goes over.
9 - Boeke
Doug Hunter is right. Bulk carriers of internet data should be Common Carriers and insensitive to content. They should be paid a markup on the intrinsic value of the data service they provide. Indeed, that is exactly what the internet was designed to do, and what the proponents of Net neutrality have always advocated.
The internet is the antithesis of the SNA and Decnet systems that it supplanted, which were centralized command systems whose doom was written in their own narrow objectives.
The political right HAS gotten on the wrong side of this issue, favoring extortionate monopoly domination against freedom, as they sometimes do, lured by the hope of easy money.
10 - Dave Nalle
It's not really the political right which is on the wrong side here, but the moderate-right political establishment. There's an overwhelming suspicion of the FCC and the Obama administration and hence this new policy among the grassroots right.
Dave
11 - Sekhar
Wonderful information indeed.
I think, government intervention itself is not the culprit here but intervention of such a government that take sides. As majority of the present governments represent corporate interests, rules and regulations are formulated in their favor. If the governments truly represent the interests of the people, perhaps such governments' intervention will favor net neutrality from the people's point of view, instead of corporates'.
12 - Dan(Miller)
Bulk carriers of internet data should be Common Carriers.
That may or may not be the case. However, the FCC gets its authority from the Congress, just as the legislative, executive and judicial branches get their authority from the Constitution. The question as I see it is whether the FCC's "net neutrality" steps, presently modest as they seem to be, are within its statutory authority and whether further FCC attempts to lengthen those steps will be. The question for the FCC should not be whether it thinks an expansion of its jurisdiction would be "good;" administrative agencies generally think that expansions are good. That is a question for the Congress to decide and then for the President to decide before he signs or to vetoes its legislation.
Dan(Miller)
13 - Dr Dreadful
&qesigThe FCC "net neutrality" business is in its very formative stages and network neutrality means different things to different folks. Whether the FCC will move on the really draconian stuff is an open question. Should it do so, I suspect the new Congress will do its best to block it.
I hope so. Most members of Congress (or of any other elected political body) give the impression that they don't really understand the Internet, or indeed basic statistical mathematics. So they glance at a website or two, and get upset by it, and say things like, 'Fox News is blatantly biased! It's not fair! There should be an anti-Fox website!' (There is.)
The Internet is neutral. Get a large enough sample size and it will be absolutely representative of the population at large. The Internet has now grown so huge that anything - anything - you can conceive of is probably out there somewhere. (As an example, I was bored the other day and randomly Googled 'exploding gorillas' - and received an impressive number of search results.) So there are lots of conservative websites out there. There are also lots of liberal sites. There are lots of racist sites. There are lots of sites advocating tolerance. There are lots of religious sites. There are lots of atheist sites. There are lots of animal rights sites. There are lots of sites for people who like to do things to animals which the animals would rather they didn't do, such as eat them. I think you catch my drift, which is that the numbers of such websites is almost certainly representative of the numbers of conservatives, liberals, racists, anti-racists, pious folks, non-believers, vegetarians and meat-eaters out there.
Point is, it seems to take politicians a couple of generations to really 'get' new cultural ideas. I mean, it's only recently that they've started to work sports and pop music references into their speeches which occasionally aren't completely inane.
14 - Glenn Contrarian
Dave -
I enjoyed your article, but (there's always a 'but' 'twixt you and me):
When the internet was created, this level of government involvement was never the intent.
When the internet was created, it was also probably not in the creators' minds that the internet would become a crucial utility, the sudden absence of which would be a severe economic blow to much of the developed world...
...and they probably did not foresee that megacorporations might get to choose who would get priority access to this crucial utility.
It's the same as with much else of human civilization, Dave - the bigger it gets, the more complicated it gets, the more regulations are absolutely necessary to keep it functioning. This is a FACT of human sociology - the bigger an organization is, the more that additional regulations will be required to maintain the proper function of that organization.
This isn't to say that regulations are needed for the sake of regulations - of course not! But net neutrality was absolutely necessary (in a stronger form than we now have) to preserve the internet as it was intended and as it has functioned for the past two decades or so.
