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The Internet

Vint Cerf: 'The Internet Is For Everyone' 163

Posted by michael from the pay-as-you-go dept.
Joel Rowbottom writes "Vint Cerf has written a damn fine RFC (3271), entitled 'The Internet Is For Everyone'. It's a good, well-balanced document which details the 'Internet Society's ideology' about the growth of the 'Net, where we can go now, and where we might be in some years' time. Worth a read."
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Vint Cerf: 'The Internet Is For Everyone' More

Vint Cerf: 'The Internet Is For Everyone'

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  • But dammit, I wish it were the same one as mine!

    • Internet for the wealthy, by the rest of us ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @11:14AM (#3421051) Journal


      Things always go this way - the people built stuffs, useful stuffs, and then the wealthy and powerful will come and take it away.

      Internet is just the latest "useful stuff" about to be taken away from us.

      Who's the "wealthy and powerful" in this case ?

      Ask Hollywood.

      Ask Disney's Eisner.

      And ask that "Mickey Mouse Senator".

      With all the existing and upcoming draconian laws, the Net will be taken away from us.

      Not just copyright. Not just royalties.

      The Net is what they are after.

      We, the Netizens, are "out of control", so they are here to "provide law and order".
      • Actualy, the internet is only going back to it's roots. Sort of. Originaly it was just college networks and government networks. But some people decided it would make a cool thing for everyone to have, so they started hacking. Then someone had the bright idea that they could bring this to the masses and make money off it. Now it's just going back to the wealthy elite. And when control has reverted completely, a new generation of hackers will come into being, and the cycle will continue.
    • It's just an RFC - doesn't necessarily mean it'll be implemented anytime soon - if at all!

  • Slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)

    by AirLace ( 86148 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @10:18AM (#3420903)
    The official RFC3271 page at the IETF is http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3271.txt?number=3271 [ietf.org].

  • hmm (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 )
    Apparently he's forgotten that if you don't have a _computer_ you can't claim your pie of the internet.

    Of course, we all do, so let's ignore the problem.
    Tea anyone?

    • Apparently you didn't read the RFC (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be until in every home, in every business, in every school, in every library, in every hospital in every town and in every country on the Globe, the Internet can be accessed without limitation, at any time and in every language."
    • Okay, so your response should be "how can we get computer access for everyone?", not "Vint Cerf is a capitalist bigot."

  • The RFC (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Network Working Group V. Cerf
    Request for Comments: 3271 Internet Society
    Category: Informational April 2002

    The Internet is for Everyone

    Status of this Memo

    This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
    not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
    memo is unlimited.

    Copyright Notice

    Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.

    Abstract

    This document expresses the Internet Society's ideology that the
    Internet really is for everyone. However, it will only be such if
    we make it so.

    1. The Internet is for everyone

    How easy to say - how hard to achieve!

    How have we progressed towards this noble goal?

    The Internet is in its 14th year of annual doubling since 1988.
    There are over 150 million hosts on the Internet and an estimated 513
    million users, world wide.

    By 2006, the global Internet is likely to exceed the size of the
    global telephone network, if it has not already become the telephone
    network by virtue of IP telephony. Moreover, as many as 1.5 billion
    Internet-enabled appliances will have joined traditional servers,
    desk tops and laptops as part of the Internet family. Pagers, cell
    phones and personal digital assistants may well have merged to become
    the new telecommunications tools of the next decade. But even at the
    scale of the telephone system, it is sobering to realize that only
    half of the Earth's population has ever made a telephone call.

    It is estimated that commerce on the network will reach somewhere
    between $1.8T and $3.2T by 2003. That is only two years from now
    (but a long career in Internet years).

    Cerf Informational [Page 1]

    RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002

    The number of Internet users will likely reach over 1000 million by
    the end of the year 2005, but that is only about 16% of the world's
    population. By 2047 the world's population may reach about 11
    billion. If only 25% of the then world's population is on the
    Internet, that will be nearly 3 billion users.

    As high bandwidth access becomes the norm through digital subscriber
    loops, cable modems and digital terrestrial and satellite radio
    links, the convergence of media available on the Internet will become
    obvious. Television, radio, telephony and the traditional print
    media will find counterparts on the Internet - and will be changed in
    profound ways by the presence of software that transforms the one-way
    media into interactive resources, shareable by many.

    The Internet is proving to be one of the most powerful amplifiers of
    speech ever invented. It offers a global megaphone for voices that
    might otherwise be heard only feebly, if at all. It invites and
    facilitates multiple points of view and dialog in ways
    unimplementable by the traditional, one-way, mass media.

    The Internet can facilitate democratic practices in unexpected ways.
    Did you know that proxy voting for stock shareholders is now commonly
    supported on the Internet? Perhaps we can find additional ways in
    which to simplify and expand the voting franchise in other domains,
    including the political, as access to Internet increases.

    The Internet is becoming the repository of all we have accomplished
    as a society. It has become a kind of disorganized "Boswell" of the
    human spirit. Be thoughtful in what you commit to email, news
    groups, and other Internet communication channels - it may well turn
    up in a web search some day. Thanks to online access to common
    repositories, shared databases on the Internet are acting to
    accelerate the pace of research progress.

    The Internet is moving off the planet! Already, interplanetary
    Internet is part of the NASA Mars mission program now underway at the
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By 2008 we should have a well-functioning
    Earth-Mars network that serves as a nascent backbone of an inter-
    planetary system of Internets - InterPlaNet is a network of
    Internets! Ultimately, we will have interplanetary Internet relays
    in polar solar orbit so that they can see most of the planets and
    their associated interplanetary gateways for most, if not all of the
    time.

    The Internet Society is launching a new campaign to facilitate access
    to and use of Internet everywhere. The campaign slogan is "Internet
    is for everyone," but there is much work needed to accomplish this
    objective.

    Cerf Informational [Page 2]

    RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it isn't affordable by
    all that wish to partake of its services, so we must dedicate
    ourselves to making the Internet as affordable as other
    infrastructures so critical to our well-being. While we follow
    Moore's Law to reduce the cost of Internet-enabling equipment, let us
    also seek to stimulate regulatory policies that take advantage of the
    power of competition to reduce costs.

