Business Wants a New, Profitable Internet

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The collapse of "dot com" promises and continuing frustration at the inability of business to harness the Internet for a profit has resulted in calls to modify the basic structure of the Internet itself so it will "obey basic economic laws". See this article in the LA Times. Time to drum out the "hippie anarchists" and put some real business sense into this mess! Or, if you can't adapt your business plan to the Internet, then change the Internet to facilitate you business plan." If you haven't read Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, now would be a good time.

Re:This is ri-goddamn-diculous

basic economic laws

I fully agree.

Especially since there are no "economic laws". Hell, there aren't even real laws of physics, so how could there be economic laws?!

Hippie Anarchist: General Wastemoreland

According to this guy, the Department of Defense which built the Internet in the 1960s is the same as "hippie anarchists". This puts the whole vietnam war debate in a whole new perspective: both sides were the same!

who cares?

who cares about any of this? somebody wants to create a walled garden, and not allow access to the outside world, uncensored? they're allowed to do that right now, no problem.

somebody wants an SLA which guarantees a certain QoS to certain customers? well that's possible too, and for large networks it's not even particularly unusual.

this is an article which changes nothing, except that it makes Bud Michels [mailto], and by association CSP [c-s-p.com] look extremely stupid, or desperate. I'm not sure which.

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Re:This is ri-goddamn-diculous

... and even if there were, the problem with a medium that doesn't understand borders is that the economic laws of switzerland are probably quite different from those of Canada. Or Peru. Or [insert country here].

So they'd have to make the internet obey the laws of borders, which makes it about as useful as the postal service for things. Assuming they could do that, you'd still have to do things like let some packets go from anywhere to anywhere.... how long until someone hacks this to piggyback email in those packets?

Personally this scares the crap out of me. Can you imagine sending an email to [e-mail] and getting a popup saying "This email crosses 4 borders and is subject to peruvian import, and will cost you $1.23, send? [y/n]". Or surfing to support.asus.tw and getting "this site is xxx miles away and will cost you $1.00/link clicked, $.50/m access and a $4.00 first access charge [y/n]"

I'm glad that this will (probably) never happen. Guess it depends on how powerful business is (oh, and all the people who aren't businesspeople and need the internet? well, we won't worry about them will we.....)

Re:This is ri-goddamn-diculous

Why is the Internet expected to comply with "basic economic laws"?

The Internet complies with basic economic laws quite nicely, as it happens. The problem that certain people are bleating about is that they do't like the way economics are giving them a spanking. One example of this provided in the article was people whining that in order to get hihgly reliable delivery, they have to build and operate their own internal networks, and that it's too expensive. In other words, what's being complained about it that the network you pay for (with your access fees) doesn't act enough like an ultra-reliable private network for free.

Ta-da! You get what you pay for. If you want a T1 pipe to every consumer, you can either share a network and amortise the cost across all the users (making it cheap, but also with no preferential treatment), or you can buy everyone a T1 to view your content.

This is an attempt to create a broadcast style economy, where largely artificial scarcity is enforced for the benefit of a handful of companies; think broadcast TV or radio. A one-way relationship rigged to exclude small players so as to exclude economic norms like free market competition.

It's the analogue of businesses that like a free market for employees when they can drive down wages for assembly line workers, and then squeal like stuck pigs when it allows scarce network engineers to charge like senior executives...

They're doomed anyway - ignore them

Here's one of the hard, harsh facts of life - politics and philosophy rarely outlive the people who subscribe to it.

Here's another: the dominant philosophy of a given group of people tends to be that of the people leading the group - and these leaders are in their 50s and 60s.

These people were typically born in the post WWII boom. They had their childhood in the 50s, their teen years in the 60s, their adult-but-politically-powerless years in the 70s and 80s. They took over the reins of political power from the generation that _fought_ in WWII, who's primary political concerns were the issues fought over in that war.

That generation was educated in WWII, and when they took political power, they were consumed with idealogical issues (communism, fascism, and capitalism) Their children were educated in economic prosparity (with little focus on pure politics) and now that they have political power, they are primarily concerned with economic issues.

Compare JFK (a politically motivated leader from the WWII generation) to Bill Gates (an economically motivated leader from the post-WWII generation)

But _our_ generation seems more and more interested in something else entirely. It's hard to describe or pigeonhole. We're not slaves to a political agenda like our grandparents. We're not (usually) slaves to our greed like our parents.

We believe in free access to information. We believe that the economic interests of corporations are subordinate to the social needs of individuals. We're better connected to each other than at any other time in human history, and that tends to make us more tolerent of each other.

The same way our parents (who have power now) can't imagine going on the Communist-witchunts of the 50s, we can't imagine (once we take over power) of passing laws like the DCMA.

The established order may not like that very much - but who cares? In 10, 20 years, they'll be dying off and irrelevant.

That doesn't mean that we don't fight and resist certain things now (the jailing of Dimitry is outrageous!) but even if we suffer local setbacks for the time being, we'll still win in the end.

Just like our children will eventually triumph over whatever idiocies we put in place when we take power.

Re:Venture Capitalists are driving this

Remember how the Internet started? Funny, I don't remember there being any venture capitalists swarming around DARPA. It was all too technical, too esoteric, and too geeky for them.

