[Note: This comment comes from friend Erik Cecil. DLH]
From: Erik Cecil <erik.cecil@gmail.com>
Date: November 20, 2009 4:33:25 PM PST
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] O’Reilly Warns Of Web War
Ironic that folks are only noticing now, but this is also far less apparent from outside the industry. We forget that the web is built on regulated telecom network that we later deregulated right at the moment competitive networks were creating entire new ecospheres. As a result carriers were able to leverage regulated versus deregulated and large ISPs, equipment vendors, etc. forced to adapt. This is why, as I’ve written extensively in Gordon Cook’s publication and other places that Net Neutrality is not only a non-solution, but worse than a solution as it retains the appearance of quasi-regulation in a space that only antitrust should seriously tread. It also shows us how utterly politicized regulation can become when no one can actually understand it. The only real long term solution is to put the tools of common carriage in the hands of individuals. This would not only begin to remedy the walled gardens at the physical and application layer it would also lend simplicity and transparency to attempts to regulate bad behavior with regard to copyright that utterly confuse actor, agent, and intermediary due to confusion between rational use of advanced technology and attempts to impose penalties on owners of technology without evidence of affirmative act or intent. The law simply cannot see the trees for the forest, when in fact, the actual problem is that intelligence is at the edge but legal power remains in the middle. We are more than overdue for a change because what OReilly misses is just how dangerous the existing regulatory structure is to the networks over which all of this activity occurs.
Regards,
Erik J. Cecil, Esq.
Source Law, PC
O’Reilly Warns Of Web War
The Web, which began life as an open community where information and tools were freely shared across geographic, political, and social boundaries, is in danger of becoming segmented into a federation of closed camps led by a handful of increasingly powerful vendors, said Internet pundit Tim O’Reilly. O’Reilly said efforts by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and other tech vendors — as well as publishers like Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones — to create closed communities around their products and services are jeopardizing the freedom, and the spirit, of the Web. “It’s no longer about the Internet as a platform,” said O’Reilly. “It’s Google as a platform, it’s Amazon as a platform, it’s Microsoft as a platform,” he said
<http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/web2.0/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221800396>