# Presentation: 505037

##  Access to an openInformation environment

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

**FCC TAC**
**April 17, 2003**
**Yochai Benkler**

## Overview

**The stakes**
**Political and economic**
**A moment of opportunity: historical, structural, and strategic characteristics of the networked information economy**
**State of play at the physical layer**
**Outline of issues at the logical and content layers**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## The Stakes

**Democracy**
**Jonas of IDT: “****Sure I want to be the biggest telecom company in the world, but it's just a commodity. I want to be able to form opinion. By controlling the pipe, you can eventually get control of the content”**
**Everyone a pamphleteer or printing press**
**Power of media & advertisers**
**Diversity of views and voices**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## The Stakes

**Democracy**
**Autonomy**
**Cisco’s QoS control policy routers**
**“****you could restrict the incoming push broadcasts as well as subscribers’ outgoing access to the push site to discourage its use.  At the same time, you could promote your own or partner’s services with full speed features to encourage adoption of your services”**
**Who defines the window through which one trains one’s eyes on the prize; whose prize?**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## The Stakes

**Democracy**
**Autonomy**
**Innovation**
**Lessig, Baldwin, Reed**
**E.g., voice/video over IP implemented through desktop software**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## The Stakes

**Democracy**
**Autonomy**
**Innovation**
**Efficiency**
**Where pipeline-type conditions prevail, standard market power issues arise**
**Deferring consumption optimization decisions to the point of consumption**
**Flexibility of using a car, not a train**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## A Moment of Opportunity

**Capital: 150 year trend of concentration and commercialization of information production**
**mechanical presses & telegraph extend social reach and raise capital cost of communication to relevant community**
**Public discourse adapts to increasingly one-way, from professional commercial producers to passive consumers**
**Easily adapted to radio, television, etc.**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## A Moment of Opportunity

**150 years trend to concentrated commercial information production**
**Organization: information economy arises to solve the control crisis of the 19****th**** century**
**Economy concerned with control of material and social processes, not with cultural transmission**
**Its cultural offshoots similarly focused on controlled demand to maximize returns to high-production cost cultural goods**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## A Moment of Opportunity

**150 years trend to industrial model of information production**
**The industrial information economy**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## Networked Information Economy

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

**Internet represents opportunity for radical reversal of this trend**
**Extends reach by decentralizing the distribution function**
**Physical capital diffuse, much of it owned by end users**
**Routers and servers not qualitatively different from PCs as is a network broadcast station or cable head end from a television**

## Networked Information Economy

**Human beings, rather than capital, become the organizing factor of our communications system and information environment **

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

**Networked Information Economy**

## Networked Information Economy

**Internet represents opportunity for radical reversal of this trend**
**Human beings, rather than capital, become the organizing factor of our communications system and information environment **
**“****Post-industrial” stage relies on harnessing diverse paths for cultural transmission muted in the 20****th**** century by the economies of scale of the industrial information economy**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

**Networked Information Economy**

## Structural Effects

**Shift from centralized/controlled organization to distributed cooperation**
**Capital: concentrated investment to distributed investment**
**Value: concentrated capture to distributed capture**
**Human capital investment: control to cooperation**
**At all layers of the information production system**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## Strategic implication

**Shift from strict bifurcation of concentrated capital goods from distributed consumption appliances to distributed capital / consumption tools**
**Base stations and handsets to user-controlled transceivers**
**Broadcast stations and televisions to p2p desktops**
**Switches and CPE to end-to-end software implemented voice over IP**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## Strategic implication

**From strict bifurcation to distributed capital / consumption tools**
**Goods valued for the use options they make possible over time**
**Automobile valued for autonomy it provides**
**PC relative to dedicated appliance**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## Strategic implication

**From strict bifurcation to distributed capital / consumption tools**
**Goods valued for the options they make possible over time**
**A regulatory framework focused on regulating commercial/industrial agents for the benefit of passive consumers will miss core desiderata of the category of “users”**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## State of Play

