[ih] XEROX/PUP and Commercialization (was Re: FYI - Gordon Crovitz/WSJ on "Who Really Invented the Internet?")

[John Curran]

On Jul 30, 2012, at 12:06 AM, Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net> wrote:
> 
> Remember a world of telephone monopoly, with literally everything that touched the network required to come from the operator.  We well might have wound up with a global digital network that would have been more like that than the significantly more competitive and varied and robust and... that we do have.

Than we have _at present_...  What we actually wind up for the Internet remains 
an open question, as those governments which still have telephone monopolies 
are giving it their best shot to move the Internet to more formally tariffed 
and controlled model.  While the benefits of the present system are apparent 
to many of us, it is not the case with large commercial "near monopolies" (who
are concerned with a perceived mismatch of revenues/costs between content and
carriage), nor for those telecommunications ministers in developing countries
(who have a real and compelling concern about the economic impact from eroding
international access settlement charges due to popularity of VoIP).  Both of 
these communities are advocating for increased regulation and introduction of 
tariff models for the Internet via the upcoming ITU World Conference on 
International Telecommunications (WCIT) this December in Dubai [1][2].

While it is easy to dismiss the decisions of individual governments in their 
ability impact the Internet (due the ability of the Internet to "route around"
damage, ala John Gilmore's quote), there are ultimate limits to this ability,
and an adverse decision by this international regulatory body could easily 
exceed our ability to maintain the present open Internet structure.

FYI,
/John

[1] http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120709_carriage_vs_content/
[2] http://www.techcentral.ie/19106/eu-carriers-were-not-asking-the-un-for-internet-taxes