BBS in a Box 2/BBS in a box - Trilogy II.iso/Files/Mag/D-G/Electronic Frontier/Building the Open Road

Text File | 1993-08-04 | 54.6 KB | 729 lines | [TEXT/EDIT]

BUILDING THE OPEN ROAD:

The NREN as a Test-Bed for the National Public Network







Mitchell Kapor and Jerry Berman

 Building the Open Road:
The NREN as a Test-Bed for the National Public Network

Mitchell Kapor and Jerry Berman*

    A debate has begun about the future of America's communications infrastructure.  At stake is the
future of the web of information links organically evolving from computer and telephone systems.  By the
end of the next decade, these links will connect nearly all homes and businesses in the U.S. They will
serve as the main channels for commerce, learning, education, and entertainment in our society. The new
information infrastructure will not be created in a single step: neither by a massive infusion of public
funds, nor with the private capital of a few tycoons, such as those who built the railroads.   Rather the
national, public broadband digital network will emerge from the "convergence" of the public telephone
network, the cable television distribution system, and other networks such as the Internet.

    The United States Congress is now taking a critical step toward what we call the National Public
Network, as the Senate and the House of Representatives move toward enacting legislation to authorize
the  National Research and Education Network (NREN, pronounced “en-ren”).  Not only will the NREN
meet the computer and communication needs of scientists, researchers, and educators, but also, if
properly implemented, it could demonstrate how a broadband network can be used in the future.  As
policy makers debate the role of the public telephone and other existing information networks in the
nation's information infrastructure, the NREN can serve as a working test-bed for new technologies,
applications, and governing policies that will ultimately shape the larger national network.  Congress has
indicated its intention that the NREN provide American researchers and educators with the computer
and information resources they need, while demonstrating how advanced computer, high speed
networks, and electronic databases can improve the national information infrastructure for use by all
Americans.1

    As currently envisioned, the NREN would connect more than one million people at more than
one thousand colleges, universities, laboratories, and hospitals throughout the country, giving them
access to computing power and information--resources unavailable anywhere today--and making
possible the rapid proliferation of a truly nationwide, ubiquitous network...2 The combined demand of
these users would develop innovative new services and further stimulate demand for existing network
applications.  Library information services, for example, have already grown dramatically on the NREN's
predecessor, the Internet, because the enhanced connectivity permits scholars and researchers to
communicate in new and different ways.... Clearly, to be successful, effective, and of use to the academic
and research communities, the NREN must be designed to nurture and accommodate both the current as
well as future yet unknown uses of valuable information resources.3

    So as the NREN implementation process progresses, it is vital that the opportunities to stimulate
innovative new information technologies be kept in mind, along with the specific needs of the mission
agencies which will come to depend on the network.

    Far from evolving into the whole of the National Public Network itself, the NREN is best thought
of as a prototype for the NPN, which will emerge over time from the phone system, cable television, and
many computer networks.  But the NREN is a growth site which, unlike privately controlled systems, can
be consciously shaped to meet public needs.  For a wide variety of services, some of which might not be
commercially viable at the outset, the NREN can provide selective access that proves feasibility and leads
to the creation of a commercial infrastructure that can support universal services.... If we fully focus on
[current] goals and work our way through a multitude of technical and operational issues in the process,
then the success of the NREN will fully support its extension to broader uses in the years to follow.4
In order to function as an effective test-bed, one that promotes broad access to a range of innovative,
developing services, the NREN must be built so that it is easy for developers to offer new kinds of
applications and is accessible to a diversity of users.  For example, to encourage the development of
creative, advanced library services, it must be easy for libraries to open their data bases to users all across
the network.  And if these library services are to flourish through the NREN, then the services must be
available to researchers and students all over the country, through a variety of channels.  Though the
NREN itself is intended to meet the supercomputing and networking needs of the government-financed
research community, Congress has wisely recognized that it can also function as a channel for delivery of
a wide range of privately developed information services.  To encourage use of the Network by
commercial information service providers, where technically feasible, the Network shall have accounting
mechanisms which allow, where appropriate, users or groups of users to be charged for their usage of
copyrighted materials over the Network.5