A few years ago, some of the VCs got the idea that this Internet thing was actually a "Good Idea" and they embraced it. They embraced it with vigor and enthusiasm.

To be fair to the VCs, there may have been other reasons why they didn't show an interest in the internet earlier - in particular, red-tape. If I remember correctly, I don't think that the internet was allowed to be used for commercial purposes before the early 1990's. This is what Al Gore was instrumental in changing in the early 1990's (and what I think he was referring to in his infamous quote which was taken as a claim to his having invented the internet).

No, please, no.

We DO NOT need to be harassing a Network World columnist for expressing his opinion to some reporter.

A lot of people have made the point that the net needs a better economic model, one that allows for better cost allocations for bandwidth usage. The stuff in the LA Times article is just talking about that, plus Quality Of Service and multicast features that will support investment in things like video on demand.

Nothing terrible here that I can see. If you disagree philosophically, go out and do like Clay Shirky and Jon Gilmore do and write intelligent, thoughtful, non-knee-jerk pieces about the future of the net.

DO NOT harass a commentator and justify the impression that the net is filled with irrational sux0rs (sux0r, n: one who sux.) who are bent on getting everything they want for free, now, dammit.

- jon

Re:This is ri-goddamn-diculous

UCLA and Stanford were the first two machines to be connected, and yeah, I believe they used leased lines. Although no one seems to remember who was doing it, the historic first message is remembered. The people at UCLA attempted to log into a computer at Stanford. Simultaneously they had placed a long-distance call to ensure that things were showing up at the other end. The conversation went basically like so (I'm writing this from memory, but I swear I am not making it up):

UCLA: (types 'L') We typed an L
Stanford: We got the L
U: (types 'O') We typed O
S: We got the O
U: (types 'G') We typed G -- oh wait, it crashed.

This was probably an accurate omen ;)

In related news...

"The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws," said Thomas Nolle, a New Jersey telecommunications consultant. "The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists who didn't have a strong profit motive. But this is a business, not a government-sponsored network."

In similar news, scientists are demanding that quantum physics obey the laws of newtonian physics.

"This new science is too hard," complained one scientist. "How can we use quantum physics to make better guns when we're not even sure if schrodinger's cat is alive until we look?"

"I can't understand this stuff unless I'm as high as a kite," stated another scientist. He continued, "What am I supposed to tell people that I do? I just tell them that I play with marbles all day."

Good article. Some gems...

``generally live up to its promise as a worldwide communications and entertainment medium.''

Who promised that it was going to be an enterainment medium? Please, we all want to know who made that promise.

``because it is configured as a huge web of interconnecting pipelines, the Internet is almost universally accessible and resistant to local damage, political censorship or the designs of corporate landlords.''

And it's those last two items that have the status quo's underwear in such a bunch.

``its shortcomings in service quality and reliability have lost their charm, which is evident to anyone who has waited a seeming eternity for a Web page to load or suffered through a weeklong outage in an e-mail account.''

Methinks that these problems are due to the servers installed at the sites where users are experiencing such poor performance. Quit trying to blame the poor performance of your web servers on the internet. ``Mr. businessman, you need to upgrade your server hardware and/or your communications line(s)''. And by ``weeklong outage in an e-mail account'', I take that was meant to refer to the recent Passport fracas. Anybody who goes around telling reporters that this was a fault of the overall architecture of the internet is a liar. Pure and simple. It was an execrable architecture, software, policies, and procedures -- and almost certainly the execution of those procedures -- at a certain large vendor of proprietary PC software that was responsible for that mess. Not the internet.

``(IAB chairman) Klensin is equally critical of executives irked by the difficulty of making money from the Internet the old-fashioned way by controlling the customer's access to scarce resources and services. These people, Klensin contends, need to look harder for novel ways to exploit the new medium.''

Bingo! We could sure use more creative thinking and less ``but I learned how to make money this way in business school'' lack-of-thinking. If you cannot adapt then get out of the business of trying to make money on the internet. There are plenty of other ways to make money in the world; find one of those and stop trying to screw up something that you don't understand.

``The Internet service provider (Excite@Home), however, argues that its subscribers remain free to surf the rest of the Web without interference, and that @Home is merely improving access to material that might prove especially popular.''

Well that material blessed with high-bandwidth accessibility is surely the most popular with Excite@Home executives who certainly will charge whopping fees to those providers for the privilege of getting it loaded more quickly onto the computers of potential buyers.

``Giving Walt Disney Co. material preferential treatment, for example, would not mean @Home would block its users' access to Disney rivals, he said.''

Of course, Disney would never dream of offering to pay more to Excite@Home (and @Home would never dream of offering that option ;-) ) if Warner Bros were unable to place content on that high-speed pipe. And while it may not be blocked through some configuration on Excite@Home's network, it'll be effectively blocked by forcing users to access it at near dial-up speeds (or maybe a little better than that).

``Michael Roberts, former chairman of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, a public body that oversees the distribution of Internet addresses. But he added, "It's too big, too important, too political to be treated as something for only a band of talented engineers to preside over."''

Should that have read ``Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, a pseudo-public body''? And I like the overall tone of that comment: ``It's too complicated for y'all to let a bunch of geeks to care for. Heck, most of these guys can't even get dates. Just leave it to business people. They'll take care of you.''

