Should the Internet be owned and maintained by the government, just like the highways? Vint Cerf, the “father of the Internet” and Google’s Internet evangelist, made this radical suggestion while he was sitting next to me on a panel yesterday about national tech policy at the Personal Democracy Forum. Maybe he was inspired by the presence of one of the other panelists, Claudio Prado, from Brazil’s Ministry of Culture, who kept on talking about the importance of embracing Internet “peeracy.” (Although, I should note that Mr. Cerf frowned upon that ill-advised coinage). But I think (or hope, rather) that he was really trying to spark a debate about whether the Internet should be treated more like the public resource that it is.
His comment was in the context of a bigger discussion about the threat to Net neutrality posed by the cable and phone companies, who are making moves to control the amount and types of bits that can go through their pipes. It was made almost in passing and the discussion quickly moved to other topics.
Maybe I didn’t fully understand him (I wasn’t taking notes), and he certainly is better versed in the issues at hand than everyone else who was in that auditorium combined. But nationalizing the Internet is bad idea. (I can’t believe I even have to say this). It would set a horrible precedent, would undermine confidence in the American economy, and would be difficult to pull off.
I tried to press Mr. Cerf on how exactly such a scheme would work without making Internet service even less competitive than it is today. He offered that the government could put the actual running of the service out to competitive bidding. It’s still a bad idea.
The Internet is essentially a series of agreements between owners of different networks about how data gets passed from one to the other. It is not clear what property exactly would be nationalized. AT&T’s backbone fiber network, for instance, sometimes carries Internet traffic, and sometimes carries telephone voice traffic. So if the government were to confiscate all the data pipes, they would nationalize the phone industry as well.
While nationalizing the Internet is the wrong solution, the problem it would address is very real. The ground rules for how the Internet is used need to be clarified. And that was the bigger point that Mr. Cerf was trying to make. But the government does not need to own the underlying assets that make up the Internet in order to set up ground rules that American companies need to abide by. That is what laws are for.
I have some ideas on how the government can actually do something useful here. More on that in a future post.
Sure, lets nationalize the internet, so that Comcast can win a no-bid contract and charge you $50 for every user that comes to your site.
Is this out of Atlas Shrugged?? Yikes. Nationalizing the internet is a horrible idea. That would be a disaster.
Wow, I’ve been working a lot with Governments and believe me nationalizing is a very bad idea. It’s a guaranteed method to grind down the little progress we’re making.
I don’t know what he’s thinking. Just go look at the conditions of our roads NOW and the money we waste towards them. That’s what’ll happen to the Internet, but in a far more damaging scale, since the Internet breeds innovation. Government will stifle it.
The fact that this was posted at all is what makes this post so outrageously useless
Simply Answer: NO!
I would trust comcast & att before I trust the government to innovate.
“in that auditorium combined. But nationalizing the Internet is bad idea. (I can’t believe I even have to say this).”
I don’t think this is proper grammar, esp not starting a sentence with “But”.
AFAIK, they already did it in China.
http://www.foxn...,207910,00.html
“Last month, the company’s former chief executive, David Carruthers, was arrested at a Texas airport and a 22-count indictment was unveiled in St. Louis, Mo., alleging fraud and racketeering against the company.”
Was it David’s fault that Americans were breaking the law by using his website? It was legal in the UK.
So I think he has a point. Different countries allow different things. As open and free as the internet is, it allows people to break laws by ignorance. In the US you can’t use that as a defense. You probably should though.
So even Mike Arrington broke the law by using 23andMe. That was in the US, but internationally people could visit this website.
http://www.mari...ry.ca/main.html
And mistakenly order some marijuana which is legal in Canada when you have as little as a tooth ache. I think it would protect a lot of unsuspecting people.
It would also help prevent globalization which is good. We in the US shouldn’t have to compete with peoples in other countries targeting our market.
“in that auditorium combined. But nationalizing the Internet is bad idea. (I can’t believe I even have to say this).”
I don’t think this is proper grammar, esp not starting a sentence with “But”.
AFAIK, they already did it in China.
http://www.foxn...,207910,00.html
“Last month, the company’s former chief executive, David Carruthers, was arrested at a Texas airport and a 22-count indictment was unveiled in St. Louis, Mo., alleging fraud and racketeering against the company.”
Was it David’s fault that Americans were breaking the law by using his website? It was legal in the UK.
So I think he has a point. Different countries allow different things. As open and free as the internet is, it allows people to break laws by ignorance. In the US you can’t use that as a defense. You probably should though.
So even Mike Arrington broke the law by using 23andMe. That was in the US, but internationally people could visit this website.
marijuanahomedelivery.ca/main.html
And mistakenly order some marijuana which is legal in Canada when you have as little as a tooth ache. I think it would protect a lot of unsuspecting people.