    Congress can create an environment that stimulates information entrepreneurship by mandating
that the NREN rely on open technical standards whose specifications are not controlled by any private
parties and that are freely available for all to use.  Such non-proprietary standards will ensure that
different parts of the network, built and operated by independent parties, will all work together properly.
By employing widely used, non-proprietary standards, the NREN will make it easy for new information
providers to offer their wares on the network.  The market will snowball: as more services are offered,
more users will be attracted, who will increase overall demand.  The NREN will also be a test-bed for
development of and experimentation with new networking standards that facilitate even broader, more
efficient interconnection than now possible on the Internet.  But throughout the stages of the NREN, all
concerned should work to assure that these functionalities are fostered.

    The NREN design and construction process is complex and will have significant effects on future
communications infrastructure design:
    Building the NREN has frequently been described as akin to building a house, with various
layers of the network architecture compared to parts of the house.  In an expanded view of this analogy,
planning the NII [national information infrastructure] is like designing a large, urban city.
    The NREN is a big new subdivision on the edge of the metropolis, reserved for researchers and
educators.  It is going to be built first and is going to look lonely out there in the middle of the pasture for
a while.  But the city will grow up around it in time, and as construction proceeds, the misadventures
encountered in the NREN subdivision will not have to be repeated in others.  And there will be many
house designs, not just those the NREN families are comfortable with.... The lessons we learn today in
building the NREN will be used tomorrow in building the NII.6 The coming implementation and design
of the NREN offers us a critical opportunity to shape a small but important part of the National Public
Network.



VISIONS

    At its best, the National Public Network would be the source of immense social benefits. As a
means of increasing social cohesiveness, while retaining the diversity that is an American strength, the
network could help revitalize this country's business and culture.  As Senator Gore has said, the new
national network that is emerging is one of the "smokestack industries of the information age."7  It will
increase the amount of individual participation in common enterprise and politics. It could also galvanize
a new set of relationships-- business and personal-- between Americans and the rest of the world.

    The names and particular visions of the emerging information infrastructure vary from one
observer to another.8  Senator Gore calls it the "National Information Superhighway."  Prof. Michael
Dertouzos imagines a "National Information Infrastructure [that] would be a common resource of
computer-communications services, as easy to use and as important as the telephone network, the electric
power grid, and the interstate highways."9  We call it the National Public Network (NPN), in recognition
of the vital role information technology has come to play in public life and all that it has to offer, if
designed with the public good in mind.

    To what ends can we reasonably expect people to use a National Public Network? We don't
know. Indeed, we probably can't know--the users of the network will surprise us. That's exactly what
happened in the early days of the personal computer industry, when the first spreadsheet program,
VisiCalc, spurred sales of the Apple II computer. Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did not
design the spreadsheet; they did not even conceive of it. They created a platform which allowed someone
else to bring the spreadsheet into being, and all the parties profited as a result, including the users.

    Based on today's systems, however, we can make a few educated guesses about the National
Public Network. We know that, like the telephone, it will serve both business and recreation needs, as
well as offering crucial community services. Messaging will be popular: time and time again, from the
ARPANET to Prodigy, people have surprised network planners with their eagerness to exchange mail.
"Mail" will not just mean voice and text, but also pictures and video--no doubt with many new variations.
One might imagine two people poring over a manuscript from opposite ends of the country, marking it
up simultaneously and seeing each others' markings appear on the screen.

