DPI-665Politics of the Internet

• January 30, 2012 notes

• Audio here: http://www.livescribe.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LDApp.woa/wa/MLSOverviewPage?sid=0P5shM74q2p7

• Professor Micah L. Sifry

• CC BY-NC-SA

Reminders

• Send me your blog address and Twitter handle

• My email is Micah_Sifry@hks.harvard.edu

• First blog post is due Feb 1, before class

Review

• How does the Internet change politics?

• Before Internet vs after Internet

• What are the politics of the early Internet, as expressed by its makers and in its architecture?

• (Coming soon: What kinds of politics does the Internet make more possible?)

The politics of the Internet’s architecture

• The tools for connection matter (are they open or closed?)

• The network for connection matters (decentralized or centralized?)

• The Internet is built on open tools and decentralized connections

• All data is treated equally

The values of its makers

• To connect anyone to anyone, as simply as possible

• Not built around creating billing events, but around creating connections

• Open process (“rough consensus and running code”) leads to better outcomes

• To build a better human society

The result

• No one owns it (it’s a distributed agreement, not a tangible property)

• Everyone can use it (it scales infinitely because it’s easy to join)

• Anyone can improve it (new services can be added at the edge, permission-free)

What regulates the Internet?

• Laws (of the governments where it is hosted)

• Norms (of its makers and users)

• Markets (affecting its availability)

• Architecture (the affordances of its code)

The Internet’s tendency

• Laws and Markets are often beyond the power of the Internet’s makers.

• Only Norms and Architecture are more fully directed by them.

• The Internet is not perfectly free…but it expands freedom.

• The early Internet is an idealized model; today Internet governance is more organized, less anarchic.

Dave Clark

• “We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.”

John Gilmore

• "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

• "How many of you have broken no laws this month? That's the kind of society I want to build …with physics and mathematics, not with laws...."

Jon Postel

• "Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."

Richard Stallman

• What does society need? It needs information that is truly available to its citizens—for example, programs that people can read, fix, adapt, and improve, not just operate.

• Society also needs freedom.

• And, above all, society needs to encourage the spirit of voluntary cooperation in its citizens.

John Perry Barlow

• Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

The Internet is thus in conflict with…

• Property rights (copying/sharing is inherent to computers; making a copy does not equal taking a physical object)

• Governments that try to interfere with it.• What else?• Do you agree?

First blog post due Feb 1

• Your post should be based on the readings for Jan. 25 and Jan. 30 in the syllabus. Your post should be about 500 words. Either:

a) summarize at least one of the key arguments made in those readings and analyze and evaluate that argument, explaining why you agree or disagree with it, using relevant material from those readings, class discussion, or your own work, experiences and/or research; or

b) explore this question: what are the default behaviors and traditional practices exposed and potentially disrupted by the new culture made possible by the emergence of the Internet. Treat this as establishing a baseline where you are essentially saying what you think now about these issues. At the end of the semester it will be useful for you to go back and see how your views may have changed or been expanded.

• Creativity, use of relevant outside sources, and compelling arguments will all improve how these posts are graded.