And, of course, many of us have had the privilege of dealing with companies with those highly-praised business motives who cannot seem to employ any of those talented engineers. Hint: the internet needs those talented engineers to keep things running smoothly far more than it needs those protectors of Capitalism.

``"The [Internet] is in trouble because it threatens so much of the establishment that it's provoked a backlash," (David) Isenberg (telecommunications expert and former AT&T Laboratories network engineer) said. ''

Another Bingo! How did that fellow describe this sort of thing? Oh, yes: a ``disruptive technology''.

Have a good one...

--

Re:This is ri-goddamn-diculous

What Nolle refers to as "basic economic laws", it seems to me, is actually the sequestering of resources by a few based on their access to money and influence.

Amen, sibling. Even if there are such things as "basic economic laws" -- which is not at all clear -- it can't fail to comply with them, anymore than than Thomas Nolle can fail to comply with the law of gravity if he jumps off a cliff.

"Having money gives me the right to manipulate the system to make more money" isn't a basic economic law, it just works that way often enough that it might seem like a basic law. Especially to those relative few who benefit from it.

Re:Hippie Anarchists?

Didn't you know? Al "Flower Child" Gore fathered the Internet at a campus love in.

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Corps are to blame for net unreliability!

Back in the dawn of time, the Net was designed as a redundant network. If one link went down, there was usually another path available, and the data could get through. The architecture of the Net resembled a spider's web. These redundant links cost extra money, but with government funding that's not really a limitation.

When ISPs and other companies started using the Net as their business, they chose to implement few redundant links. They cost extra money, they said. Why have two or three separate links to the net when one will do the job?

So what happens when a lot of ISP's and bandwidth providers do this? The net architecture becomes more like a tree with little redundancy. Unlike webs, trees have many vulnerable points. Thus, it is common to see sites being unreachable. For example, my reaching Slashdot from my desk at work in Australia is a journey of over 20 hops, and if any of these links goes down, Slashdot becomes unreachable. The reliability of my connectivity to Slashdot over all these hops is about 95%-98%.

So the solution? Change the architecture of the net by putting it back the way it was! Put back the redundant links, and to hell with the bottom line of the penny-pinching providers. And get the corporations who want reliability to pay for it! The Internet is NOT FREE, yet corporations seem to want to make money off the net without paying for it. Well, big corporations, you get what you pay for.
--

Hippie Anarchists

Yup! That's what we are! I've heard "hippie anarchist" used over the decades as a cheap euphemism for "libertarian". So I'll examine the internet in terms of a laissez fair, anarcho-capitalist, free market.

(Of course, the internet ain't 100% free market. The following musings are mere generalization. Since utopia is not an option, there are exceptions to everything.)

The internet works according to the principles of volunteerism and property rights. The internet is private property. Pure an simple. We just don't see it as such since we think of it as a whole. In reality it's millions of tiny homesteaded properties all connected together. Companies and individuals own the backbones, servers, domains and software. We have organized ourselves into a working system without having to resort to government fiat and decree.

The internet runs by way of voluntary cooperation. We don't have any law backed by the use of force. We don't have policemen running around with guns. We only have mutual agreed upon rules of conduct. When these rules are broken, we do not throw the perpetrators in jail, but utilize non-violent solutions. If a section of the backbone decides to charge an onerous price, we route around them. When a server becomes a haven for spam, we boycott them through established protocols. And when a member abuses their free speech, we excercise ours through flamage and email bombing.

Where needed services were missing, some entepreneurial sorts stepped in and offered them. Domain names are one example. I own my NIC and it's MAC address. But basing a global network of addresses based on device addresses is highly inefficient. So I rent a static IP address from my ISP. This works quite well and is extremely efficient. IPv4 addresses are getting filled up, but even as we speak we are self-organizing around a new IPv6 standard of addressing. No need for Congress or Parliament to get involved. But though static IP addresses are great for computers, they are lousy for humans, so along comes another party offering domain name services. Thus I rent my domain name as well. A good analogy would be "I own my home and it's physical location, but pay rent to have it listed with the post office."

If folks don't like this free nation we have built, they can always construct their own. Simply and easily. Intranets. VPN's. If they wish to recruit others and put out the capitalization, they can even create their own parallel but separate backbone.

But this LA Times article is bizarre. The internet is business friendly. All anarcho-capitalist societies are. Did a lot of businesses get hosed in the dotcoms of last year? Of course! But this is nothing new. Market booms based on stupid speculations have always occured. Read up on the history of tulips for a surprising parallel.

If he wants corporations to be in control of the backbone, he needn't worry. They already are. It just isn't owned by those he considers "worthy". Tough beans! This is the free market. If you don't like we won't stop you from creating an alternative, or block you from trying to convince the backbone owners from selling to you.

Who you going to call when the internet sputters, grinds or even breaks? I don't know. But that's his problem. Why doesn't he get off his butt and create connection insurance? There are no laws here to prevent him.

In the meantime the internet is working quite well. If there is a problem, it is because people see the net as a "whole" when it is not. It is a collection of individuals and companies working together voluntarily to synergize a new nation open for homesteading by all.

This isn't hypothetical...