    We know from past demand on the Internet and commercial personal computer networks  that
the network will be used for electronic assembly--virtual town halls, village greens, and coffee houses,
again taking place not just through shared text (as in today's computer networks), but with multimedia
transmissions, including images, voice, and video. Unlike the telephone, this network will also be a
publications medium, distributing electronic newsletters, video clips, and interpreted reports.10

    We can speculate but cannot be sure about novel uses of the network.  An information
marketplace will include electronic invoicing, billing, listing, brokering, advertising, comparison-
shopping, and matchmaking of various kinds. "Video on demand" will not just mean ordering current
movies, as if they were spooling down from the local videotape store, but opening floodgates to vast new
amounts of independent work, with high quality thanks to plummeting prices of professional-quality
desktop video editors. Customers will grow used to dialing up two-minute demos of homemade videos
before ordering the full program and storing it on their own blank tape.

    There will be other important uses of the network as a simulation medium for experiences which
are impossible to obtain in the mundane world.  If scientists want to explore the surface of a molecule,
they'll do it in simulated form, using wrap-around three-dimensional animated graphics that create a
convincing illusion of being in a physical place.   This visualization of objects from molecules to galaxies
is already becoming an extraordinarily powerful scientific tool.  Networks will amplify this power to the
point that these simulation tools take their place as fundamental scientific apparatus alongside
microscopes and telescopes.  Less exotically, a consumer or student might walk around the inside of a
working internal combustion engine--without getting burned.

    Perhaps the most significant change the National Public Network will afford us is a new mode of
building communities--as did the telephone, radio, and television.  People often think of electronic
"communities" as far-flung communities of interest between followers of a particular discipline. But we
are learning, through examples like the PEN system in Santa Monica and the Old Colorado City system in
Colorado Springs, that digital media can serve as a local nexus, an evanescent meeting-ground, that adds
levels of texture to relationships between people in a particular locale.

    Computer and communications technologies are transforming speech into electronic formats and
shifting the locus of the marketplace of ideas from traditional public places to the new electronic public
forums established over telephone, cable, and related electronic communications networks.  To both local
and long-distance communities, accessible digital communications will be increasingly important; by the
end of this decade, the "body politic," the "body social," and the "body commercial" of this country will
depend on a nervous system of fiber-optic lines and computer switches.

    But whatever details and names one gives to the vision of a final product, a network that is
responsive to a wide spectrum of human needs will not evolve by default.  Just as it is necessary for an
architect to know how to make a home suitable for human habitation, it is necessary to consider how
humans will actually use the network in order to design it.

    In that spirit, we offer a set of recommendations for the evolution of the National Public Network.
I first encountered many of the fundamental ideas underlying these proposals in the computer
networking community.  Some of these recommendations address immediate concerns; others are more
long-term.  The focus is on the role of public access and commercial experiments in the NREN, which
complement its research and education mission.   The recommendations are organized here according to
the main needs which they will serve: first, ensuring that the design and use of the network remains open
to diversity,  second, safeguarding the freedom of users. The ultimate goal is to develop a habitable,
usable, and sustainable system--a nation of electronic neighborhoods that people will feel comfortable
living within.



Recommendations

I. Encourage Competition Among Carriers

In the context of the NREN, act now to create a level and competitive playing field for private network
carriers, (whether for-profit or not-for-profit) to compete.  Do not give a monopoly to any carrier.   The
growing network must be a site where competitive energy produces innovation for the public benefit, not
the refuge of monopolists.

    The post-divestiture phone system offers us a valuable lesson: a telecommunications network can
be managed effectively by separate companies --even including bitter opponents like AT&T and MCI-- as
long as they can connect equitably and seamlessly from the user's standpoint. The deregulated
telecommunications system may not work perfectly and may produce too much litigation, but it does
work. We should never go back to any monopoly arrangement like the pre-divestiture AT&T, which held
back market-driven innovation in telecommunications for half a century.  Given the interconnection
technology now available, we should never again have to accept the argument that we have to sacrifice
interoperability for efficiency, reliability, or ease-of-use.

    Similarly, the NREN, and later the National Public Network, must be allowed to grow without
being dominated by any single company.  Contracting requirements in the current legislation advance
this goal.