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

**Physical Layer**

**Logical Layer**

**Content Layer**

## Physical Layer

**Cable**

**DSL**

**Sat.**

**Lic.**
**wrls**

## “High Speed”—asymmetric 200 kbps downstream

**Source: FCC Third 706 Report February 2002**

## “Advanced Services”at least 200 kbps both ways

**Source: FCC Third 706 Report February 2002**

## “High Speed” to Homes & Small Business

**Source: FCC Third 706 Report February 2002**

## “Advanced Services” to Homes & Small Business

**Source: FCC Third 706 Report February 2002**

## “Advanced Services” (to bigger institutions?)

**Source: FCC Third 706 Report February 2002**

## High Speed Lines to Homes & SOHO by Type of Provider

## Physical Layer

**Cable**

**DSL**

**Sat.**

**Lic.**
**wrls**

- Declaratory Ruling

- Appropriate Framework

- Incumbent LEC regulation

- US Telecom Assn
- (DC Cir.)

- Do two pipelines a competitive market make?

## State of Play

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

**Physical Layer**

**Logical Layer**

**Content Layer**

## Logical  Layer

**TCP/IP**

**Operating systems: MS**

**Linux**

**Applications**

**Apache, Perl**

**Higher le  protocols: naming & addressing**

**Higher level**

**QoS**

## Logical  Layer

**Operating systems: MS**

**Linux**

**Trusted systems required?**

**Trusted systems required?**

**Applications**

**Apache, Perl**

**TCP/IP**

**Higher le  protocols: naming & addressing**

**Higher level**

**QoS**

## Content  Layer

**Censorship: filtering, **
**Monitoring, blocking**

**Censorship resistant**
**systems: Freenet etc.**

**Micky bound:**
**Intellectual**
**property**

**Property-resistant**
**systems:**
**Kazaa etc.**

**Free sharing: **
**peer production**
**creative commons**

## A core common infrastructure

**Censorship: filtering, **
**Monitoring, blocking**

**Censorship resistant**
**systems: Freenet etc.**

**Micky bound:**
**Intellectual**
**property**

**Property-resistant**
**systems:**
**Kazaa etc.**

**Free sharing: **
**peer production**
**creative commons**

**TCP/IP**

**Operating systems: MS**

**Linux**

**Applications**

**Apache, Perl**

**Cable**

**DSL**

**Sat.**

**OWLs**

**Higher le  protocols: naming & addressing**

**Higher level**

**QoS**

## A core common infrastructure alongside commodified infrastructure
Like the national highway system, or a park system—open to both noncommercial and commercial use, but no one gets a government-granted right to exclusive appropriation
Intended to provide a core cluster of resources whose utilization is not dependent on payment, available for sustaining production on a decentralized model, and on a non-market model

**Like the national highway system, or a park system—open to both noncommercial and commercial use, but no one gets a government-granted right to exclusive appropriation**
**Intended to provide a core cluster of resources whose utilization is not dependent on payment, available for sustaining production on a decentralized model, and on a non-market model**

**Building the Commons**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## Building the Commons

**Physical layer **
**license free spectrum **
**public provision on the national highway system approach**
**Municipal provisioning of fiber to the curb or to the home**
**State provisioning of major trunks**
**Federal provisioning of backbone**
**Formally declared a “public forum”**

**Building the Commons**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## Building the Commons

**Physical layer **
**Logical Layer **
**Resisting regulatory forcing of design choices to fit the business model of incumbent content makers**
***E.g.*****, Broadcast flag**
**National Software Foundation?**
**Government procurement practices**

**Building the Commons**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## Building the Commons

**Physical layer **
**Logical Layer **
**Content Layer**
**Resisting the enclosure movement and reclaiming the public domain**
**FCC has long experience, some quite bad, at trying to open the content layer (*****e.g. *****finsyn)**
**Substantial work to be done on the limits from the first amendment and politics**

**Building the Commons**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**

## Wrap up

**The stakes of adhering to an Internet model of communications are both political and economic**
**Sustaining that architecture requires openness at all layers of the communications environment**

**_____________________________________________****_____________________________________________**