...it's happening now. Klensin has significantly nonzero sway within ICANN governance. ICANN itself is comprised mostly of intellectual property lawyers and executives who have espoused sentiments closely matching those in this article. Medin, though relegated to a role as figurehead within @Home, has significant influence over strategic architectual decisions within @Home (and subsequently, AT&T Broadband to an extent). AOL-TW stand on the threshhold of acquiring both @Home and Amazon. Microsoft stands ready to yet again "embrace and extend" the software model, the hardware model, and their integration both on local busses and over networks. Couple that with InfiniBand and similar bus-decoupling advances (iSCSI, 10GB Ethernet), and the future is bleak: Corporate-controlled push-only Internet, and the demise of what we now know as the "home computer".

The pieces are in place. At this point, the only thing that will effect change is massive lobbying within ICANN (instead of x00,000 /. readers/posters, how about x00,000 concerned ICANN participants?), support of groups like the EFF, and direct lobbying of local congresscritters.

Without it, by 2010, you'll be paying other people for the privilege of letting them decide what you can do with your computer. And Linux won't matter much as a movement, because the control battle isn't on the computer anymore; it's moved beyond the OS. The Open Source movement is fighting a war its already won.

When I see articles like this..

When I see crap like this, I am immediately reminded of the phrase "replace the word 'internet' with the word 'telephone', and see if it still makes sense."

What they fail to realise is that the internet is a communications medium. Just like the telephone.
The two have remarkable similarities: they are both large-scale networks, designed to facilitate information flow across large or small distances. (In fact the only real technical difference is that the telephone was designed to transmit sound, and the internet was designed to transmit data.)

When someone says "How do you make money off the internet?" - just replace that with "How do you make money off the telephone?"

Try it with this article - once you put everything in context, you'll see just how stupid the quotes are.

BigCorpNet anally rapes me

You cough up the dough, you go first.

Great shit, I've just had a vision...

BigCorpNet: Would you like to sign up for BigCorpPremium service?

User: I already get 1Mbps DSL. Go away.

BigCorpNet: But with our PREMIUM service, your traffic will get PRIORITY!

User: Wait... you're buying bandwidth priority so you can sell me what I already had six months ago?

BigCorpNet: And all you can do is bend over and take it like a lady. Now shine my shoes, boy.

I really don't like this idea.

-grendel drago

What?!

Wait... someone hosting an expensive backup system over a PUBLIC NETWORK that they AREN'T PAYING FOR is complaining that they don't control it? Spare me!

Ha! Big businesses hide behind "Free market! Invisible hand!" in meatspace, but they're sorely outmatched inside the network. So they clamor for control to be handed over to them on a silver platter. Fuckwits.

The internet is like the telephone? Uh, try keeping up a correspondence with your buds in Sweden and Germany from California on twenty bucks a month.

"neighborhood Internet service providers that may be run by high school kids with a high-powered server computer and a leased phone line" -- really? If by "run", they mean "tended by unpaid labor", then *maybe*.

If these corporations want a reliable network, they can build their own. No fucking way is control of the public net getting turned over to them for a pittance.

I'm *outraged* about this. You should be too, every one of you.

-grendel drago

Economic law==oxymoron economist==idiot

"The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws,"

Economics is populated with charlatans, faith healers and witch doctors who are completely deluded as to their ability to understand a fundamentally chaotic system. These guys are right up there with snake oil salesmen in their pseudo-science. Next they will be asking the physicists to repeal the law of gravity because it offends some misguided Keynesian dogma. Small wonder that rocket scientists are in such demand in the stock market[1].

The sooner these morons are put ship and fired into deep space, the sooner we can on with making a living. (The rocket scientists could even get to build rockets)

Reminds me of man's argument with God in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Xix. [1] An Amusingly accurate grammatical error

Re:Here is this guys URL and E-mail

> The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws," said Thomas Nolle, a New Jersey telecommunications consultant. "The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists who didn't have a strong profit motive..."

No, Mr. Nolle, the historical fact that it was devised by a bunch of military strategists (who just happened to design something that was also very useful to hippie anarchists ;-) is the reason why it fails to comply with basic economic laws.

(Plus, someone should tell him that the "laws" of economics are wholly unlike the laws of physics, and one of those "laws" says that Shit Happens when you introduce disruptive technologies into a marketplace.)

And finally, the basic economic law of supply and demand doesn't seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Take Napster (out of its misery, please ;-). When the price was zero, and the product was freely-copyable MP3 files of every artist under the sun, lots of people "bought" Napster's product. Now that external factors have raised the price, and reduced the value of the product (DRM-encumbered .nap files from a few select artists), there's less demand for Napster.

Were there costs? Sure - bandwidth costs money. But telcos' overbuilding of the backbone (combined with the failure to bring broadband to the home) was the fault of a poor business decision -- the assumption that there'd be consumer demand for the extra bandwidth.

Had there been demand for the bandwidth (incidentally, something like the old Napster would have been a great source of demand!), and had they been able to deliver that bandwidth to the home, the telcos would have made a fortune.

Don't confuse poor business decisions with the end of economics.

Re:Silly corporations

Well, let's see, it was *my* tax dollars that paid to develop and build the Internet, years before Corporate America had even heard of it.

So yes, I feel pretty damn entitled, thank you. :)

:M

Re:What?!

If these corporations want a reliable network, they can build their own. No fucking way is control of the public net getting turned over to them for a pittance.