The Network shall be established in a manner which fosters and maintains competition within the
telecommunications industry and promotes the development of interconnected high-speed data networks
by the private sector.11 Absent a truly competitive environment, a dominant carrier might use its
privileged access to stifle competitors unfairly: "Use our local service to connect to our undersea
international links, without the $3 surcharge we tack on for other carriers." The greatest danger is
"balkanization"--in which the net is broken up into islands, each developing separately, without enough
interconnecting bridges to satisfy users' desires for universal connectivity.  Strong interoperability
requirements and adherence to standards must be built into the design of the NREN from the outset.12

    After 1992, private companies will manage an ever-greater share of the NREN cables and
switches. The NSF should use both carrot and stick to encourage as much interconnection as possible.
For example, the NSF could make funding to NREN backbone carriers contingent on participation in an
internetwork exchange agreement that would serve as a framework for a standards-based environment.
As the NREN is implemented, some formal affirmation of fair access is needed--ideally by an "Internet
Exchange Association" formed to settle common rules and standards. (Their efforts, if strong enough,
could forestall a costly, wasteful crazy-quilt of new regulations from the FCC and 50 State Public Utilities
Commissions.) This association should decide upon a "basket" of standard services--including messaging,
directories, international connections, access to information providers, billing, and probably more--that
are guaranteed for universal interconnection.  The Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) formed in 1991
by three commercial inter-networking carriers  represents a substantive, initial move in this direction.

II. Create an Open Platform for Innovation

Encourage information entrepreneurship through an open architecture (non-proprietary) platform, with
low barriers to entry for information providers.

    The most valuable contribution of the computer industry in the past generation is not a machine,
but an idea--the principle of open architecture. Typically, a hardware company (an Apple or IBM, for
instance) neither designs its own applications software nor requires licenses of its application vendors.
Both practices were the norm in  the mainframe era of computing. Instead, in the personal computer
market, the hardware company creates a  "platform"--a common set of specifications, published openly so
that other, often smaller, independent firms can develop their own products (like the spreadsheet
program) to work with it. In this way, the host company takes advantage of the smaller companies'
ingenuity and creativity.

    Even  interfaces rigidly controlled by a single manufacturer, like the Macintosh, embrace the
platform concept. Two years ago, when Apple began planning the System 7 release of its Macintosh
operating system, one of its first steps was to invite comment from software companies like Macromind,
Aldus, Silicon Beach, and T/Maker. In substantive, sometimes very argumentative sessions, Apple
revealed the capabilities it planned to these independents, who knew their customers and needs much
better than Apple. One multi-media company, after arguing that Apple should take a different technical
turn, actually found itself doing the work in a joint project. The most useful job of Apple's famous
"evangelists" is not selling the Mac specs, but listening to outsiders, and helping Apple itself stay flexible
enough to work with independent innovators effectively.

    In the design of the NREN, information entrepreneurship can best be promoted by building with
open standards and by making the network attractive to as many service providers and developers as
possible.  The standards adopted must meet the needs of a broad range of users, not just narrow needs of
the mission agencies that are responsible for overseeing the early stages of the NREN.  Positive efforts
should be made to encourage the development of experimental commercial services of all kinds without
requiring the negotiation of any bureaucratic procedures.

    In the early stages of development of an industry, low barriers to entry stimulate competition.
They enable a very large initial set of products for consumers to choose from.  Out of these the market
will learn to ignore almost all in order to standardize on a few, such as a Lotus 1-2-3.  The winners will be
widely emulated in the next generation of products, which will in turn generate a more refined form of
marketplace feedback.  In this fashion, early chaos evolves quickly a set of high-demand products and
product categories.

    This process of market-mediated innovation is best catalyzed by creating an environment in
which it is inexpensive and easy for entrepreneurs to develop products.  A great number of independent
enterprises, each of which puts at voluntary risk the intellectual and economic capital of risk-takers, is the
best way to find out what the market really wants.  The businesses that succeed in this are the ones that
will prosper.