15 - Clavos
Doc @ # 13:
Well put. The crucial point you make is that the net already IS neutral. The last thing we need ids the FCC sticking its nose in and mucking things up
16 - Clavos
This observer, who is not a conservative, has an interesting viewpoint on the grossly misnamed Net Neutrality "initiative" by the FCC.
17 - zingzing
"The last thing we need ids the FCC sticking its nose in and mucking things up."
although it's possible that someone needs to keep it that way. and maybe it's not possible to keep it that way. although popular revolts are particularly successful. unless they whip out the guns.
"This observer, who is not a conservative, has an interesting viewpoint on the grossly misnamed Net Neutrality "initiative" by the FCC."
that is an interesting perspective. although i don't know if it's about the "initiative by the FCC" as much as it is about the unfortunate reality we might face.
those who make money on the internet have been looking for a way to do it faster and better for a while. exclusivity is a way to do that. i certainly don't want that to happen, and i think most people don't, but i think we're staring down the wrong end of the barrel on this one.
it'll be interesting to see where this goes. thing is that the people who want to see this happen may regret it. no one needs a vast majority of the sites out there. and someone's going to hack your ass. you can't beat the internet, because the internet has more minds.
18 - Cindy
If the governments truly represent the interests of the people, perhaps such governments' intervention will favor net neutrality from the people's point of view, instead of corporates'.
Consider that to favor the interests of the people as a whole, there could not be a favoring of any power group (such as corporations, from your example). Is it possible to prevent those seeking power (power groups) from co-opting gov't (authority)?
Consider that people can respond regarding their own interests and need no representatives of same, particularly in a technologically advanced world such as ours.
Imagine if leaders were not able to install their own judgments but were only to 'represent' the actual decisions of the people of various communities. Imagine if the were instantly accountable and removable by the people they represented. One could not 'buy' such leaders.
Couldn't that work?
19 - roger nowosielski
"onsider that people can respond regarding their own interests and need no representatives of same, particularly in a technologically advanced world such as ours."
Interesting point, Cindy, reminiscent of Ross Perot's notion of electronic town-halls, to do away with the idea of representation. Also, the idea of public referendum, made popular in California, comes to mind.
Of course the idea of making wholesale decisions for as many diverse communities which comprise a country such as ours is also a kind of insanity. Not only does it take away from the autonomy of each of those diverse communities; what's worse, it propagates the notion of statehood. It is this notion that has got to be degraded by all means possible. Which is precisely why the agenda by Julian Assange is of primary importance.
20 - Dr Dreadful
Imagine if leaders were not able to install their own judgments but were only to 'represent' the actual decisions of the people of various communities. Imagine if the were instantly accountable and removable by the people they represented. One could not 'buy' such leaders.
Beats me why you would need leaders if that was their only function.
21 - Sekhar
#18 Maybe we are talking about mere hypothetical government that can not be realized in present day set up unless people themselves take over reins.
22 - Sekhar
#20 I think, Cindy means the leaders who do not see themselves in the role of today's leaders but those leaders who see themselves as only organizers of the society i.e. only implementing people's dictates.
23 - roger nowosielski
Good point, Sekhar. The idea of "leaders" is being debunked, they fall by the wayside.
24 - Cindy
20 & 22
Dr.D,
You are right Dr.D. You would not need them to 'lead' in the traditional sense. I was using the word 'leaders' loosely and as more of a begging-the-question sort of way. I should have used some of these handy gadgets: "leaders".
Sekhar,
By 'leaders' I mean nothing more than in this hypothetical example:
Say we are organized as a town of a size. If we all participated directly in all the decisions that would need to be made on our town level, we would also need to participate in some way with decisions that are made beyond our town level. However things would be organized, we could select 'leaders/representatives' who would meet with the 'leaders/representatives' of other 'towns' to communicate the decisions our own town has arrived at.
So, when we pick you Sekhar, as a member of our community to 'represent' some number of us. You will only be bearing the results of our decisions, not making your own decisions on our behalf.
21,
Yes, exactly.
25 - Cindy
For Sekhar's consideration.