What public network? If I do a traceroute to www.slashdot.org it goes though my ISP, through UUNET, through exodus and hits OSDN. At no point does my request transit a publicly owned network. The people who own the pipes control the internet. Sprint, UUNET, AT&T, these guys are in control.

The vision this idiot quoted in the article scares the piss out of me too but I think we're almost too far gone to fight it. QOS (quality of service) routing means that some packets are flagged as important as they transit the netowrk and get priority routing. QOS is on its' way to a backbone near you, real soon now.

Consider this:
If I'm downloading a tarball from kernel.org and a router discovery packet shows up, it goes first. I have no problem with that, it is a good thing. However, this jackass wants the network to behave a little differently, if I'm downloading that tarball and a packet shows up that is part of the streaming movie trailer my moron neighbor is watching, it goes first. Why? Because advertising.moviestudio.com cut a deal with the backbone provider to get priority routing.

We are only a couple of years from a n-tier quality of service based network. You cough up the dough, you go first. I really don't like that at all.

laughable article

What companies are calling for the restructuring of the internet? What a bunch of crap (typical of the LA Times). The internet is driven by the same economic principles that govern our highway system. Much of the internet transport falls under the domain of a public utility. Just like the highway system. Some private ventures get special access rights to set up profit making operations, like gas stations and fast food joints on a major interstate. The analogy that the internet pipe is dumb is flawed. The pipe is not dumb. The pipe routes packets in the best possible manner. However, the pipe doesn't know what is in the packets, just like the stop light doesn't know what is in your car.

Priorities don't work - remember Cheshire's Law

It's the ATM paradox:
ATM's big feature is guaranteed quality of service. When you set up a TCP/IP connection, the Internet does not reserve network bandwidth for you to guarantee that your data will not suffer network congestion or loss. ATM does offer guaranteed reserved bandwidth. This is its big advantage.

Or is it? If you reserve bandwidth for one user, then you have to refuse to let anyone else use that bandwidth. Everyone always talks about reservations in the context that you are the one who gets the bandwidth and it is everyone who is refused. What about when you are the one being refused? Reservations suddenly doesn't seem so wonderful any more, do they? The only way to make sure no one is refused service is to engineer your network so that you have enough bandwidth for everyone -- but if you have enough for everyone then why do they have to keep making reservations? That's the ATM paradox.

More here [stuartcheshire.org] and here [stuartcheshire.org].

As for streaming the same video to lots of people at once, there is a fine answer already, called multicast. But corporations foolishly don't turn it on on thier networks.

"Trying to own the Internet - that's a Paddlin'"

But any changes in the network's basic structure will face numerous obstacles, including resistance from traditionalists who believe that the Internet is popular precisely because it cannot be controlled by big companies.

Umm - did they happen to notice the DDOS attacks on Yahoo!, Amazon, etc. that were carried out for no apparent reason? Corporations seeking to control and prioritize the Internet are just begging to be hammered by every kiddie with a script. "Traditionalists" might not mind so much, either.

Venture Capitalists are driving this

Remember how the Internet started? Funny, I don't remember there being any venture capitalists swarming around DARPA. It was all too technical, too esoteric, and too geeky for them.

A few years ago, some of the VCs got the idea that this Internet thing was actually a "Good Idea" and they embraced it. They embraced it with vigor and enthusiasm. The results were:

* They piled millions upon millions of dollars on startup companies that were run by inexperienced, bright-eyed, I-think-I'm-part-of-a-new-paradigm kids

* They ran up the stock market by helping to inflate valuations on these worthless companies.

* They got filthy rich before the market collapsed.

* And now that the pathetic dot-bomb companies have failed, they want to ignore the few success stories (anyone notice how eBay is bringing in "profit" - yeah, that's where you actually make more money than you spend) and tell us all that because of their own stupidity, the Internet is flawed.

Businesses are using the Internet in myriad ways to improve service, streamline production, and eliminate waste.

But the reality of "pure play" Internet companies is that most of them simply won't work. To VCs I say this: Get over it. Look for real business models that will lead to profitability. The days of 50x returns are over. You don't need another mansion in Los Altos anyway.

The Internet works for business - just not for the overhyped, underbrained, overmonied ones.

How about just obey the existing laws?!

How can anyone expect dot coms to cut a profit when the few that actually sell something sell it so close to the break even point?! I would much rather buy my stuff online at the same price I could get it locally than have to deal with jerk off drivers and mallrats.

The Internet structurally doesn't need to change, it needs to change the mindset behind its commercial enterprises. The Amazon.coms will not be able to cut a profit until they set realistic prices and spend more time trying to get a reputation for excellent service than pissing off people with patents. If Bezos is so concerned about protecting his company and getting a good name for it, why didn't he sign the patent over to a not-for-profit group like the FSF or EFF?

