Political Bloviation

TAP: Vol 11, Iss. 10. Innovation, Regulation, and the Internet. Lawrence Lessig.
The Case for Competitive Neutrality

If there’s a better explanation of why this is important to a free and open internet, please tell me:

The Internet is the fastest-growing computer network in history. It is not, however, the first computer network. There were many before it, many of which were extremely well-funded. Something, however, was different about the Internet, something in its design.

In the view of many, the critical difference is a design principle that network architects Jerome Saltzer, David P. Reed, and David Clark call “end-to-end.” This model regulates where “intelligence” in a network is placed. It counsels that intelligence be placed in the applications. As described by Saltzer, “end-to-end” says: “Don’t force any service, feature, or restriction on the customer; his application knows best what features it needs and whether or not to provide those features itself.” Build the network to give the application or users control over the service; don’t allow the network any such control. The network is to remain stupid, and intelligence is to reside at the ends.

End-to-end was initially chosen as a technical principle. But it didn’t take long before another aspect of end-to-end became obvious: It enforced a kind of competitive neutrality. The network did not discriminate against new applications or content because it was incapable of doing so. The network can’t tell the difference between a packet carrying Republican speech and a packet carrying Democratic speech; it doesn’t notice the difference between a packet sent from a Windows operating system and one sent by Linux; it can’t filter out the streaming of video from the streaming of audio. The network is designed not to know these differences, but simply to take the packet offered and route it as it is addressed. This doesn’t mean that users can’t discriminate. The point of end-to-end is not that everything goes; it is to locate the power to discriminate in the users–they choose–and to remove that power from the network. The principle thus regulates the power to discriminate. It requires that the network have none.

This regulation too affects innovation. Just like the license governing open code, endto-end means that the network owner can’t pick and choose which applications or content will run. As the network can’t discriminate, the test of whether new content or applications run is thus not whether the network owner likes it, but whether the content or application can be coded in an IP protocol. If it can, it will run; and if it is desired, then it will become dominant. Like open code, the principle of end-to-end vests control over the evolution of the Internet in (the many) developers and consumers, and not in (the few) network owners. Like open code, it is a regulation designed to enable innovation.

The consequence of this principle has been profound. By keeping itself open to evolution, the network has developed in ways that no one would have imagined at the start. At each stage, there have been pressures to optimize on the present model, and the commitment to end-to-end has avoided such calcification. As Saltzer, Clark, and Reed note, had the network been optimized in the 1980s for telephony, as many thought it should, the World Wide Web would not have been possible. A commitment to simple and stupid networks has produced an opportunity for surprising and radical innovation.

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