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if Governments restrict
    access to it, so we must dedicate ourselves to keeping the network
    unrestricted, unfettered and unregulated. We must have the freedom
    to speak and the freedom to hear.

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it cannot keep up with
    the explosive demand for its services, so we must dedicate ourselves
    to continuing its technological evolution and development of the
    technical standards the lie at the heart of the Internet revolution.
    Let us dedicate ourselves to the support of the Internet Architecture
    Board, the Internet Engineering Steering Group, the Internet Research
    Task Force, the Internet Engineering Task Force and other
    organizations dedicated to developing Internet technology as they
    drive us forward into an unbounded future. Let us also commit
    ourselves to support the work of the Internet Corporation for
    Assigned Names and Numbers - a key function for the Internet's
    operation.

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be until in every home, in
    every business, in every school, in every library, in every hospital
    in every town and in every country on the Globe, the Internet can be
    accessed without limitation, at any time and in every language.

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it is too complex to be
    used easily by everyone. Let us dedicate ourselves to the task of
    simplifying the Internet's interfaces and to educating all that are
    interested in its use.

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if legislation around the
    world creates a thicket of incompatible laws that hinder the growth
    of electronic commerce, stymie the protection of intellectual
    property, and stifle freedom of expression and the development of
    market economies. Let us dedicate ourselves to the creation of a
    global legal framework in which laws work across national boundaries
    to reinforce the upward spiral of value that the Internet is capable
    of creating.

    Cerf Informational [Page 3]

    RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if its users cannot
    protect their privacy and the confidentiality of transactions
    conducted on the network. Let us dedicate ourselves to the
    proposition that cryptographic technology sufficient to protect
    privacy from unauthorized disclosure should be freely available,
    applicable and exportable. Moreover, as authenticity lies at the
    heart of trust in networked environments, let us dedicate ourselves
    to work towards the development of authentication methods and systems
    capable of supporting electronic commerce through the Internet.

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if parents and teachers
    cannot voluntarily create protected spaces for our young people for
    whom the full range of Internet content still may be inappropriate.
    Let us dedicate ourselves to the development of technologies and
    practices that offer this protective flexibility to those who accept
    responsibility for providing it.

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if we are not responsible
    in its use and mindful of the rights of others who share its wealth.
    Let us dedicate ourselves to the responsible use of this new medium
    and to the proposition that with the freedoms the Internet enables
    comes a commensurate responsibility to use these powerful enablers
    with care and consideration. For those who choose to abuse these
    privileges, let us dedicate ourselves to developing the necessary
    tools to combat the abuse and punish the abuser.

    Internet is for everyone - even Martians!

    I hope Internauts everywhere will join with the Internet Society and
    like-minded organizations to achieve this, easily stated but hard to
    attain goal. As we pass the milestone of the beginning of the third
    millennium, what better theme could we possibly ask for than making
    the Internet the medium of this new millennium?

    Internet IS for everyone - but it won't be unless WE make it so.

    2. Security Considerations

    This document does not treat security matters, except for reference
    to the utility of cryptographic techniques to protect confidentiality
    and privacy.

    Cerf Informational [Page 4]

    RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002

    3. References

    [1] Internet Society - www.isoc.org

    [2] Internet Engineering Task Force - www.ietf.org

    [3] Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -
    www.ICANN.org

    [4] Cerf's slides: www.wcom.com/cerfsup

    [5] Interplanetary Internet - www.ipnsig.org

    [6] Internet history - livinginternet.com

    4. Author's Addresses

    Vint Cerf
    former Chairman and President, Internet Society
    January 2002

    Sr. Vice President, Internet Architecture and Technology
    WorldCom
    22001 Loudoun County Parkway, F2-4115
    Ashburn, VA 20147

    EMail: vinton.g.cerf@wcom.com

    Cerf Informational [Page 5]

    RFC 3271 The Internet is for Everyone April 2002

    5. Full Copyright Statement

    Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.

    This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
    others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
    or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
    and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
    kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
    included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
    document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
    the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
    Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
    developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
    copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
    followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
    English.

    The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
    revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

    This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
    "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
    TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
    BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
    HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
    MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

    Acknowledgement

    Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
    Internet Society.

    Cerf Informational [Page 6]

  • 1000 million? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kythorn ( 52358 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @10:28AM (#3420936)
    1000 million? Is he waiting for 1024 million to call it a billion?

    • Re:1000 million? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dredd13 ( 14750 ) <dredd@megacity.org> on Saturday April 27, 2002 @10:32AM (#3420953) Homepage
      Because .US definition of "billion" and .UK definition of "billion" are not the same. When clarity is key (as it would be in an RFC) ambiguous words like "Billion" get laid by the wayside.
      • That's correct, but hardly anybody uses the old British billion definition any more. Here in the UK when we refer to a billion we mean the same as Americans (and presumably the rest of the world) - one thousand million.
        • 10E3 Duizend 1.000
          10E6 Miljoen 1.000.000
          10E9 Miljard 1.000.000.000
          10E12 Biljoen 1.000.000.000.000
          10E15 Biljard 1.000.000.000.000.000
          10E18 Triljoen 1.000.000.000.000.000.000
          10E21 Triljard 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000

      • Re:1000 million? (Score:2, Informative)

        by gidds ( 56397 )
        Originally, yes. But the `US' 10^9 definition has been common usage here in the UK for the last couple of decades.

    • Re:1000 million? (Score:2, Informative)

      by joib ( 70841 )
      No. billion = 10^9 = 1000 million. Perhaps you mean a "gibi" [slashdot.org]. Or well, the prefix gibi means 2^30=1073741824... :)

    • Re:1000 million? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Oswald ( 235719 )
      Don't feel bad about not knowing that "billion" meant different things to different people. This is the first I've heard of it. Judging by the comments you've received, it seems pretty clear that it's news to some people on the other side of the pond, too, since about half the responders seem to think you're simply too ignorant to know the meaning of the word. That makes them as parochial as you and me...and less observant, since the guy who wrote the RFC clearly uses "billion" to mean 1000 million several times in reference to population (unless the British actually think the number of people in the world is 11,000,000,000,000).
  • If only 25% of the then world's population is on the Internet, that will be nearly 3 billion users. With the current Internet Protocol standard, (four period seperated octants), there are only 4228250625 possible IP addresses. In addition to this, many are invalid for use on the Internet, as they are for local networks or use (172.XXX.XXX.XXX, etc) What happens when we end up running out of addresses? Just something to think about.

