Comments at the Meeting of theAdvisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy (ACICIP)
U. S. Department of State
December 16, 2016
By Robert E. Kahn, President & CEO
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
I would like to clarify, briefly, a misunderstanding that has emerged in recent months concerning atechnology created by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (“CNRI”) over two decadesago. Known as the Digital Object Architecture (“DO Arch”), it provides a general approach tomanaging information in digital form in the Internet and elsewhere. I think it is important to correct
this going forward.
On a number of occasions at international meetings, particularly over the last year, the UnitedStates delegation has asserted that this is proprietary technology; presumably CNRI’s proprietarytechnology. This is inaccurate. A similar assertion was made in the mid-1980s about the Internet,
namely that it was CNRI’s proprietary technology. In the latter case, it took the U.S. Congressappropriating funds to the group in question to study the impact of the Internet on the nation tocause this assertion to dissipate.
Many other concerns have been expressed by the U.S. delegation at the ITU concerning the digital
object technology. Like the Internet, it was also developed with funding from the U.S. Government,in particular DARPA, but also other agencies as well. Starting with the Library of Congress, over theyears CNRI has worked with and is working with various parts of the U.S. Government to assist
them in understanding and using the technology, including the U.S. Department of Defense andNational Library of Medicine. The approach was also supported in the late 1990s by around 45
commercial entities working as part of the Cross-Industry Working Group; and the report onManaging Access to Digital Information: An Approach Based on Digital Objects and StatedInformation is available today.
The overall architecture is in the public domain, and anyone is free to use it. CNRI and others havedeveloped reference software implementations of key components of the DO Arch; and thosedeveloped by CNRI are available open source in the Internet. CNRI still provides services for manyof the digital library systems around the globe; and other parties now provide services for
publishers, movie studios and cable TV industry. The technology is also being deployed to identify
large data sets for the research community; and pilot projects in other areas (e.g. the financialindustry) are underway. Finally, the Research Data Alliance, which was established by the UnitedStates, European Union and Australia in 2013, has adopted many attributes of the DO Arch in itswork. Users thus have a growing choice of organizations to deal with for services and/or software.
It was CNRI’s original goal to make this work available in the public interest, which was also theoriginal intent of DARPA, and, subsequently, other organizations such as NSF and NIST. Just as theInternet is not a proprietary technology of CNRI, but rather available to all in the public interest, theDO Arch is not a proprietary technology either, but rather a logical follow-on to the existing Internet
capabilities for managing information in digital form and is available to all. The DO Arch iscompatible with the current Internet and offers one of many competing alternative technologies
going forward. In my view, the future of the Internet depends on innovation as well as competition
for the best ideas. This overall approach has stood us well over our history.