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

[Jack Haverty]

Indeed, the history of The Internet is still being written.   I can
envision a future universe where The Internet is dominated by hundreds
of millions of people using handheld computers, communicating
primarily over the phone network, paying $1000 or more a year for
every device that they own to use the net, and only able to "plug in"
hardware and applications that are approved by the vendor.

Wait a minute .. how many I-thingies, tablets and smartphones are in
people's hands today!?    And what are they paying whom to use them
with no-longer-unlimited "data plans"?  And how fast is that type of
usage growing?

If I were in charge of that mythical Internet Company that wiped out
all the competitors a decade or so ago, I'd be a tad concerned.   I
don't particularly like the vision, but it may be inevitable.

/Jack Haverty


On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 4:39 AM, John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> wrote:
> 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
>
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