    • It's called IPv6. Users in the US just need to get off their collective arses and use the thing. It's already there and working.

      • US will never upgrade to IPv6 (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I once compiled IPv6 support in my Linux kernel. It choked my DSL bridge and I had to hard reset it to get it working again. The I got pissed off mail from my ISP accusing me from trying to DoS their gateway with "malformed packets" (??).

        No thanks. We'll stay with IPv4. You use the new thing. Just like it is with the imperial vs. metric unit systems.

        • A lot of network hardware such as your DSL bridge is 'hardcoded' for ipv4 packets. this hardware needs to be replaced (or have a firmware update if you're lucky) before ipv6 can fly.

          On an ipv4 net ipv6 packets are not malformed. The hardware should simply have checked the version bits in the header and dropped the packets, but the people that made it probably didn't bother since there existed only ipv4 when they made it and they could save to transistors by not checking. So the fool at the ISP that told you that you could use ipv6 (you did call them didn't you) should have his fingers slapped.

          What you tried to do was pass ipv6 packets onto an ipv4 based network, you would have needed an ipv6 to ipv4 bridge (before your ipv4 to xDSL bridge)

          Anyway to get The Internet to support ipv6 a lot of the infrastructure has to be updated, I wouldn't expect to see that too soon. The 'killer app' we need to get ipv6 out may be streamed HIGH quality video (don't need cable when you have internet) that uses ipv6's priority value to get through.

          No thanks. We'll stay with IPv4. You use the new thing. Just like it is with the imperial vs. metric unit systems.

          So in a few years when we have got TV over the internet you will stick to your overpriced (you'll be the only customer remember) ipv4 connection, that makes your ipv4 packets get the lowest priority through the internet. Just because you tried the new stuff a little too early?

          And without ipv6 we won't get that huge address space that will give everyone and his dog (and the dog's fleas) their own unique IP address

    • Re: What do we do when.... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Simple, we use IPv6.

      On a related note, the percentage of IPv4-adresses assigned to American (US) organisations, businesses, people is unproportionally high.

      That 's why the European Union is trying to push Cisco et al to implement IPv6 faster then originally planned.

      [Off-topic: I don't know what happened to IPv5. Maybe they follow kernel-numbering guidelines: odd numbers are for experimental use, even numbers for stable standards.]
      • "On a related note, the percentage of IPv4-adresses assigned to American (US) organisations, businesses, people is unproportionally high"

        Umm, maybe because the internet was *invented* here, and the early adopters got large netblocks assigned? Lets not go all tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist over this, ok? It's not because the US is just mean to you poor downtrodden Europeans, we just had a head start and given the projected usage - that we now know was far below what actually happened - the allocation system wasn't too terribly efficient, because no-one thought it needed to be. As late as the 1996, setting up a business ISDN account with a mid-size local ISP got us a full 254 addresses assigned, even though we only really needed one of them and had just 5 employees. Now, if I still had those addresses, I could probably make more renting them out than the company paid me in salary. Who knew?
    • IPv6?
      Increasing usage of NAT and its ilk?
      The end of civilization as we know it?

      Seriously though, I'm sure it all works out nicely in the end.

  • 'Mirror' (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Saturday April 27, 2002 @10:29AM (#3420940) Homepage
    Working link to RFC 3271 [networksorcery.com]. (Since the original seems Slashdotted.)

  • That the appeal to bring the internet to everyone is an RFC.

    Was anyone else kinda teary by the time they finished reading that?

    • It did make me teary-eyed, even though I strenuously disagreed with Cerf's obsequience towards the rapacious copyright industry. It did'nt help that I happened to have read RFC 2468 (who do we appreciate? Jon! Jon! Jon!) immediately beforehand. Despite its flaws, RFC 3271 is a document for the ages, a call to arms for all lovers of information freedom.

  • Hmm. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zigg ( 64962 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @10:31AM (#3420948)

    Noble sentiment, but Mr. Cerf is misguided if he thinks "the Internet for everyone" is going to be accomplished through unquestioning support of the ICANN cabal and the establishment of universal laws to "protect" intellectual property. Both of these seem to be to be a way to destroy, rather than build, the Internet.

    Now, if we could replace ICANN with something a good bit more democratic, and put in some globally recognized laws to protect us from IP law's reach, then maybe we'll get somewhere.



    • ... and instead it is chasing after POWER and MONEY.

      I am a regular ICANN member, and I for one AM ASHAME of what ICANN is doing.

      But what can I do? I am just a regular member, and the next "voting" won't take place anytime soon.

    • Vint said "Let us also commit ourselves to support the work of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - a key function for the Internet's operation."

      He didn't order us to support ICANN itself, just its WORK. Which gives a little wiggle room to those who despise ICANN yet obey Mr. Cerf unquestioningly.
  • The Internet is for everyone except when it's just for Slashdot. (Poor, poor site...)

  • SpringTime (Score:4, Funny)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @10:33AM (#3420954) Journal
    [noting the lack of comments}

    Look! It's sunny out! It's warm outside!

    I bet a lot of geeks are heading out into the Big Blue Room to enjoy the enhanced weather that is out there on the East coast right now.

    • Re:SpringTime (Score:2, Insightful)

      by minusthink ( 218231 )
      whoa, there's an outside now?
      • Look! It's sunny out! It's warm outside!

        I bet a lot of geeks are heading out into the Big Blue Room to enjoy the enhanced weather that is out there on the East coast right now.

      Haven't you heard? That "sun" thing that our parents like to prattle on about has been shown to release dangerous radiation. It turns your skin to leather and leads to unsightly skin lesions and even cancer.

      No thanks. This is just another one of those things that we Geeks have right and the nature boys and the geriatric crowd got wrong.

      I only go outside when there's a comet or meteor shower or something Geeky to observe. Some people like to see those Solar eclipse things, but what's the point? If you look directly at it, you're eyes get fried, I hear.

    • Look! It's sunny out! It's warm outside!

      Not in L.A. I was coaching my daughter's softball game (at 1PM PDT), and it was COLD!

