The Current State of the Net

Source|p2p Foundation

Excerpted from a commentary by John Naughton:

“On Tuesday, the US Federal Communications Commission, which has the power to set the rules for internet use in the US, issued a ruling which administered the latest kick to the hornets’ nest. In an admirably succinct summary, my Guardian colleague Charles Arthur puts it thus: the FCC “seems to have done the right thing – defending neutrality – for fixed-line broadband, but fumbled it on mobile“. This is because the proposed rules “seem to allow mobile carriers to decide that they can introduce pay-per-service charges, so that Skype or YouTube or Facebook might be charged to get their content on to the networks; alternatively (or perhaps additionally), users who wanted those services might find themselves being charged extra. That, obviously, means that those services are not being treated in a ‘neutral’ way. Which means that you don’t have net neutrality.”

Or, to put in another way, the FCC seems to have endorsed net neutrality for the past (fixed-line internet connections) while abandoning it for the future.

Does this matter? Yes, because while most people still get their internet connections via fixed-line broadband, the likelihood is that in 10 years’ time a majority will access the net via wireless connections. And if the FCC ruling stands, the wireless sphere will be anything but neutral. It will be dominated by the carriers – the telcos – who see no merit in neutrality. Which is why some people feel that the FCC’s decision effectively means kissing goodbye to the open internet. “The neutering of the internet is now the unofficial policy of the Federal Communications Commission,” writes Dan Gillmor, for example. “Contrary to the happy talk from FCC chairman Julius Genachowski… the move is well underway to turn the internet into a regulated playground for corporate giants.”

Sceptics about net neutrality will doubtless portray this as an over-reaction. Until I read Tim Wu’s new book – The Master Switch: the Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Knopf, 2010) – I might have agreed with them. But Professor Wu places all this in a more sombre context – of what he calls the Cycle.”

And the cycle is this:

“History shows a typical progression of information technologies: from somebody’s hobby to somebody’s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel — from open to closed system.”

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Excerpted from Douglas Rushkoff:

“The real lesson of the WikiLeaks affair and subsequent cyberattacks is not how unwieldy the net has become, but rather how its current architecture renders it so susceptible to control from above.

It was in one of the leaked cables that China’s State Council Information office delivered its confident assessment that thanks to “increased controls and surveillance, like real-name registration … The Web is fundamentally controllable.”

The internet’s failings as a truly decentralized network, however, merely point the way toward what a decentralized network might actually look like.

Instead of being administrated by central servers, it would operate through computers that pinged one another, instead of corporate-owned server farms, and deliver web pages from anywhere, even our own computers.

The FCC and other governing bodies may attempt to defang the threat of the original internet by ending net neutrality. But if they did, such a new network — a second, “people’s internet” — would almost certainly rise in its place.

In the meantime, the internet we know, love and occasionally fear today is more of a beta version of modeling platform than a revolutionary force.

And like any new model, it changes the way we think of the way things work right now. What the internet lacks today indicates the possibilities for what can only be understood as a new operating system: a 21st century, decentralized way of conducting political, commercial and human affairs.

This new operating system, even in its current form, is slowly becoming incompatible with the great, highly centralized institutions of the 20th century, such as central banking and nation states, which still depend on top-down control and artificial monopolies on power to maintain their authority over business and governance.

The ease with which PayPal or Visa can cut off the intended recipient of our funds, for example, points the way to peer-to-peer transactions and even currencies that allow for the creation and transmission of value outside the traditional banking system.

The ease with which a senator’s phone call can shut down a web site leads network architects to evaluate new methods of information distribution that don’t depend on corporate or government domain management for their effectiveness.

Until then, at the very least, the institutions still wielding power over the way our networks work and don’t work have to exercise their power under a new constraint: They must do so in the light of day.”