    It is worthwhile to note that not a single major PC software company today dates from the
mainframe era.  Yesterday's garage shop is today's billion-dollar enterprise.  Policies for the NPN should
therefore not only accommodate existing information industry interests, but anticipate and promote the
next generate of entrepreneurs.

    The diverse needs of these many users will create demand for thousands of information
proprietors on the net, just as there are thousands of producers of personal computer software today and
thousands of publishers of books and magazines.  It should be as easy to provide an information service
as to order a business telephone. Large and small information providers will probably coexist as they do
in book publishing, where the players range from multi-billion-dollar international conglomerates to
firms whose head office is a kitchen table. Large and small publishers can coexist because everyone has
access to production and distribution facilities--printing presses, typography, and the U.S. mails and
delivery services--on a non-discriminatory basis.  In fact, the sub-commercial print publications are an
ecological breeding ground, through which mainstream authors and editors rise. No one can guarantee
when an application as useful as the spreadsheet will emerge for the NPN (as it did for personal
computers), but open architecture is the best way for it to happen and let it spread when it does.

    The PC revolution was brought about without direct public support.  Entrepreneurs risked their
investors' capital for the sake of opportunity.  Some succeeded, but many others lost their entire
investment.  This is the way of the marketplace.  We should take a much more cautious attitude about the
commitment of public monies.  In the absence of proven demand for new applications, government
should not be spending billions of dollars on the creation of broadband networks.  Neither should
telephone companies be allowed to pass on the costs of the NPN in a way which would raise the rates for
ordinary voice telephone service.

    Instead, we should position the NREN to show there is a market for network applications.  The
commercial experiments just beginning on the Internet provide one source of innovation.  Deployment of
a national ISDN platform in the next few years represents another relatively inexpensive seed bed.  As
such experiments demonstrate more of a proven demand for public network services, it should be
possible for the private sector to make the investments to build the broadband NPN using experience
from the NREN.

    At the same time as the NREN is being debated and developed, telephone companies continue to
push at the limits imposed on them by the "Modification of Final Judgment" (MFJ) of divestiture, the 1982
anti-trust agreement which split up the Bell system.13  Under pressure from the D.C. Court of Appeals,
Judge Greene recently lifted the information services restrictions on the BOCs --despite the competitive
tension between the telephone companies, cable TV carriers, and newspapers.  Thus, in the next year or
so, Congress may well be forced to define a new set of rules for regulated telecommunications.14  Like the
AT&T divestiture decision, this would represent a fundamental shift in national policy with enormous
and unpredictable consequences.

    Many consumer and industry groups are concerned that as the MFJ restrictions are lifted, the
RBOCs will come to dominate the design of the emerging National Public Network, shaping it more to
accommodate their business goals than the public interest.  The Communications Policy Forum, a
coalition of public interest and industry groups, has recently begun to consider what kinds of safeguards
will be needed to maintain a competitive information services market that allows RBOC participation.
The role that the RBOCs come to play in the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure is, of course, an
issue that must be carefully considered on its own.  But in this context, the NREN represents a critical
opportunity to create a model for what a public network has to offer, free from commercial pressures.

    With all of the uncertainty that surrounds the RBOCs’ entry into the information services market,
we should use the NREN to learn how to develop a network environment where competitive entry is
easy enough that the RBOCs’ opportunity to engage in anti-competitive behavior would be minimized.
There is evidence that the RBOCs are resisting attempts to transform the public telephone system into a
truly open public network15 notwithstanding the FCC's stated intention to implement Open Network
Architecture.16  But since the NREN standards and procedures can be designed away from the
dominance of the RBOCs, a fully open network design is within reach.  In this sense the NREN can be a
test-bed for "safeguards" against market abuse just as it is a test ground for new technical standards and
innovative network applications.