  • The internet *is* for everyone... (Score:3, Funny)

    by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @10:33AM (#3420957)
    ...until the site you want to use gets slashdotted. And right when I was just about to look up a different RFC (2321 FWIW), too.

  • Free as in Speech (Score:4, Informative)

    by Thenomain ( 537937 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @10:35AM (#3420963) Homepage

    I'm not sure I agree with the gushing optimism of this guy. For instance, from the article:

    The Internet is proving to be one of the most powerful amplifiers of speech ever invented.

    While fundamentally, this is a good thing, it decreases the signal-to-noise ratio and makes it a) easier to hear only what you want and b) harder to find even that. This seems to imply that giving everyone in the world a bullhorn (and keep them from getting shot) is, in itself, a good thing.

    And then we turn around and complain about child porn and hate-groups on the internet. It's part of the same thing. I'm just leery of the positive-only spin this article has.

    Similarly: The Internet is becoming the repository of all we have accomplished as a society. ... But no mention on having to work through the garbage. While I have confidence that societies will eventually pick the most accurate history, I can't imagine it would be easy.

    I in no way think the article is wrong (I don't), just misleadingly in its enthusiasm.

    -Thenomain (NMI)

    • "Similarly: The Internet is becoming the repository of all we have accomplished as a society. ... But no mention on having to work through the garbage." True, but is this any different than libraries. No one ever said that ALL the information contained within the walls of a library is good and useful. It is however a place to find info, if you're willing to do the legwork to find it. Ultimately it is always up to us as individuals to filter out the good signal from the noise of input we receive from all directions.
    • Google restores the correct signal-to-noise ratio.


    • Well, there is one thing you have to realize: You guys "there over the pond" you're so stuck in this freedom of speech thingie. Namely too many times I see the term taken _too_ literally. And the funny thing with it is that you can turn it anyway you like (like all stuff that became voided of meaning and is taken only literally -- see idiotic religious extremism): Child porn, hate groups, it's_my_constitutional_right_to_tell_you_to_rott_i n_hell.. They all excercize their "freedom of speech", right ?

      Get fucking over it. Yes, like the Whole Wide World (heh.. joke, get it :)?), Internet is for everyone. But like a real society it gotta have a set of rules, guide of conduit, (de facto) morals, and so on.

      The most notable thing Internet has done is that it brought us all together closer that we ever imagine. And forces us to get over petty differences and live just in another, larger and more dynamic society that _still_ hasn't got yet all the inherent "functioning rules" loud and clear for everyone to know and respect.

      Yes, the guy is optimist. Yes, the guy focuses on the bright side. But the fact that we don't have yet everything straighened up it doesn't mean we should start whining "it doesn't work, let's kick it"...

      --
      Jeez, I never imagined what a globalist/pacifist/flower power boost one gets from a Campari Orange ....
      • The internet is not a "real society". It's a tool, a way to facilitate thoughts no more or less viable than the various postal services all over the world. It's not at all different than the telegraph.

        I'm ignoring the potential of the computer, for now, because for the most part, a computer and a person can generally get the same kinds of things done. For the internet, that's interpreting signal and passing it along.

        The notion that it "forces us to get over petty differences" is a fallacy. In some cases, it polarizes differences. If there was a choice between content that promises "All Views I Agree With 24 Hours A Day" and "Cultural Diversity, Even If It's Sometimes Repugnant", which do you think people would be more likely to choose?

        Being of the "Cultural Diversity" crowd, I try harder to get others onto that mentality, but I'm more likely to read Slashdot than Salon for exactly the same "Closer To My Views" reasons.

        And there are almost no uniquely American views on "free speech". We got ours from other countries. Not like we had our own pool of people to start with!

        And I've yet to see anyone whining about the internet not being perfect. If it doesn't work, fix it.
      • /* But like a real society it gotta have a set of rules, guide of conduit, (de facto) morals, and so on. */

        So, who will be the dictator or tribunal/council to decide this?

    • Re:Free as in Speech (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dkleinsc ( 563838 )
      I weas just going to point out, in relation the signal to noise ratio, that your post right here could easily be considered part of the noise. Slashdot is full of people like myself who like to talk, and so we all do, with only the modding system to keep some of us sane or doing work.

      Of course there's a problem of shifting through the garbage that bombards your senses. I deal with that problem every time I go to a library, or step outside in a city, or turn on the television set. In some ways, I find that the 'net is better at allowing me to filter out the crap than paper-based information sources. And I'm not just talking about google's ability to thwart pages' attempts to up their ratings, but also that if you truly want you can only visit a few websites and not deal with anything else.
    • Decreases the signal-to-noise ratio? Hello?! Didn't you mean significantly increases?

  • Users as consumers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Florian Weimer ( 88405 ) <fw@deneb.enyo.de> on Saturday April 27, 2002 @10:42AM (#3420981) Homepage
    Vint Cerf seems to view users mainly as consumers. He doesn't even mention the danger of proprietary protocols, trade secrets and patents, and the domination of big media conglomerates, which has already started to divide the Internet in the content-producing Rich and the content-consuming Poor.

    It's unfortunate that the days of the beginning Internet mass media, on which everyone could publish more or less equally, rapidly become history, and nobody seems to regret it.

    • I regret it. An interesting side-effect of people trying to maintain the old equality is forming and joining communities like Slashdot (discussion-oriented), Sourceforge [sourceforge.net] (production-oriented) or Baen [baen.com] (product-oriented) in self-defense.

      None of these things seem like a bad thing, though I do regret all the others who don't get the equal exposure they deserve. Google helps balance the scales, at least.

      • Re:Users as consumers? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Florian Weimer ( 88405 ) <fw@deneb.enyo.de> on Saturday April 27, 2002 @11:32AM (#3421098) Homepage
        This isn't self-defense, but self-delusion. Slashdot and Sourceforge have already become part of the corporate Internet. In fact, Slashdot is a fine example for the content-dividing effect of the Internet: The Internet is now so large that you cannot pay the bandwidth for a successful site.

        If you'd chosen Usenet or some of the IRC networks as examples, I would have agreed. Centrally administered services can hardly keep the spirit of the earlier days, but truely distributed services can do, if they supported by many companies and individuals, not only by providing content, but also by offering infrastructure.

