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F2C (Freedom to Connect) Post Event Thoughts

David Isenberg, the one-man force behind F2C, deserves everyone's kudos for having delivered a truly important event right here, inside the Beltway. David's, and the tremendous group of attendees and speakers, instincts are right in convening this assembly at this time and in this place. Techno-libertarians may be in denial or dismayed, but to an overwhelming degree, it's the decisions made in the chambers of Washington DC, Brussels and Beijing rather than, say, the boardrooms of Boston, Silicon Valley and Seattle that increasingly set this country's (and the world's) technology directions.

Timely, because for millions of bloggers, social bookmarkers, podcasters, wikiists and vloggers --if we left you out, we didn't mean to-- the Web has begun to live up to its promise of becoming a truly multidirectional, horizontal way to communicate and connect. It, meaning the combination of technological platforms and protocols, has succeeded in profoundly lowering both the barriers to production and distribution for Web communicators. One only has to see that on the Web the New York Times, Fox News and Yahoo have to compete for the same screen space as clever and creative sites run by a single individual or a relatively small group of collaborators. Needless to say, this "long tale" of diverse content and an economic model that can be supported by relatively compact audiences, drives the big content guys nuts. Politicians have also gotten the message: the Web's ability to quickly mobilize supporters and even demonstrators has the potential to overturn the very cozy arrangement they have forged with financial interests in what have increasingly become safe districts where the incumbent has to get caught swimming nude in the tidal basin with a stripper to worry about a potential challenger, and even then, probably a substitute from their own party.

Gut issues: On the Web, all bits and bytes look the same. These can be bits of free flowing creativity, advertisements, hate messages, bets, pornography, purchase orders, music and movies, love notes and plots to blow up buildings. On the Web, they all look alike. Because of this openness, obviously, not everything there meets our approval  Thus, there is a confluence of interests who, for better and worse motives, are tempted to want to somehow regulate, tap into and control that flow by tampering with the very guts of the Internet. In that blueprint, only permitted kinds of bits and bytes might use the channel while all others are shunted, blocked or black-lined. Vint Cert, one of the principal architects of the Internet, spoke eloquently about why we should avoid going down that path.

The delivery system: The Web is more than an integration of technology platforms built on standard protocols.  There is also a physical transport layer. And the business of providing the physical means for transporting all those bits and bytes out to the ends is enormous and consequently requires great investments in infrastructure. Where that infrastructure gets built, who gets to fund and lay it and how these choices get regulated is equally important. Terry Huval, the head of the publicly owned electric utility in Lafayette LA, spoke about his city's efforts to build their own network.

Lafayette, like Philadelphia and some other municipalities are proposing to built out their own Internet access systems and have been facing tough opposition from the telephone and cable companies.  But these cities are in the minority. Although access to the Web is vital to the social and economic wellbeing of a society it is being left mainly to the purely economic considerations of monopolistic conveyors, who in the case of Web access in the US, are the giant Telcos and Cable Operators.

Mark Cooper, one of the panelists, provided the following context by reminding the audience (the event was webcast) of how far back the principal of fair access has been embedded in the law.  Innkeepers in pre-Renaissance Europe at the very dawn of Capitalism were required, in some of the first instances of common law,  to publicly post their tariffs. In such way, for example, the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales could all be assured the same price for equal bed and board regardless of their station in life. Cooper also pointed to rules requiring canal operators in early America and later the railroads that required them to post their tariffs and make them an equal playing field for transport or trade. It was well understood, that if these regulations were not in place, the monopoly operators of roads, canals and railroads could charge favorites one price and non-preferreds another thereby tipping the competitive balance.

As the F2C website argues in its call for the Conference:

The need to communicate is primary, like the need to breathe, eat, sleep, reproduce, socialize and learn. Better connections make for better communication. Better connections drive economic growth through better access to suppliers, customers and ideas. Better connections provide for development and testing of ideas in science and the arts. Better connections improve the quality of everyday life. Better connections build stronger democracies. Strong democracies build strong networks.
 

Place: By happenstance or not, on Tuesday of this week the Supreme Court heard two cases --MGM v.Grokster and Brand X (Brand X (a California ISP) vs FCC) with the potential of having enormous impacts on the future of technology. In the first case, the judges were being asked to look at whether technologies that can be used for illegal purposes can be banned even if they also have legitimate uses.  In the Brand X case, the Court will decide whether the Cable Companies, like the Telcos have to open up access to their lines into the house to other potential service providers like ISP's.   Later in the year, Congress will be working on a possible update to the Telecommunications Act, which is widely viewed as flawed.  For the last decade the role of the FCC, a group of 5 Commissioners, which once had the fairly sleepy job of regulating a stagnant network system has become a critical battlefield for a multitude of issues.  The Brand X Case, for example, is the direct result of an FCC ruling that said that the Cable Companies were not required to share their lines, a decision that was later overturned by the 9th District Federal Court of Appeals.

And so, against this background, on Wednesday, the F2C Conference opened in the AFI Silver Theatre outside of Washington. Expert speakers like Susan Crawford, Jim Baller, Robert Corn-Revere, John Perry Barlow, Rahul Tongia and Dan Gillmor, to name just a few, talked about First Amendment speech and press issues; alternative network build-out approaches; the need for a neutral, private, transparent, fully accessible network; societal access implications; and potential technology solutions. What couldn't have been made more eminently clear to all who attended in person or via the webcast, was`that the consequences of choices in future directions for the Web are far too important to be left to the politicians and lobbyists to sort out on their own. If they are left to do that, without the direct input and actions of all of us most directly affected, it's highly likely that this dynamic moment in communication history will become something looked back at in nostalgia or anger for what might have been.