It would also help prevent globalization which is good. We in the US shouldn’t have to compete with peoples in other countries targeting our market.
No! And neither should healthcare, the oil industry, and anthing else that is currently sub-optimal.
The issue is not the Internet, it is the miserable infrastructure situation! The analog is the highway system owned by the government. The problems are not (at least arguably) with the traffic (cars and trucks). The problems are with the existence and state of the physical infrastructure (roads). In some places there are no superhighways to contribute to the economy. In many places there are no information superhighways, either, despite “competition” and deregulation.
The government should take on the infrastructure issue, building out the net everywhere with the latest technology (fiber optics). Then the crappy major communications companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast would provide services on the infrastructure. Along the way they could not charge the exorbitant prices that they now do.
There are scenarios that could be beneficial. For instance, by nationalizing the cabling or wiring then many cable/dsl/phone companies could utilize it and we could choose which one (of then less regulated) we wanted to subscribe to. I concede that the boondoggle would then be how (and to whom) taxes were spent for upgrades (to fiber optics, for instance). But a better choice would be to separate the businesses. Some companies provide the cabling or wiring, others provides the phone or DSL or catv. The same could said for electricity.
Yes. Definitely the Intertube is broken and gooberment peeple like Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska could do a better job managin it for all us techie loozers.
the Internet is a series of agreements? Common misconception.
It’s a series of tubes!!
OMG. Vint Cerf must be getting senile. This is about the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of. Next thing you know, someone will propose the United Nations should run it. Save these idiotic ideas for April Fools day, where they belong.
@ Vaughan
You mean to tell me you would like the same bozos who run broadband in the USA to be running the whole internet? Well, I guess that’s a great idea if you want the rest of the world to have sh*tty internet last mile like the USA.
I work at the FCC. We, the government, could do an excellent job of running the Internet — Just like the FDA does an excellent job preventing contaminated tomatoes from entering the USA.
NOT !
Communist fuck off!!!
we should nationalize the oil companies
SuggestionLocator.com
No disrespect, but leave it up to an old guy to suggest something like this. Fortunately for us, young people run the Internet world and don’t trust the government. No way, dude. Sorry.
Nationalize the internet? Not really even possible. On the other hand, the UTOPIA project in Utah shows that a coalition of local governments can indeed run the underlying network.
UTOPIA customers are the only people in the country who have fiber connections all the way to the termination point (not just to the local dist node like Verizon’s FIOS). They’re getting gig-e speeds at the same price I pay for 6Mbit. Government providing the underlying infrastructure is a good thing. We let them do it for roads, it makes sense that they do it for power and internet too.
(BTW, china doesn’t own the internet in china – several companies compete, even if they’re mostly majority owned by the state)
Indeed, this is a horrible idea. There are already way too many aspects of everyday life that got nationalised in one way or another. If this ever happened (and given the imbecility of the people ruling us this is not completely out of question), the Internet as we know it would be dead.
Took a lot of left wing professors to make this consideration possible.
Man, the pendulum in this country is shifting towards Socialism. We all need to attack these stupid ideas and expose them.
I guess it’s part of the trend with the Democratic Party being taken over by Modern Liberals. I can see that most comments here are by people who realize the lunacy of Socialism, but we have to learn more about why these Socialists can so easily dismiss the history of failures of their ideas. Everywhere Socialism is tried, people die and the rest want to escape it.
This infestation affects just about everything in our culture.
I have posted this link before here, but I have to keep doing it as it has helped me understand why Modern Liberals seem to want to do the opposite of what is correct. It’s a talk called “HOW MODERN LIBERALS THINK” by Evan Sayet. It’s very good.
http://www.yout...h?v=eaE98w1KZ-c
Not only is it a horrible idea, it would be impossible to do. Hasn’t anybody seen terminator 3? You can’t control skynet! While you can block access to certain portals and cut off service to certain regions/households, etc, there are many hackers and professional internet gurus that are better with the systems than anybody the government has employed. While I do like the idea of net neutrality and stopping the large phone companies from ripping everybody off, I think that through the continued development of internet technology, even if the phone companies were to control the internet, a better, cheaper solution would arise. http://www.read...ex.php?RTA=web2
“(I wasn’t taking notes)”
Did you honestly not take notes?
That’s a lot of article from memory.
Distribution channels are almost always the proper subject of government established monopoly and regulation. That which is distributed via those channels should, on the other hand, almost always be determined solely by market forces (with limited exceptions such as safety regulations.)
We should have “public” Roads; waterways; power, telephony, and cable networks; airways; airwaves; water pipes, etc.