        • Yes. Most users *are* consumers. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Bookwyrm ( 3535 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @12:33PM (#3421264)
          Distributed services tend to take a hit in efficiency in terms of cost/resources than centralized services, though the service may be better -- centralized services tend to be able to take advantage of efficiencies of scale and mass production. Unless you can convince every one that it is worth paying more for the best and not just 'good enough' for them, centralized services will be out there if not the norm. The better solution is to find ways to allow for both centralized, decentralized, and hybrid systems to coexist politely. (i.e. both Wal-Mart and the mom-and-pop store.)

          I am incredibly tired of hearing people constantly spout off how everything would be so much better if service ABC was distributed. It is such a consistant refrain of:

          We should replace the centralized
          service-name with a distributed model, so that everyone can do their own service-name for themselves. By developing the right technologies to make service-tools available for everyone, we can all benefit. If everyone had access to service-tools and could do their own service-name, then innovation can flourish as everyone becomes part-time service-person and might develop new and exciting uses in service-name.

          If you stand in front of a bunch of (service-person = ) programmers, and say replace service-name with 'network services' and service-tools with 'computers', then everyone cheers. However, if do substitutions like service-name = "grocery stores/food distribution and production", service-people = "farmers", and service-tools = "farming tools and overalls", people start hemming and hawing -- unless, perhaps, you proposed that in front of a bunch of farmers. Or "sewage services", "sanitation engineers", and "septic tanks." -- unless when proposed in front of bunch of sanitation engineers.

          Chaos/freedom yields innovation, but order/discipline yields production. Between the two is a varying place where the efficiency of the resources consumed verses the quality/quantity of what is produced is maximized. People may want the best in everything, but they cannot afford it -- people will pay for the best priced "good enough" -- this does not necesarily drive an improvement in quality, only efficiency. There's a reason why people don't grow their own food, manage their own waste, generate their own electricity, perform their own appendectomies, purify their own water, build their own homes, mine their own ores to hand-forge the nails they need to hammer together the boards they cut from the trees they felled to build their own home, etc. Doing it all yourself might, eventually with practice, yield far superior and customized services/products (from your own point of view), but it requires more effort.

          Some people choose to put forth that effort, but equally important is to able to choose not to and buy services from some one else so that a person might focus their energies on their endeavor of choice and excell within that field, not spreading their energies around just to survive.

          It is a good thing that if a person wanted to, they could grow their own food, make their own clothing, do everything for themselves -- they may come up with something interesting, after all, and they should be free to. It is also a good thing that if a person wants to buy services from other entities, even (gasp) from a centralized service so that the person may focus on their chosen endeavor -- one rather suspects Stephen Hawking would be hard pressed to grow his own food (without the purchase of considerable automation, at least.) People need to have the opportunity to choose what they want to buy and what they want to do themselves.

          It's a bit of a rant, perhaps, but I just disgustedly tired by those who froth at the mouth about how centralized services are bad... while drinking coffee at Starbucks. When they are wearing/using products made in sweatshops in foreign countries while spouting off how "everyone should do their own network services for themselves because centralized service models suck", it's just adding insult to hypocrisy.

          Centralized services are not inherently bad, nor distributed services inherently good. They are just models -- only when you map the model to an actual system or process and establish criteria for measuring performance can you then make a judgement on bad verses good. What is good is being allowed to make that decision for one's self and choose the model one wants to use -- no system should be entirely one or the other.

          (And as far as not being able to pay for the bandwidth to run a successful site, that's why the Internet needs to go to a pay-to-play model where the people browsing should pay for the bandwith. Then no site is 'penalized' for success.)

    • Re:Users as consumers? (Score:3, Informative)

      by alen ( 225700 )
      Someone has to pay the bandwith. There isn't a business in the world that can indefinetly provide you a free service and survive. If you want to post content, then either find a hosting service or pay someone for their bandwith costs.
      • Yes, but if the service is highly distributed, sites can participate without immense bandwidth requirements.

        Look at IRC: If there was only a single IRC server for the whole world, it would require a tremendous amount of bandwidth (and processing power). The way IRC is distributed, individual servers have got moderate bandwidth requirements (a constant rate of 200 kBit/sec or so for IRCNet, IIRC, and substantial bandwidth reserves for resyncing). Similar rules apply to Usenet (although the bandwidth requirements are moderate only if you don't need binaries).
  • Read the RFC [ietf.org] at the original source. The link in the article is already broken.
  • Sounds like Locke posting to the "NET" Now we just need Demosthenes and we'll be on our way.

  • By 2008 we should have a well-functioning Earth-Mars network that serves as a nascent backbone of an inter- planetary system of Internets

    Anyone else finds it absurd to have a round trip time of almost half an hour?

    And imagine the chaos when a site on Mars gets slashdotted by earthlings or vice versa :-)
    • By 2008 we should have a well-functioning Earth-Mars network that serves as a nascent backbone of an inter- planetary system of Internets

      Anyone else finds it absurd to have a round trip time of almost half an hour?

      This does sound crazy at first when one looks at conventional TCP as the basic data transfer mechanism. Latency is a bandwidth killer, and the bandwidth delay product here would mandate enormous window sizes and low tolerance for errors. The latter could be reduced with forward error correction on a lower layer, but I supsect that many or most of our mainstream apps would need to be tuned for the latency.

      On the other hand, consider the UUCP, BBS, Fidonet, USENET, or other services we used to use (or still do). Those file transfer mechanisms are not well suited for interactive use, but are perfectly usable for bulk transfers. One obvious application here is for intelligent (preloading) web cache servers. Email would take longer to arrive, but would otherwise not suffer.

      I am intrigued with the possibilities of some of the P2P file sharing clients in this application. While Napster seemed to bring the expectation of immediate, almost interactive, file transfers, others like edonkey seem to have the idea of finding the desired files from an index, and having your client wait (possibly for days) until one or more copies are available for transfer. The current approach is probably well suited for the case of distributed copies where the peers are often off the network, but might be readily adapted to the extremely remote, high latency environment.
    • /* And imagine the chaos when a site on Mars gets slashdotted by earthlings or vice versa :-) */

      So, what happens when a hunk or "cloud" of space debri (of which there are many) goes between us, blocking signal? I'm no transmissions expert but the thoguht of it seemed comical.
      "goddammit i had 96% of the mp9 down when it happened!!!" urgh nevermind. im bored.
    • Ever heard of Squid? Cold, hard cache, baby.

