Re: NII and the Need for XXX-rated Porn

[Mike Godwin <mnemonic@eff.org>]

Tim May writes:

> Seriously, Mike's comments about cable being a "vaster wasteland" (a
> nice EFF paraphrase of the famous FCC Commissioner's comments in the
> 60s), is important.
 
I proudly take credit for "a vaster wasteland"--a phrase that occurred to
me in a flash of insight as I was doing a revision of the Open Platform
paper. I hope that if I repeat it a lot, it will become a
self-perpetuating meme.

> Does anyone expect the NII will offer hard-core porn on its networks? 
 
In the long run, I expect it will, yes. On a properly designed NII, it
would be impossible to prevent, although of course anyone could bar it at
his or her home.

> I don't know what the solution is, except that I'm naturally skeptical
> about the government having _anything_ to do with it. (I've read the
> CPSR pitch on NII and it scares the crap out of me. I've read the NII
> articles in "Whole Earth Review" and elsewhere and I have the same
> reaction. I've read the Open Platform proposal from EFF and find it
> better, but still overly oriented toward government solutions.

Well, we knew we weren't going to please the purest Libertarians, but we
did try to make it palatable to them--after all, we have genuine
entrepreneurs on our Board of Directors, and they *do* believe in free
markets. Open Platform is our way of getting there from here.

> Finally, I'm still trying to dig out the NII docs themselves, the ones
> Tom Kalil has pointed us to.)
 
Did he say they were online? If this has been discussed before, I missed
it.

> Strong crypto fundamentally collides with many of the stated public
> policy goals surrounding the National Information Infrastructure.

I don't think it collides with EFF's public policy goals, although it may
collide with Tom Kalil's.


--Mike