    An open platform network model carrier from the NREN to the National Public Network would
actually make some MFJ restrictions less necessary. Phone companies were originally prohibited from
being information providers because their bottleneck control over the local exchange hubs gives them an
unfair advantage. But on a network in which the local switch is open to information providers--because
the platform itself is so rich and well designed-- creativity and quality triumph over monopoly power.
Instead of restricting information providers, the National Public Network developers should encourage
the entry of as many new parties as possible. Just as personal computer companies started in garages and
attics, so will tomorrow's information entrepreneurs, if we give them a chance. Their prototypes today,
small computer networks, electronic newsletters, and chat lines, are among the most vibrant and
imaginative "publishers" in the world.


III. Encourage Pricing for Universal Access

Everyone agrees in the abstract with universal service--the idea that any individual who wishes should be
able to connect to a National Public Network. But that's only a platitude unless accompanied by an
inclusive pricing plan.

    The importance of extending universal access to information and communication resources has
been widely recognized:

In light of the possibilities for new service offerings by the 21st century, as well as the growing
importance of telecommunications and information services to US economic and social development,
limiting our concept of universal service to the narrow provision of basic voice telephone service no
longer services the public interest.  Added to universal basic telephone service should be the broader
concept of universal opportunity to access these new technologies and applications.17

    The problem of disparate access to information resources has been recognized in other
telecommunications arenas as well.  Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Chairman of the
Subcommittee of Telecommunications and Finance of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
warns that:

[i]nformation services are beginning to proliferate.  The challenge before us is how to make them
available swiftly to the largest number of Americans at costs which don't divide the society into
information haves and havenots and in a manner which does not compromise our adherence to the long-
cherished principles of diversity, competition and common carriage.18

To address this problem in the long-term, there is legislation now pending which would broaden the
guarantee of universal phone service to universal access to advanced telecommunications services.
Senator Burns has proposed that the universal service guarantee statement in the Communications Act of
1934 should be amended to include access to a nation-wide, advanced, interactive, interoperable,
broadband communications system available to all people, businesses, services, organizations, and
households..."19
    In the near term, the NREN can serve as a laboratory for testing a variety of pricing and access
schemes in order to determine how best to bring basic network services to large numbers of users.  The
NREN platform should facilitate the offering of fee-based services for individuals.

    Cable TV is one good model: joining a service requires an investment of $100 for a TV set, which
99% of households already own, about $50 for a cable hookup, and perhaps $15 per month in basic
service. Anything beyond that, like premium movie channels or pay-per-events, is available at extra cost.
Similarly, a carrier providing connection to the mature National Public Network might charge a one-time
startup fee and then a low fixed monthly rate for access to basic services, which would include a voice
telephone capability.

    Because regulators are concerned about any telephone service that might cause the price of basic
voice service to rise, they are unwilling to approve new services which don't immediately recover their
own costs.  They are concerned that any deficit will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher
charges for standard services.  As a result, telephone companies tend to be very conservative in
estimating the demand for new services.  Prices for new services turn out to be much higher than what
would be required for universal digital service.  This is a kind of catch-22, in which lower prices won't be
set until demand goes up, but demand will never go up if prices aren't low enough.

    Open architecture could help phone companies offer lower rates for digital services. If
opportunities and incentives exist for information entrepreneurs, they will create the services which will
stimulate demand, increase volume, and create more revenue-generating traffic for the carriers.  In a
competitive market, with higher volumes, lower prices follow.

IV. Make the Network Simple to Use

The ideal means of accessing the NPN will not be a personal computer as we know it today, but a much
simpler, streamlined information appliance - a hybrid of the telephone and the computer.

    "Transparency" is the Holy Grail of software designers. When a program is perfectly transparent,
people forget about the fact that they are using a computer. The mechanics of the program no longer
intrude on their thoughts. The most successful computer programs are nearly always transparent: a
spreadsheet, for instance, is as self-evident as a ledger page. Once users grasp a few concepts (like rows,
cells, and formula relationships), they can say to themselves, "What's in cell A-6?" without feeling that
they are using an alien language.