    • A SYN for breakfast, a SYN/ACK for lunch and a sensible dinner.

      One would think that interplanetary latency falls well outside the range of "things we can tune application-side". Calling an Earth/Mars link a backbone is probably about as fitting as calling an IP-over-Avian-Carrier link a backbone.

      That RFC raises a lot of good points, but "backbone to Mars by 2008" really shattered the sensationalist illusion for me. :(

  • Ping (Score:1)

    by ksb ( 517539 )
    You just have to wonder on the ping time to a server on mars, and you're gonna have to be pretty confident in the OS not to fail, its one hell of a support call to NASA to hit ctrl-alt-delete ;)
    • Let's see here... Depending on what point in the orbit, seems to me that the ping time would be anywhere between 6:04 (Mars is 182 light-seconds (54.5 million km) away at its closest point) and 44:38 (It's 1339 light-seconds (410.3 million km) away at its furthest point). So yes, that's minutes:seconds.

  • Even CERF supports Intellectual Property (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pay The Fuck Up! ( 563397 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @11:40AM (#3421131) Homepage
    Read this:

    Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if legislation around the world creates a thicket of incompatible laws that hinder the growth of electronic commerce, stymie the protection of intellectual property, and stifle freedom of expression and the development of market economies.

    Even internet hero Vint Cerf agrees that we need strong protection for intellectual property! Surely now you must agree that mass piracy, sharing, and general abusive hacking is causing far more harm than good, and in fact preventing the internet from being for everyone.

    He's right. Those who use content should pay for it.

    • This is the same Vint Cerf that believes that ICANN is effective. Believes that there's no place for democracy on the board of ICANN, and believes that dissenting opinions within ICANN must be removed.

      As for the "protection of intellectual property", there have been laws on the books for ages that concern protecting copyrights and patents for ages. However, none of this is about protecting copyright, but rather controlling its creation, controlling it's distribution, and controlling its use. For that reason alone, most of these protections do not deserve our support.

  • Everyone means simple technologies (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JordanH ( 75307 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @11:49AM (#3421158) Homepage Journal
    The Internet is for everyone. Anyone who has a display device or printer that can bring up RFCs.

    I'm always struck by how much value there is in simple language presented simply. No flash, no java, no PDFs, no PS, no markup, no bold, no underlines, just straight text. Would this, or any other, RFC be any better presented in HTML? I know there are HTML rendering of the RFCs, but are they really any better.

    Whenever I go into a business that really uses their computers for customer service, I note how simple the user interfaces usually are. Most POS,Airlines,Car Dealerships and COMPUTER STORES are still green screens with text. Some are GUI, but have they proved to be any better?

    Look, hypertext is great, having multiple applications on the screen (simple GUIs) is great, beyond that has all of our complex presentation really bought us much except narrow the audience of who can receive the information or applications?

    The Internet is for Everyone, unless the technologists insist on making it only for a few.

  • for spammers. Spammers have no right to exist.

  • The Internet is NOT for Everyone. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @12:20PM (#3421235) Homepage


    Since it's an RFC, here's my C..

    The Internet should not be "for everyone", much the same way as driving a car should not be legal for everyone.

    Having been a SysAdmin for a number of years, I can tell you that the vast majority of Internet users are law-obiding, decent and considerate people. Then, of course, you have the 1% who want to take such a wonderful gift, and abuse it. They will abuse it for their own personal or financial game, or simply because they get off on making someone else on the other end of their "attack" miserable.

    I propose that people should be required to carry a Computer License, which proves they are capable of using the Internet responsibly, in much the same way as you're required to carry a Drivers License to prove you know how to use a car responsibly.

    To the vast majority of us, its no big deal. Having a Computer License is no more a threat to one's personal freedoms and rights to privacy as carrying a Drivers License is. For people who have demonstrated a clear-cut lack of understanding of the fundemental governing principles of behavior and usage, their license should be revoked, just as it is for people who have demonstrated a lack of understanding for the basic principles of behavior and usage for a car. While I wouldn't impose fines, and I would not create a police force to apply the law, I would leave it up to the individual ISP to decide how to best apply this for his or her system.

    Its only after we do something like I've just described that the net can be cleaned up, and relatively free of abuse, garbage, and other miscellaneous mindbarf.

    Cheers,

    • Duah, i'ts early. I just woke up. 1,$s/game/gain.

    • I've kicked that idea around, something along the lines of having to pass a test and get a license for a registered IP address - something like having to have an FCC license to run a transmitter to broadcast into the aether, you'd need an IP license to send packets into the Internet. Of course 'amateurs' could setup their own offline intranets and run w/o being licensed/registered but to connect to The Internet they'd need an engineer - like everyone on the radio of tv isn't a licensed broadcaster but they have to go thru one, etc, etc, etc.

      But I don't know. Which is worse? Having a Federal Culture Control (you don't get a license because we just don't like you) burocracy to contend with is a cure worse than the disease if you ask me. Give me good ol' messy human freedom, with all the spam, crime, etc anyday. Just hunt down and punish the few criminals, not the entire system.

    • In some states, you can get your drivers license taken away for being a minor in possession of cigarettes, without regard to your proximity to a car. Note that cigarettes don't affect driving.

      A 'computer license' could and would be abused.
    • Your wish, my command:

      Internal Computer Driver's License [icdl.org.za]

      I resigned from a small Caribbean country's Computer User's Society when they spent upwards of USD$25K to implement this....

    • It's a nice thought, but since the laws and regulations for licensing would be set up by an elected body of people who most likely would not qualify in our estimation for the licenses, we might not get what we want.

      Licensing might require that you not use any non-DRM-including software. Or might somehow prohibit your choice of operating system. Or any number of other things.

    • Free speech should not be "for everyone", much the same way as driving a car should not be legal for everyone.

      Having been a Nazi for a number of years, I can tell you that the vast majority of political speakers are law-obiding, decent and considerate people. Then, of course, you have the 1% who want to take such a wonderful gift, and abuse it. They will abuse it for their own personal or financial game, or simply because they get off on making someone else on the other end of their "attack" miserable.

