Re: RFC3271 and independance of "cyberspace"

Keith you have put your finger squarely on the nub of what is wrong 
with this RFC .
I recommend to you and other list members the essay of Yochai 
Benkler.  Grab the whole essay with the following URL.  Benkler asks 
that we consider what we are doing.  Building the perfect shopping 
mall or the great agora.  His question is the same as yours.  i quote 
my own summary from COOK Report volume 11, nos. 3-4, pp. 5-6
Consider Benkler's challenge in his two year old essay: "From 
Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation 
Toward Sustainable Commons and User Access." The complete paper is 
found at: http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v52/no3/benkler1.pdf
In April of 2000 he closed this article with the following eloquent 
plea.  "Once legislatures conceive of those whose welfare they serve 
as users, rather than as consumers, the relevant focus of regulation 
should shift to enabling the widest possible range of users to use 
the resource for active communication, not simply for passive 
reception."
This we contend is the critical question never asked.  Why are we 
building these communications systems?  To provide services and make 
money of course.  But what is it that we expect the system to do? 
Enable a new generation of couch potatoes like the television of the 
last major communications revolution?  Or, since we now know and 
understand that this technology makes possible, will we ask that the 
legal power of the state be invoked to ensure that those who pay for 
it will be able to run their own web sites, host their own discussion 
forums, publish their own research and opinions or run their own 
electronic store fronts?
Who Will Own the Printing Press?

Benkler's analysis shows that these are the most fundamental and 
basic questions.  Ones that must be answered before a legal and 
regulatory approach is applied to the technology.  If we answer that 
we are going to build a legal and regulatory framework that enables 
users rather than consumers, our entire approach must change in 
radical ways to be in keeping with the goals that we wish to use the 
law and regulation to achieve.
Two years ago Benkler pointed out that the approach being undertaken 
was to enable consumers.  He suggested that, perhaps, it was being 
done perhaps out of ignorance.  After two more years of life on the 
fast track aimed at the creation of Internet-couch-potatoe-consumers, 
we can no longer claim ignorance of what we are allowing our 
politicians and the FCC to do.  Consider again Benkler's call to arms:
"Today, as the Internet and the digitally networked environment 
present us with a new set of regulatory choices, it is important to 
set our eyes on the right prize. That prize is not the Great Shopping 
Mall in Cyberspace. That prize is the Great Agora-the unmediated 
conversation of the many with the many. [snip]  An open, free, flat, 
peer-to-peer network best serves the ability of anyone-individual, 
small group, or large group-to come together to build our information 
environment. It is through such open and equal participation that we 
will best secure both robust democratic discourse and individual 
expressive freedom."




>  > well, keith since we cannot amend RFCs maybe you should prepare 
> one of your own?
> maybe.
>
> >  I am not sure that the idea of killing intellectual property is 
> > the right one either.
> >  We all know there is something wrong with the current set up but I 
> > am no sure that
> >  the wholesale dispatch of Intellectual Property concepts is the 
> > right answer either!
> nor did I quite suggest doing that.
>
> however, there seems to be a strong and alarming tendency for global 
> legal frameworks on
> IPR to discourage, rather than encourage, the notion that the 
> Internet is for everyone.
> or perhaps they encourage the notion that the Internet is for 
> everyone to be a consumer
> of works that are produced and controlled by a few large companies, 
> rather than a vehicle
> which enables everyone to share their ideas, expressions, and 
> experiences with others.
> Keith

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