In general, those who maintain a distribution channel should never be permitted to be “users” of that channel or providers of content that flows through the channel. Thus, those who maintain the cable networks should never be permitted to provide programming, those who offer internet service should not be permitted to provide content or application services. Those who maintain railroad tracks should not be permitted to run rail cars or engines. etc. Funding for distribution channels should either be by tax in very special circumstances (i.e. for roads, water distribution, etc.) or by auction to the highest bidder (i.e. driven by market forces). Usage rights over a public channel should never be provided in perpetuity — terms of use should always be limited and thus subject to reallocation after new auctions.
Whenever you see a channel maintained by a user or content provider, what you are seeing is one of two things: 1) Special interests that are “stealing” from the common wealth or 2) The result of government incompetence to maintain the channel.
Distribution channels should be monopolized and regulated, distributed content (physical or non-physical) should be subject to the open market.
The internet is an essential public distribution channel. It should not be subject to the whims of private concerns. If we don’t have a government that can maintain it for us, then we should get a new government.
bob wyman
#23
please change your name to big booby
Erick: The issue of Net Neutrality is something we’re also dealing with in Canada. In a fashion very typical to Comcast, Bell Canada and Rogers both turned on deep packet inspection (DPI), enabling them to selectively decide what type of traffic gets the “fast” lane and what traffic hits the wall.
Last night, in Toronto, a coalition called SaveOurNet.Ca, led by those also responsible for the Comcast/Verizon/AT&T fight in the US at saveourinternet.com met to discuss the issue in an open forum and to force the Canadian government to consider the effects a regulated Internet would have on innovation in Canada. I wrote a follow-up post on my blog at: http://benlucie...-poor-planning/
It’s a complicated issue and I’m looking forward to seeing your upcoming post on your ideas. -Ben
Vint Cerf is becoming old, though bearing the title the father of the Internet. Please give him a break, he is just becoming too old to think it through.
[ironic] Yeah, this is a great idea. America nationalizes the web and then you can almost have a free pass for the Homeland News Service…
Keep the Dream Alive America![/ironic]
The fundamentalists come out in force with a resounding No, for no other reason than it goes against doctrine. But tell me, why do you trust corporations? Government and corporations are the same people, same money, same thing.
Well, we nationalized the air traffic control system; although the privatized model in Canada has fewer delays due to routing and a more modern technological infrastructure.
We have national highways that are subsidized by the feds, although a great deal of the maintenance is private contractors. Only our passenger railways are quasi-public, for profit, with a pitiful federal budget, and that’s mostly for rolling stock.
A federal internet……hmmmmm…..maybe just an enlightened set of federal policies.
in France, and for many years, all the pipes belong to France Telecom, a company owned by the government.
Result is a healthier competition because for a 65-million inhabitants country, they have 8 major ISPs with extremely high competition between all these players. For 29 euros, you get 20MBdown/2MBUp, free cable TV and free nationwide and international phone.
this is why France is by far more advanced than USA when it comes to bandwidth and pricing. I pay in Florida $55 for comcast with 1/2 the bandwidth of what I could get in France, and that’s for internet alone.
In other words, when the pipes belong to the government, they can let all the players compete, and this leads to a healthier situation for the consumer.
Good call. Maybe their strategy is, let me see. . .DUMB.
@26
I am awed by your insightful and intelligent commentary.
Oops – almost forgot: /sarcasm.
How can someone nationalize the internet? Last I heard it spans across Geographical boundaries.
Yeah…underlying assets can be nationalized but that would be a disaster! Google will be the first one to bid for contract to manage it!
Smells like a long-term evil strategy to me.
Nationalizing the internet is the wrong term to use.
Back the ship up. The IP ADDRESS is a location identity. In another respect, it is an end-point identity. Those end-points are interesting little entities Vint.
You had the NSF and others create Network Solutions to distribute them and monetize the Internet under a specific arrangement… one that plays alot like rental property, unless you purchase those entities as a corporate entity instead of as an individual human being.
You see, no individual in America really owns anything. Real estate is a possession, not owned property. Real Estate = Royal Estate (Property of the King/Government). And your identity, the one that is organized as your citizenship at birth… yeah, you do not own that either Joe Doe.
Those IP Addresses… those end-points that end in your home, or your iPhone, or any other device you might be connected to the net through… which part of that connection is yours? Do you own the brain that feeds the net your attention? Do you own the content that creates the marketplace in all its varieties? How do suppliers, which have a known process for creating private ownership, initiate a relationship with you? Are you an owner of anything? What happens when the net is functioning like snowcrash suggests… where is the line between your attention, your biology, and the pipes?
Have you ever thought of yourself as a sovereign you?
Can you imagine a nation that is OWNED by its citizens. Not merely a nation like America that is owned by its government, and provides an opportunity to possess property privately… and certainly not a state-owned scenario like China or Russia of the past.
