[wordup] The Internet is dying - Lawrence Lessig

[Adam Shand]

So much good and bad all going on at the same time.

  http://tinyurl.com/bxw2

Adam.

From:http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_05.shtml#001180

MediaCon: “but there’s the internet”

Of all the lines that Dr. Pangloss pesters me with (and you know who you 
are), the one that gets me the most goes something like this: “But 
there’s an internet now. Why do you worry about media concentration when 
there’s an internet?”

So there’s a million reasons why this is silly — despite the importance 
of blogs, etc. But the one that’s most relevant is this:

At the same time that media concentration restrictions are being 
removed, such that 3 companies will own everything, so too are 
neutrality restrictions for the network being eliminated, so that those 
same three companies — who will also control broadband access — are 
totally free to architect broadband however they wish. “The Internet” 
that is to be the savior is a dying breed. The end-to-end architecture 
that gave us its power will. in effect, be inverted. And so the games 
networks play to benefit their own will bleed to this space too.

And then Dr. Pangloss says, “but what about spectrum. Won’t unlicensed 
spectrum guarantee our freedom?” And it is true: Here at least there was 
some hope from this FCC. But the latest from DC is that a tiny chunk of 
new unlicensed spectrum will be released. And then after that, no more. 
Spectrum too will be sold — to the same companies, no doubt.

So then, Dr. Pangloss: When the content layer, the logical layer, and 
the physical layer are all effectively owned by a handful of companies, 
free of any requirements of neutrality or openness, what will you ask then?

Via: richard.schwartfeger at hp.com
From: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30733.html

Internet is dying - Prof. Lessig
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 15/05/2003 at 21:33 GMT

The Internet is dying, says Lawrence Lessig, a law professor with a cult 
following amongst technophiles.

Lessig is mobilizing against the FCC's relaxation of media controls 
which will leave most of the United States' professional media outlets 
in the hands of a tiny number of owners. In FCC chairman Michael 
Powell's vision, Old Man Potter can own every newspaper, radio station 
and TV channel in Pottersville.

The move, which has even been criticized by former FOX and Vivendi 
executive Barry Diller, would return the mass media to a state even turn 
of the century robber barons couldn't have wished for.

But drawing an important parallel, Lessig argues that the relaxation of 
media controls for the latter-day robber barons bodes ill for open 
computer communications.

"The Internet is dying," he writes, launching a torpedo at the heart of 
techno-utopian mysticism by questioning the belief that all will be for 
the best in all possible worlds.

Writing an introduction to the centenary edition of Orwell's 1984, 
Thomas Pynchon describes The Internet as "a development that promises 
social control on a scale those quaint old 20th-century tyrants with 
their goofy moustaches could only dream about".

Lessig is more subtle, but points us the same way.

"When the content layer, the logical layer, and the physical layer are 
all effectively owned by a handful of companies, free of any 
requirements of neutrality or openness, what will you ask then?"

The vandals stole the handles

The Internet is dying in ways that Lessig doesn't enumerate, too. You 
only have to step outside tech-savvy circles to see what a massive 
disappointment the modern tech experience is for most people: many of 
whom are your friends and relatives.

What does the Internet mean to these folks, now?

It represents a perfect tragedy of the commons. Email is all but 
unusable because of spam. Even if our Bayesian filters win the arms race 
against the spammers, in terms of quantity as well as quality of 
communications, email has been a disaster.

(An architect friend tells me that email has become the biggest 
productivity drain in his organization: not just the quantity of 
attachments, but the mindless round-robin communications, requesting 
comments that get ignored. Email has become a corporate displacement 
activity.)

Google has its own spam problems: a tiny number of webloggers and 
list-makers whose mindless hyperlinks degrade the value of its search 
results, and create the Web equivalent of TV static.

Basic web surfing means navigating through web sites whose inspiration 
for their baroque overdesign seems to have been Donald Trump's wedding 
cake, all the while requiring the user to close down dozens of 
unrequested pop-up advertisements. (Yes, we know the tools to turn off 
pop-ups, but the vast majority of IE users don't have that luxury, and 
their patience has already been tested to the limit.)

And most of all, The Internet means sitting at noisy and unreliable 
machines that would land any self-respecting consumer manufacturer with 
a class action suit.

What's dying here isn't The Internet - it remains as open as ever to new 
software and new ideas. Remarkably, the consensus that upholds the 
technical infrastructure survives, in the form of the IETF, despite 
self-interested parties trying to overturn it. What's dying is the idea 
that the Internet would be a tool of universal liberation, and the 
argument that "freedom" in itself is a justification for this 
information pollution. It's probably reached a tipping point: the signal 
to noise ratio is now too low.

Users are not stupid. The 42 per cent of US citizens who Pew Research 
tells us have no interest in logging on and "blowing their minds" are 
simply making a sensible choice.

Free to do what?

Lessig seems to have completed half the journey from promising 
Republican lawyer to mature political economist - but the last part of 
the journey will be the hardest. It involves unwiring some stubborn 
philosophical assumptions.

"'Won't unlicensed spectrum guarantee our freedom?'" asks Lessig's 
interlocutor, appropriately enough, one 'Dr.Pangloss'.

Well, we suppose he means that's "freedom" in the sense of push-button 
buzzword, where "freedom" is an end in itself.

There's a slight problem with this. Freedom isn't an absolute: it's 
whatever we decide it to be. Deny absolute freedom to a small number of 
people to set employment conditions, and you can give the vast majority 
of people a three day weekend. Result: happiness. (Maybe) And 'freedom' 
as a justification for deregulation - which gave us the Internet - 
hardly inspires confidence for the future wireless in the United States.

An exercise for the reader: trace how the same buzzwords that propelled 
the last irrational bubble - "freedom", "choice" - are the same 
buzzwords behind the wireless bubble. But such concepts are complex, 
possibly eternal social mediations and involve more than pushing a few 
buttons. But hey, no one said it would be easy.

The most popular technology in the world - thanks to its low cost and 
high communications value - is the cellphone. This is derided by the 
'freedom' lobby because it's regulated spectrum (boo!), and not an 
'open' network (hiss!), and yet it delivers a tremendous social utility. 
The latest generation of phones impresses me not because they can run 
irc or ssh, which they do splendidly, but because I can send a photo to 
relatives with three clicks on a device costing less than $100. A small 
parcel of happiness, there.

Now contrast that with the tragedy of the commons we described above.

Back to Lessig, answering 'Pangloss'. Only a small chunk of spectrum 
will be "freed", notes Lessig, but, "to the same companies, no doubt".

So long as the United States' techno-utopians seem to be obsessed with 
infrastructure plumbing as the British are obsessed with toilets, with 
means rather than ends, Lessig faces an uphill battle. Guiding US policy 
to create an infrastructure that provides utility to the people, rather 
than a handful of ideologues, is going to be Lessig's greatest challenge.