Cerf: Building a Barrier-Free Net

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   The New York Times, July 27, 1997, Money & Business, p. 12.

   Viewpoint

   Building an Internet Free of Barriers

   Vinton G. Cerf

      Vinton G. Cerf is senior vice president for Internet
      architecture and engineering at MCI Communications. He
      is a co-inventor of the computer networking protocol
      TCP/IP, which has become the language for Internet
      communications.

   When the subject is global networks like the Internet, the
   magic word is "seamlessness." Seamless global
   communications represents the technological promised land
   of major network providers like mine. For the consumer,
   seamlessness means unimpeded, smooth, clear communications
   among all points within a network and among all networks.

   To the extent that it has developed, seamlessness has been
   the sine qua non, the essential element, behind the
   fast-growing Internet. It is the essence of the links of
   the World Wide Web. The Internet, after all, is not a
   network, or even a medium, in the traditional sense, but a
   network of nearly 200,000 networks and a medium of media,
   encompassing all the long-established ones while creating
   entirely new types. The more seamless we make the Internet
   and, for that matter, the global information
   infrastructure, the quicker we will harness the immense
   potential.

   Although high hurdles of technology and infrastructure
   stare us in the face, obstacles of the political and public
   policy variety are equally daunting. Many policy makers
   fail to grasp that the very seamlessness already found on
   the Internet, coupled with its basic digital nature, makes
   it almost impossible to monitor or regulate its flow of
   information in a hierarchical way. Notwithstanding the
   efforts of certain countries, Big Brother would have real
   problems doing his dirty work on the Internet. Still,
   well-meaning policy makers try to extend longstanding
   social goals to the Internet through heavy-handed,
   market-distorting mandates when industry-led strategies
   could be more effective.

   Of greatest concern to the Internet industry today are the
   many legal quagmires and incoherent policy patchworks that
   hinder Internet commerce. Achieving full seamlessness of
   Internet networks will be impossible if the networks'
   builders must maneuver through inconsistent laws and
   policies. Not only are the policies of many nations in
   conflict, but so are policies within nations -- and to such
   an extreme that some seem mutually exclusive.

   A good example is encryption policy. Encryption technology
   scrambles digital communications to make them
   indecipherable to anyone except the intended receiver. The
   users range from businesses that transmit confidential data
   to individuals who send personal E-mail messages.
   Widespread availability of encryption is a prerequisite for
   enhancing security and privacy on the Internet, for
   engendering a mature electronic marketplace and even for
   helping the work of law enforcement.

   Yet governments resist removing old restrictions on the
   export and use of encryption technology -- rules that date
   from the cold war -- even as they proclaim pro-market
   intentions and stress greater Internet privacy and security
   as priorities.

   Fortunately, growing numbers of key policy makers in the
   advanced democracies are showing a clearer, more
   technologically sophisticated understanding of the
   Internet. They grasp that while government financed the
   start of the Internet, the absence of government has
   largely allowed it to take off like a rocket.

   Within this group are members of Congress like Senators
   Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, and Patrick Leahy,
   Democrat of Vermont, and Representative Bob Goodlatte,
   Republican of Virginia, who are pushing to liberalize
   encryption export controls.

   Another is Ira C. Magaziner, the White House adviser who
   oversaw the development of a major Administration policy
   paper, released earlier this month, on electronic commerce.
   The paper, which advocated a largely hands-off approach by
   Government to Internet regulation, is a breakthrough in
   electronic commerce policy. Its perspective is properly
   global; its delineated goals, highly commendable.
   Particularly laudable is its proposal to designate the
   Internet as a tariff-free zone.

   The Internet is now perhaps the most global and democratic
   form of communications. No other medium can so easily
   render outdated our traditional distinctions among
   localities, regions and nations. While the Internet
   increasingly knows no boundaries, it still knows barriers
   all too well -- obstacles that are too often born of
   technological ignorance leading to incoherent public
   policy.

   The world cannot afford policies that impede the
   development of the Internet, diminish its utility and limit
   its social reach. And much more could be at stake than
   seamless digital networks. We may find that the more we
   succeed in removing barriers to Internet communications,
   the more we may help reduce those other, far more important
   obstructions to human communications -- the ones that
   divide nations and estrange demographic groups.

   That, ultimately, could be the most far-reaching, enduring
   benefit of an unfettered global Internet.

   -----

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