A new model for the world to consider. Universally Distributed Private Ownership… Of your identity, and all the information it connects to.
The reality is that corporate entities are just as alive as blood-pumping humans in our socio-economic universe… more so even, as they can live forever, and have a better tax basis for existence.
As a result, the power of a human vote has been diminished through time, the relationship your kids have with the central government has diminished from the one that your great grandparents had, and generation after generation is getting progressively weaker on an individual life basis when standing next to the social monolith that is the “Great We” organized as our US Government. No doubt, we live in a richer world, but our individual empowerments are increasingly coming with a greater price, and diminished control.
The Internet is a phenomenon of individual empowerment. I believe its destiny is to be owned by each of us individually. Ive dedicated my life to this concept…Ive reached out to Mr Cerf to discuss this concept many times over the past decade.
Before that can happen, a new model of socio-economic existence must emerge. Its baseline concept, in my opinion, is Universally Distributed Private Ownership.
Let us all be organized as socio-economic machines… from the moment of our birth. Why? Because in a socio-economic universe, there is one concept more powerful than freedom… one opportunity more powerful than “FREE”… ownership is omnipotent. You must own yourself.
Otherwise the Civil War made slaves of us all by outsourcing the costs of self-determination to the individual, and opportunity to the machine.
Vint Cerf, perhaps you have been evolving your ideas… for as you said, 1976 was not a year when these things could come about. Perhaps the time is coming….
@25: The difference is that unlike roads, electricity, and water, the ‘net has no one fixed medium that is impossible or at least difficult to duplicate. We have cable, telco lines, wireless, fiber, and all these networks can be duplicated with much less effort than duplicating roads, power distribution, or water and sewer. Therefore there is no need for a monopoly. In the case of the Internet, a monopoly would hamper innovation, no matter what politicians might try to do.
Free market competition has always shown to provide the best response to customer needs because the money comes straight from the customers. Trust me, government, especially federal government, is THE SLOWEST ORGANIZATION IN THE WORLD. If you think they’ll respond to consumer needs, you are sadly unaware of how the government works.
Vint Cerfing seems to be a dangerous sport, what with all the hot air blowing.
Next thing one could argue for would be a nationalized protection system, called the great firewall, to protect us from external attacks via the internet. Of course, to make sure no one goes above the speed limit (as on the highways), one would need to police every packet.
Then again, it could all be outsourced to China.
Vint Cerf isn’t old or dumb. He’s a Googler and he’s working for his Google overlords.
Right now Google’s ad-bits get a free ride on all of our ISPs thanks to net neutrality. Vint just wants to make sure that Verizon, ATT and Rogers and Bell don’t come knocking on Google’s doors for a slice of the ad revenue to keep them moving.
The internet isn’t a highway – and personally, I don’t want to keep paying for Google’s adbits in ISP charges or through government taxes.
I say – let the ISPs block the ad bits until Google pays them for delivering the ads.
Hi, I’m Vint Cerf. You may remember me from such films as Mr. Deeds. I played the character of Cecil in that movie.
Seems to me the phone company worked best as a regulated monopoly, and as Darwin foretold, left to nature and natural selection, my Ameritech dsl has evolved into SBC dsl, which has further evolved into AT&T dsl. It’s in the genes.
You Nationalize the Internet and you kill it !!!!
An internet localized to the United States would be pretty good though.
Why not protect our markets from countries that pay $.50 an hour?
Let’s protect our developers.
Oh my god. Please put this man out to pasture, his brain has stopped working.
You know what would be even awesomer???
If the US government would put a new digital customs and inspections on digital goods from outside the United States. That way it could put tarrifs and customs and duties charges on work and digital goods purchased outside of the United States to settle the score.
They should do this via a router that would require that goods sold outside the US to Americans go through one uniform portal.
It would raise untold revenue for the US govt to pay for schools, education, and programs, and it would also give Americans a good incentive to buy at home.
@46 continued
Furthermore, if any company tries to circumvent this official govt portal for international sales of goods OR services, they get auto-banned on the national firewall until they apply for re-en statement.
Internet == regulated == fair trade online
That’s the American way.
Can we just find a place for the communists to live on this planet? I’m am quite certain there are plenty. Maybe they could all move to one place where their dreams can come true? I am done with these people influencing my life. No problems with communists, just want them in Venzuela or wherever makes sense, away from me.
Chris- Get out of my county immediately. I don’t care where you go, OUT! NOW!
As a 50% lakota native, you belong somewhere else. It is for all our best interests. I can’t help you, you worthless scum.
@49, Just like softwood lumber. The Canadian govt raped it’s own people to subsidize a dying industry to be unfair then imported the subsidized goods into the US, and the US slammed them. The WTO be damned.
Let’s give people a reason to come to America again. [ GRINS ]