      I propose that people should be required to carry a Speech License, which proves they are capable of using free speech responsibly, in much the same way as you're required to carry a Drivers License to prove you know how to use a car responsibly.

      To the vast majority of us, its no big deal. Having a Speech License is no more a threat to one's personal freedoms and rights to privacy as carrying a Drivers License is. For people who have demonstrated a clear-cut lack of understanding of the fundemental governing principles of behavior and usage, their license should be revoked, just as it is for people who have demonstrated a lack of understanding for the basic principles of behavior and usage for a car. While I wouldn't impose fines, and I would not create a police force to apply the law, I would leave it up to the individual publishers to decide how to best apply this for his or her system.

      Its only after we do something like I've just described that free speech can be cleaned up, and relatively free of abuse, garbage, and other miscellaneous mindbarf.

  • Yuck! (Score:2)

    by zenyu ( 248067 )
    I just lost a lot of respect for Mr. Cerf. He doesn't seem to get it. "Parental" controls an IP "protections" close of the internet from everyone.

    A member of the Internet Society told me there was a power grab there recently where they took away the voting rights of the members and gave most of the power to corporate sponsors and the IETF.

    Should Cerf now be reclassified as enemy of freedom?

    Calling a decree to take away the internet under that friendly headline is the same tactic used when the US congress calls internet censorship bills "child protection" bills. He may just be ignorant, but I think we have to consider he may just be evil now. It happens.
  • It stopped being for everyone when the government got out and left it in private hands.

    All those ass-holes want to do is to get you to buy more shit. They don't give a fuck about content except that its something that the media companies use to string the ads together.

    As for the copyright scamming content providers they don't make money one all the new shit, the old stuff that they own the copyright to makes them money. They only reason for promoting the new artists du jour is to churn the inventory and screw the consumer.

    There is NO room for originality, creativity or for the artist to make a dime from it.

    Might as well throw in the towel on the media outlet controlled web and use an alternate [packet.org] channel of what's left.

  • I refer to the disappointing section 2 of the RFC. Though I highly respect Mr. Cerf for his past achievement in the history of the Internet, he misses one point. The Internet will only be accepted by the masses if its use is as secure and stable as e.g. the phone network or electricity coming from your wall outlet. We know how to use those utilities, we know about the dangers, and there are strict regulations to make them safe. In the Internet, this can only be achieved by dramatic steps to improve software quality.

  • End-To-End Transparency (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @01:22PM (#3421427) Homepage
    The Internet is not the Internet without end-to-end transparency and addressability. Any randomly selected node must be able to send and receive packets with another randomly selected node.

    Anything that prevents this, NAT, DHCP with static DNS, "transparent" proxies, draconian firewalls or usage policies, is bad. Unfortunately, many Internet users are second-class citizens, limited by technology or corporate policy to the status of "information consumers".

  • This is the world in which we live. We work to earn money, spending the money in grocery and clothing stores, paying our mortgages, living as model citizens (just as Neo was pressured to do) for the sake of our survival. We take money from the system and feed it back into the system, like cattle fertilizing the ground upon which they graze. The film assumed that reducing a human being to a "coppertop" was an intolerable, dehumanizing condition.
    -- The Matrix
    I am sorry /. people, I've taken the red pill and woken up out of the dream world, this is how the things actually are:
    Television, radio, telephony and the traditional print media will find counterparts on the Internet - and will be changed in profound ways by the presence of software that transforms the one-way media into interactive resources, shareable by many.
    Television - content is paid for by cable subscription, plus advertising dollars. This is broadcast over powerful transmitters and/or subterrainian cable nationwide. The transmitters have a long range and can be received with aerials, or cable set top boxes (sometimes integrated with the TV). Important term: broadcast. The Internet doesn't provide as cheap a mechanism (routers, ISPs) for reaching as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible. After the burst of the telecom bubble, there is no way in hell that the telcos can afford to upgrade their IP bandwith to the levels required for transmission of TV-like signals to 500 million Americans, even super-compressed. 500 million MPEG-2 streams of 2 Megabits per second, I'm not even going to bother to do the math. RSVP and RTP and multicasting protocols will find it difficult to scale to this amount, and even if they can, what's the point when the infrastructure to broadast is available anyway. Even the advertisers like doubleclick.bet can barely cover bandwidth costs because the Internet is so poor at providing a one-time broadcast, one advertisement places a billion hits on doubleclick.net and they have to pay for their bandwidth. with ad revenues sliding, once they can't cover their costs....... Free content is dead.
    "I don't watch TV. It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite."
    -EarthForce Security Officer, Babylon 5
    Well dude, you're not gonna have to watch TV over IP because it offers no massive improvement over boradcast over current cable and broadcast transmitter technology.

    Radio over the Internet - Napster, Kazaa, Bearshare, etc, - you content providers better become good friends with Cydoor 'cos that's as good as it's gonna get. Users with lots of shared files don't get money, just loads of people leeching off of them, pissing off their ISP, which will then enforce a restrictive usage policy of "No filesharing, no servers". The RIAA will shut the rest of you down unless you pay them off with ad revenues (which don't cost the cost of streaming radio anyway) or set the lawyers (hounds) on them.

    Telephony over the Internet - on hold until IPv6 backbone QoS. Over corporate LANs or to PBXs it's OK. When encapsulated in SONET (which guarantees stuff) it's mmmmmmkay, over the Internet IPv4/IPv6 itself - some Chinese DDoS or SNMP router hack or some dumb MCSE at the ISP/telco will see to the reliability and latency of that. With <4% of households on broadband there will only be a gentle transition to broadband phones.

    Newspapers over the Internet - when we buy a newspaper we pay 30 cents, some goes to the publisher to pay his journalists. Journalists want money or they'll just flip burgers. Therefore the Internet kills free media, it doesn't encourage it (ironic really). If you want newspapers over the Internet, it could be really cheap because the medium is cheap (no middle man or distribution network), but at the end of the day you're gonna have to get 500 million Americans to whip out their credit cards and send it over the Net. Doh! Newspapers on the Internet suddenly seems like a bad idea.

    End result: ISPs and telcos will have to pay for Internet content if ad revenues dry up. The Internet won't be free unless the telcos and ISPs want it to be. Judging by TV coverage of WTC attacks, has anyone shown binLaden's persective? Nope, okay scratch Internet free speech then.