What is being made quite apparent is that those behind the major ecommerce companies usually have no clue how to run a business. The smaller ecommerce companies have to be doing something right, because they have little venture capital and 99% of them would be out of business in the blink of an eye if they lacked business savvy. The biggest mistake the ecommerce giants made was getting their customers used to VERY low prices, prices so low that profitability would be unthinkable unless pricing policies changed.

oh, what a great idea

Funny, but I haven't heard the common man complaining about the internet being unreliable and needing big corporations to step in and save it. I use the internet every day and very seldom (nowadays at least) have any trouble whatsoever.
The LAST THING I want is more commercial control of the internet's core infrastructure, and I imagine most of you agree. (Disclaimer: I work at a big internet company, and nobody here's been complaining about it either). Yet this article makes it sound like businesses are up in arms about it. Does anyone else out there have that experience? Is your business complaining about the anarchistic 'net?

I have a strong feeling this is just FUD being spread by telecom companies who want a bigger piece of the pie -- can you imagine more corporate control somehow bringing costs *down*?

--- egomaniac

Re:um ... basic economic laws??

The Internet actually obeys the (descriptive) laws of economics almost perfectly (as do most situations with no intellectual property laws). Marginal revenues = marginal costs. Let me say it again. Marginal revenues = marginal costs. Need me to say it one more time? No? Alright then.

Fundamentally, no one should make an economic profit. That is to say, no one (including CEOs) should end up with a salary any higher than necessary to find someone with the required skillset, and the profits remaining for dividends should be no higher than necessary to secure enough investors to get the business off the ground. The idea of .coms as wildly profitable businesses just because they were on this new thing called the Internet was always ridiculous. It would be like expecting someone listed on Pricewatch to make enourmous profits because they sell high tech equipment. Instead, those companies make just enough money (most of the time) to keep from defaulting on lease payments.

Likewise, most of these pure internet plays will likely end up with just enough money for a small content staff (or whatever staff they need to get their jobs done) and bandwidth. This is how economics WORKS! That's not to say people's lives are crappy under Capitalism, it just means that only monopolies (which usually only form with government support, like the phone companies or those with intellectual property (Disney, for example, has a narrow monopoly on Mickey Mouse products)) can throw the kinds of wild spending sprees that the .coms were famous for. Real capitalism tends to produce many companies, all barely hanging on by the skin of their teeth, as you see in computer assemblers/parts resellers, restaurants, farming, and so forth.

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

um ... basic economic laws??

From the article:

"The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws," said Thomas Nolle, a [dumbshit].

I wonder if he understands what he's saying? For purposes of this discussion, there are two types of laws: prescriptive and descriptive.

Prescriptive laws are, for instance, speed limits. They don't attempt to describe the world but to govern it. These are human social constructs and subject to rapid change. They have a goal (e.g. prohibit bad behaviour), and can be adjusted depending on how well they serve that goal. If you disobey one of these laws you're likely to be punished by your peers.

Descriptive laws are, for instance, gravity. They attempt to understand and explain the world we see. They are not human constructs (unless you're a solipsist), and are not subject to human modification. They serve no goals (unless you're a deist), and do not change. There is no opportunity to disobey these laws.

So what is this guy saying? What types of laws is he talking about? If he means that the Internet is not obeying the descriptive laws of the science economics, then he's fucked: if a verified experiment conflicts with what you think is a law, then the law goes (hint: scientific method). That would mean that the Internet is an exception to economic law. Ergo, economic law is full of holes. Oops. Not much of a descriptive law, eh?

If he means that the Internet won't obey the prescribed laws of the human construct of economics, he's equally fucked: if economic laws work so well, why are we in a recession? If they work so damn well, why was the Internet a surprise to most people? Why was the dot-com hype and crash a surprise?

In short, he's full of shit. He wants economics to be a science so he can be its High Priest ("Only I can interpret the laws of the great God economics."). But he wants it to be a set of regulations that he can impose on things he doesn't understand. Typical late 20th century capitalism, eh?

"We all say so, so it must be true!"

Re:whew

This article is silly. Have you ever read over the structure of IP and TCP headers? There's all sorts of neat things in there. One field, I don't remember whether it was TCP or IP, actually does this - sets various priority flags for the data - whether you're concerned about throughput, response time, etc. Near all routers ignore them. Why? Its not profitable.

You don't need to re-write the net. You need to put pressure on backbones to actually use the full potential of the current net (and, to be more swift in implementing IPv6).

-= rei =-

Sour grapes

To quote the article:

"The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws," said Thomas Nolle, a New Jersey telecommunications consultant. "The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists who didn't have a strong profit motive. But this is a business, not a government-sponsored network."

Bleh. First off the Internet is based on an idea the military came up with (ARPANet), so it wasn't devised by a bunch of "hippie anarchists". Secondly, it wasn't designed with business in mind, it was designed to propogate information. This is a grand case of a supposed expert not knowing what he's talking about.

As said before and most likely again, the issue shouldn't be changing the Internet to fit businesses, but rather changing the businesses to fit the Internet. Yes, a lot of ideas failed. That doesn't mean the Internet is useless. It simply means you have to look at what it can offer and use it for that. It's a learning process, but so many higher management types don't want to take the time to do the neccessary research. They want results, and fast, so they make the techies throw something together with a poor business model and a poor support structure. And guess who gets blamed/laid-off when the whole thing goes south?

Be Polite!

If this is indeed valid contact information for this capitalist bastard ^H^H^H^H^H^H person, then yeah, send him an e-mail telling him how wrong he is! But be articulate and polite, so we don't see an article in the LA Times where he says "The Internet is basically populated by ranting jerks and script kiddies, as well as those anarchistic hippies."

