[Chapter-delegates] ISOC open letter

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 06:58:04PM +0200, Richard Hill via Chapter-delegates wrote:

>To me, the Link, Internet, and Transport layers are for sure infrastructure.
>Some parts of the Application layer might be infrastructure, but much of it
>is not.

Suppose I invent an experimental transport that I'm using over the Internet to communicate with two friends.  Is it infrastructure?  Maybe sort of -- it's perhaps infrastructure for the three of us, but it's really just mystery garbage to everyone else.  Now, suppose that I am Google and I invent an experimental protocol that I deploy to browsers that I give to everyone (but which is not yet standardized) and that lives in an application-layer protocol.  Is it infrastructure?  I'd say it's hard to claim that it is _not_ infrastructure, and so we're already in deep trouble with the layer model.

Further,

>No, there is not a bright line. Still I think that most people would agree
>that, at least at present, e-commerce platforms, streaming services, and
>social media are not infrastructure.

I am unprepared to speculate what most people would agree to on this topic, but I'm rather less certain than you seem to be.  I definitely disagree that some parts of social media are not infrastructure: the uniquity of "login via Facebook", "login via Google", and "login via Twitter" buttons show that _at least part_ of some social media platforms are definitely infrastructure on the modern Internet: accounts in unrelated services are using OAUTH services that depend on features tied to a particular social media system identity.  If that isn't infrastructure to you, then we're simply talking about different things. 

>broadcast evolve, but the basic concept is the same: to use some medium to
>send the same content to a lot of people more-or-less at the same time

But that is not, of course, the overwhelmingly dominant way that people use the Internet.  Clubhouse aside, people are just not setting their alarm clocks to make sure they watch their favourite Internet show when it comes on.  And they're not being tidy and careful about (in the case we're talking about) Candian content rules for who made the production and who were the performers and so on.  The traditional solution that Canada had for this was to use broadcast licensing to force the Canadian content to be carried into Canadian homes even if Canadians often didn't want it.  The Internet presents a challenge to that model, because the Internet doesn't impose a rigid distinction as to who is a "producer" and who a "consumer".  C-10 (and a host of other similar proposals in other countries) appear to be an attempt to re-impose those kinds of distinctions, frequently with implicit or explicit expectations that the network provide the necessary facilities to enforce the regulatory preference.  To me, that is a threat to the Internet Way of Networking, and the Internet Society should oppose it.

I am sad that I appear unable to convince you of this, but I suppose we will have to agree to disagree.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
President & CEO, Internet Society
sullivan at isoc.org
+1 416 731 1261