    The Internet can facilitate democratic practices in unexpected ways. Did you know that proxy voting for stock shareholders is now commonly supported on the Internet?
    Yeah, and the dot-coms also said that they'll make money in unexpected ways. Dude, sorry you're just clutching at straws
    The Internet is moving off the planet! Already, interplanetary Internet is part of the NASA Mars mission program now underway at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By 2008 we should have a well-functioning Earth-Mars network that serves as a nascent backbone of an inter- planetary system of Internets - InterPlaNet is a network of Internets! Ultimately, we will have interplanetary Internet relays in polar solar orbit so that they can see most of the planets and their associated interplanetary gateways for most, if not all of the time.
    If doubleclick.net can barely pay for terrestrial content sites, how the heck are they gonna pay for that infrastructure? I told everyone my XML search engine [avishek.co.uk] could be used over the interplanetary Internet, so what?
    Let us dedicate ourselves to the creation of a global legal framework in which laws work across national boundaries to reinforce the upward spiral of value that the Internet is capable of creating.
    WHATTTTTTT? So the RIAA and DMCA can follow me to Mexico???? How about if I code DeCSS v2 WHERE THE HELL WILL I GO?
    Let us also commit ourselves to support the work of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - a key function for the Internet's operation.
    Let us give thanks for the food on our table.... Maybe if I give ICANN a donation they'll give me my own static IPv4 address
    Internet IS for everyone - but it won't be unless WE make it so.
    Dude, you should get a dog, Golden Retriever maybe, and perhaps take a chill pill.

    Score: -1, Pessimist, it's people like you that burst the bubble a@@hole.

  • I'm sure that the original idea was that everybody could just apply for network numbers because that's what I did in '95 and they're still there although they subsequently became totally unroutable. But that's a long story that would be redundant for some and would take awhile to explain to others. Suffice it to say, IPV6 is certainly keeping with the spirit of the internet as it was. Numbers for all, I say --and no, not for money, just for the sake of the net.
    And while we're passing out numbers, let's pass out letters as well. Why we can't have at least several hundred thousand or a million top level domains still escapes me. The domain name system was supposed to humanize the network by making addresses easy to remember. Bravo, good work. But the next step is to allow complete sentences because it is really a sentence rather than a word that encapsulates a thought and serves as a convenient unit of memory. I'm sure this will provoke some harsh facts of life lectures on routing tables or some esoteric aspect of DNS that I'm not aware of, but that's cool. It's a request for comments and those are my comments.
    • what are new TLDs going to accomplish? There is no (problematic) limit to the number of addresses that can exist under just one TLD. If you're trying to escape the crappyiness of ICANN/verisign/network solutions or whatever they call whoever controls DNS, then 1) who do you think is going to run the new TLDs? 2) if someone else running name registration is good, why not commit your energy to putting them in charge of the existing TLDs?

      --
      Benjamin Coates
  • "Internet for everyone" means one of the these options:
    1. Free Software
    2. Free Speech
    3. Free Porn
    4. CowboyNeal
  • most likely running Windows. So there you go. Vint, another Microcerf.

  • Why the internet isn't free for all (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MoneyT ( 548795 ) on Saturday April 27, 2002 @07:45PM (#3422700) Journal
    Because the world governments can't stand it. And neither can the average citizen. Imagine, a world were everyone can say and do what they like and the only way they are kept in check is because everyone owns a gun. That's essentialy what the internet has to be in order for it to be perfectly free and the average human and government drone is very much afraid of this. The internet is truly anarchy at it's hight. The only way to not get bombarded is to not go there in the first place. It places the entire burden of censoring on you. You decide what you want to see, hear and read, not the government. Unfortunately, untill everyone on line is able to effectively hack everyone else, this can't really exist because some people are evil. So what you will have is a sort of sci-fi post appocolpse world. Average citizenry will have a little bit of space for it self, but will constantly be in danger of lossing that space or having it attacked by evil people (Black-hat hackers) The only protection people will have is a self regulating group of white-hat hackers who will act as world wide vigilantes ensuring people are given basic freedom on the net. The net will be in a constant state of informational warfare, but that's what human nature is all about. Information, knowledge, is real power, and that's how the internet will be regulated, by the intelligent and the smart. And like everything in life, when it becomes corrupt, the highest regim will be overthrown. The internet is the electronic version of earth. Nothing more, nothing less. Except, people online are regulated by outside laws. The only way for the internet to truly be free is to cut it loose from law and let it self regulate, just like the real world does. You think I'm crazy, but think about it, read it again, it makes sense.
  • Since when did JonKuntz become Vint Cerf?!?
  • but the domain namespace is the sole property of ICANN, to be leased as they allow.

    <sarcasm>Thanks a lot, Vint.</sarcasm>

  • Why do people take Vint Cerf seriously? He is the Chauncey Gardner of the Internet, someone who is not very bright, but thought of highly when his only accomplishment was just Being There.

    Vint works for Worldcom, the largest backbone/commercial ISP and second-largest long distance company. He has Worldcom's interests in mind, not the public's. He has learned to say "Internet" all over the place, making his about as "k3wl" as the bozos who were putting "dot com" in company names a few years ago. But he never, ever actually understood the Internet. His most significant early work was TCP, but if you examine the protocol (and compare it to, say, TP4), you notice just how ugly and stupidly written it was. Nice experiment but it should have been thrown out 20+ years ago. Proof that good enough is the enemy of the best.

    Vint's the bozo who changed his IAB vote from TUBA to IPv6 about ten years ago. They were ready to move ahead to TUBA as a new IP. It was already implemented in many end systems and most routers. But for political reasons, the grotesquely inferior IPv6, which is a Yugo-quality work, was adopted when Vint put IETF politics above quality.

    Now he's flogging ICANN, which is trying to turn the Internet into a private club for copyright holders, leased on a per-use basis to sheepish consumers. Jones & Day, the law firm that created ICANN to enrich its own pockets, uses Vint as window dressing (a Chauncey role) and to keep Bernie Ebbers in line. If Worldcom dissented, ICANN would be toast, and the Internet maybe would have a chance of being for everyone. Vint's vote is with Disney.

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