End-to-end design principle

It's fascinating how drooling journalists and business suits thoughtfully discuss Internet architecture. Somehow, these people believe they're qualified to make judgements on issues they have no clue about, such as the end-to-end design principle [reed.com].

We cannot give these people an Internet that's good for their needs without throwing away the net as we have it now. Perhaps it's very good that Michels (whoever this guy is) says in the article: "We don't have any control over the Internet". Mr. Michels, it's by design. Even bright people don't have control over the Internet. Business suits should think about what they understand and leave engineering alone.

This is ri-goddamn-diculous

"The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws," said Thomas Nolle, a New Jersey telecommunications consultant. "The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists who didn't have a strong profit motive. But this is a business, not a government-sponsored network."

You're fscking kidding me, right? First of all, I can't believe that this guy can say that with a straight face. Why is the Internet expected to comply with "basic economic laws"? Nobody is twisting a business' arm and forcing them to do business on the damn Internet. If they try and fail, then obviously it's not their fault, it's the underlying technology that's to blame. This is a pathetic and whiny excuse. Yes, the original infrastructure wasn't designed to handle the load that the 'net has today, but the 'net of today isn't the same as the AARPNET of yesterday.

By adding "intelligent" switches and other devices, they believe, the system could work faster, avoid traffic jams, distinguish between high-priority data and other material that can wait, and generally live up to its promise as a worldwide communications and entertainment medium.

By saying this, they basically mean "We want hardware that gives our data priority!" Well, guess what, schmuck. This is one medium that you're going to have one hell of a time controlling. If QoS is that important to you, design and implement your own private ATM network.


-------

The need(for Geeks) to take control Now

I am not the an all knowing seer, but you had to figure this was coming, and we have heard rumblings before. Its been appearent, in things like the road runner services sending montly news letters about the great things you can find(for a fee). Its inevitable that eventually the network providers, would want to become contant providers and start showing preference for the content they wish to provide over the content that an intelligent user could search for on their own.
The Time has come for us to start demanding freedom of connection. Once the ISP has given us a line and an IP(Via Cable/DSL/Whatever) we should have everyright to do what WE want with that connection. If the world in this article comes to pass then and ISP would be looking at our packets for service type. Then saying "well thats a Quake packet no need to rush with that one, this packet thats coming through showing the lastest commercial for Chevy Trucks(who our database says paid us this month) via Realaudio(Who is the exclusive preferred video content provider for out network) is much more important. The way it should be, for the most part is, and should remain is equal consideration for all packets. Big Business please get off the internet, the real internet users(not the AOL lamers) have more important things to do. The true probelm is that its hard to get to the backbone, and because of that we have little control of what happens on the way there. Things should get opened up more, and that would solve some problems. it should be my choice what traffic I give and take and what i do with my connection if i want to run a web server, and a mail server of my own(which I do, in violation of the terms of service with my cable provider) then I should be able too. They really peved me as it appears they recently blocked my server from being able to answer DNS queries, which took my domain down for several days while I was away on a trip. They are the only game in town for high speed internet, and its annoying to not beable to do what i wish with my connection(verizon will not do DSL to far away, refuses to ISDN(to slow anyway), and refuses to create the infrastructure for anything else so i am stuck with my cable modem. I hate to involve the govenment, but perhaps its time for some consumer protection laws reguarding the internet.

basic economic laws don't really apply

Basic economic laws are based on supply and demand of scarce resources. This makes sense when there is a significant cost associated with duplication of an existing product. It doesn't make sense for the Internet; once something is digital, it is almost free to copy. This flattens out the traditional supply/demand vs price curve into almost a flat line.

Businesses that have traditionally been able to control their prices to maximize profit suddenly find themselve unable to do so. With near infinite supply, price controls are nearly impossible. That's why O.S. works so well and business has had such a tough time on the net. It's hard to be successful and greedy when what you're selling doesn't cost anything to reproduce.

Bandwidth is not free, and I can understand a market for that. The information on it is free to reproduce, and businesses that have grasped that have done well (barring lawsuits). Hopefully, people will realize the benefits of privatization don't apply to everything (compare with California electricity) and won't cave in to businesses whose only care is their profit, not public good.

an open letter.

Attention corporate whores:

I write to you as someone who's been on the Internet a fairly long time. I'm not the archetypal grungy Unix guy from the basement, but I remember cursing when my favorite gopher holes were replaced by web sites. I don't write my own device drivers or build my own hardware, but I try to learn from those who can.

That's the point of the Internet, you see. Learning.

I don't want your advertisements shoved in my face. I don't want banner ads or flash filled sites funded by this week's trendy diet cola. Hell, I don't even want graphics all that much. I want information.

The Internet has the potentiality to be the greatest repository of information in the history of the world. You're trying to turn it into the digital equivalent of the crinky paper fliers in my Sunday newspaper.

I don't want it. Very few people do.

I wake up in the morning and there's a Pepsi ad on the radio. Then there's one on the television when I watch the news. I figure I'll escape to the movies, there's one there as well. What the hell would I want to look at more ads for?

Speaking as a .org-owning netizen, you can take all of your "economic responsibility," fold it until it's all sharp corners, hold it in the palm of you manicured marketer's hand, and shove it straight up your ass.

