Re: We Don't Need No Steenking Digital Superhighway!!

[Mike Godwin <mnemonic@eff.org>]

Tim May writes:

> Very true! In fact, it is the EFF's talk about the "need" for such a
> government effort that really worries me about the EFF (a mild kind of
> worry...I haven't completely detweilered over it). I'm not clear just
> how central are these issues to the EFF, currently, but I urge us all
> to try to convince them that the "electronic frontier" really doesn't
> need government-built channels and routes.
 
EFF has been convinced of this since the beginning. The last thing EFF
wants is to have the government build the national information
infrastructure. Instead, we want to encourage both a variety of
information conduits, with a high degree of interoperability, but built by
private enterprise. The idea of the Open Platform (see our papers at
ftp.eff.org) is for private enterprise to create an environment in which
*anyone*--not just a media giant--can become an information provider, and
in which any BBS has the potential to become the WELL or CompuServe, or
whatever it likes.

Since both the telcos and the cable companies already operate under a high
degree of regulation, the issue isn't whether government should play no
role--it's already playing a pretty serious role. Instead, the issue is
how the government can reduce its regulatory role and at the same time
increase incentives for the kind of flexible, switched networks that
support the many-to-many paradigm rather than the traditional one-to-one
paradigm of the telcos or the one-to-many paradigm of the broadcasters.

The result should be a highly competitive environment with less need for
regulation, whether we're talking about local-loop telephone service or
computer-based conferencing systems.

> And unlike the Interstate Highway System (actually called the National
> Defense Transportation System, or somesuch, clearly an
> autobahn-inspired Eisenhowwer defense project), which arguably needed
> a government-level effort to obtain the land, the crossings, etc., no
> such government-level effort is needed to lay more cable, put up more
> satellites, etc.
 
EFF thinks these things will happen anyway, and is not interested in
having the government do them.

> We helped kill the Superconducting Supercollider, now we can help kill
> Al Gore's TipperNet fantasy.

The notion of government-funded information superhighways, as originally
conceived, is already dead, killed by lack of government money (just as
the supercollider was killed). EFF supports NREN, but only as a testbed
for what the NII is eventually going to look like--we can learn a lot
about how networks run by studying the controlled anarchy and the support
of information niches that exists on the Net.

It is commonly thought that EFF supports some kind of massive government
undertaking to build the information infrastructure. But those who read
our position papers at ftp.eff.org know different.


--Mike