You want streaming video ads and the like to every desktop in America? Build your own fucking network. That's not what this one is for.

--saint
----

How typical

Time to play that time honored American game: Who you gonna blame?

Was it stupid business plans? Venture capitalists with unrealistic expectations?

I guess it was only a matter of time til failures started to blame the network that gave them the opportunity to succeed.

Let the lawsuits begin as usual. God how I wish some people would just accept responsibility for their actions and get over it!

Sore losers and sour grapes won't change openness.

A painter doesn't complain that his canvas is too rough, or that paint isn't tactile enough, or that the colours that he mixes are too unreliable to match his vision. He just paints, and whether the painting is a masterpiece or a failure is built in how he paints it, not in the source.

The internet is a canvas, and it's a rough one -- there are holes broken by patches of smoothness, low pings breached by high ones. The brushes are IP Protocols, very simple things built on buffers and packets. They don't stream well, or lend themselves to flawless point to point conversation. There are security issues. And the paint is HTML...a dirty sort of paint made for painting houses. There are display issues. There are compatibility issues. It is difficult to rely on, because people can handle things pretty much however they like. A color that perfectly matches an offline swatch will look different on a monitor with a different contrast setting. People don't always get HTML...they don't understand links or buttons.

The internet is a set, understandable material: why are businesses blaiming their own failings on it? "We can't get it to do tricks for us," they say, but they're asking it to do the wrong tricks. Webcasting? This isn't TV, it's internet...it's made for text and graphics, it's TTY to the extreme. And companies that understand what the web is -- a vehicle for interactive information exchange -- are doing quite well on it. AOL, for example, and ebay. The problem is that a lot of businesses don't want to paint on the canvass they've got...they want to sculpt! They're building up layers of paint and pulling the threads out of their brushes in an attempt to make the internet do what it wasn't designed for and isn't ready to do.

Besides, ownership isn't the answer...we've had non-tcpip information services in the past, and they've had very limited appeal. If you remember the old modem nets, the biggest problem was the lack of uniformity. You couldn't send mail to Bob@AlbanySuperChat if you used HundsonValleyInfoCOnnect. You had so many problems due to the fact that not everybody want to use the same computer or the same network. But all owned infonets assume this, and in the end are doomed to failure because of their closed protocols. Do you think television would have survived if each network required you to buy an expensive proproetary TV from their network or "partners"?

The internet is an ever-changing entitiy...speed enhancements and new concepts liek IPv6 will eventually lead to a network that is both streamlined and open. Corporate entities building a new network from scratch will result in a needless expenditure of technology for uncertain (and probably low) returns. Only through open standards can an information solution be truly pervasive...otherwise, it's just more plastic & light.

Here is this guys URL and E-mail

Look what this fool wrote.

The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws," said Thomas Nolle, a New Jersey telecommunications consultant. "The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists who didn't have a strong profit motive. But this is a business, not a government-sponsored network."

Why not drop him a line

http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/nolle.html
[e-mail]
[phone]

-Im standing next to a Mountain, Chop it down with the edge of my hand.

Re:an open letter.

Heh, that's exactly what the network is for. Stockholders, VC's and CEO's control the Internet, because they OWN it. You do not. Neither do I. Huge, global, all-encompassing media conglomerates and Telecommunications giants ARE building their own network, and the free ride is almost over.

I read an old Wired article once that was about the pioneering days of the original radio buffs and hobbyists, and how eventually the free ride ended and we wound up with modern day radio as a result. Sorry guys, the Arpanet is dead, it died back in the early 90's.
This is inevitable. Unless we all chuck out a whole shitload of money (read:taxes) to support this beast-- private interests, the all-mighty buck, and old-fashioned red-blooded American capitalism will decide the next incarnation of the net. It's just so ironic to hear all the socialist rhetoric. The Sixties are over guys, and I need to get fed, because the postwar treasurechest is near empty. The great economic juggernaut of America, land of the free, home of the brave. A country bouyed by the downtrodden, underpaid, underfed masses of the world, built on the genocide of the American Indian, and the slavery of Africans. Fucking people over is the great New World past time.

Corporations are slowly becoming more powerful than goverments, and we are moving towards a technocracy. Get used to it. It's a natural phenomenon. The printed word, the telegraph, the radio, the TV, the Internet. Information is free. It's transmission is not. So until we are all psychic, chances are some privately held, for-profit individual or group will determine what we see, hear, and think. If you doubt it, look at the natural world. YOU are the universe, part and parcel, and obey its LAWS. The laws are amoral and without judgement. They simply are. And if you look at the course of human history and animal behaviour, you will see that there has always been and still are elite groups of people who control the masses resources.

Thank you for holding, a representative will be with you shortly. Welcome to Disney Internet, please have your IPV6 address, and your computer operator license ID ready, and the first available service rep will assist you.

Re:This is ri-goddamn-diculous

"!" Well, guess what, schmuck. This is one medium that you're going to have one hell of a time controlling. "

Not so fast.
Remember that vast majority of the infrastructure of the net is controlled by private companies, running on hardware almost exclusively from a single source (Cisco.)
All they need is to strike some sort of deal with Cisco and voila, 10 years from now we end up with exactly what this guys was asking for.
I am not saying it is right or wrong, but it IS possible.