    Personal computer communications, by contrast, are practically opaque. Users must be aware of
baud rates, parity, duplex, and file transfer protocols--all of which a reasonably well-designed network
could handle for them. It's as if, every time you wanted to drive to the store, you had to open up the hood
and adjust the sparkplugs. On most Internet systems, it's even worse; newcomers find themselves
confronting what John Perry Barlow calls a "savage user interface." Messages bounce, conferencing
commands are confusing, headers look like gibberish, none of it is documented, and nobody seems to
care. The excitement about being part of an extended community quickly vanishes. On a National Public
Network, this invites failure. People without the time to invest in learning arcane commands would
simply not participate. The network would become needlessly exclusionary.

    Part of the NREN goal of "expand[ing] the number of researchers, educators, and students with ...
access to high performance computing resources"20 is to make all network applications easy-to-use.  As
the experience of the personal computer industry has shown, the only way to bring information resources
to large numbers of people is with simple, easy-to-learn tools.  The NREN can be a place where various
approaches to user-friendly networks are tested and evaluated.

    Technically trained people are not troglodytes; they approve of human-oriented design, even as
they manage to use the network today without it.  For years, leaders within the Internet community have
been taking steps to improve ease of use on the network.  But the training of the technical community as a
whole has given them little practice making their digital artifacts appropriate for non-technical
consumption.  Nor are they often rewarded for doing so.  To a phone company engineer designing a new
high-speed telephone switch, or to a computer scientist  pushing the limits of a data compression
algorithm, the notion of making electronic mail as simple as fax machine may make sense, but it also feels
like someone else's job.  Being technically minded themselves, they feel comfortable with the specialized
software they use and seldom empathize with the neophyte.  The result is a proliferation of arcane,
clumsy tools in both hardware and software, defended by the cognoscenti: "I use the `vi’ editor all the
time--why would anyone have trouble with it?"

    If we have the vision and commitment to try this, the transformation of the network frontier from
wilderness to civilization need not display the brutality of 19th century imperialism.   As commercial
opportunities to offer applications and services develop, entrepreneurs will discover that ease of use sells.
The normal, sometimes slow, play of competitive markets should cause industry to commit the resources
to serve the market by making access more transparent.  But at the start transparency will need deliberate
encouragement-- if only to overcome the inertia of old habits.

V. Develop Standards of Information Presentation

The National Public Network will need an integrated suite of high-level standards for the exchange of
richly formatted and structured information, whether as text, graphics, sound, or moving images. Use the
NREN as a test-bed for a variety of information presentation and exchange standards on the road
towards an internationally accepted set of standards for the National Public Network.

    Standards--the internal language of networks--are arranged in a series of layers. The lower levels
detail how the networks' subterranean "wiring" and "plumbing" are managed.  Well-developed sets of
lower-level standards such as TCP/IP are in wide use and continue to be refined and extended, but these
alone are not sufficient.  The uppermost layers contain specifications such as how text appears on the
screen and the components of which documents are composed.  These are the kinds of concerns which
are directly relevant to users who wish to communicate.  Recently independent efforts to develop high-
level standards for document formats have begun, but these projects are not yet being integrated into
computer networks.

    Today, for example, the only common standard for computer text is the American Standard Code
for Information Interchange (ASCII). But ASCII is inadequate; it ignores fonts, type styles (like boldface
and italics), footnotes, headers, and other formats which people regularly use. Each word processing
program codes these formats differently, and there is still no intermediary language that can
accommodate all of them. The National Public Network will need such a language  to transcend the
visual poverty and monotony of today's telecommunicated information. It will also need additional
standards beyond what have been developed for message addresses and headers, a common set of
directories (the equivalent of the familiar white pages and yellow pages directories), common
specifications for coding and decoding images, and standards for other major services.

    Congress has provided that the National Institute of Standards and Technology  shall adopt
standards and guidelines ... for the interoperability of high-performance computers in networks and for
common user interfaces to systems.21 As the implementation of the NREN moves forward, we must
ensure that standards development remains both a public and private priority.  Failure to make a
commitment to an environment with robust standards would be "the beginning of a Tower of Babel that
we can ill afford."22  Since current standards are so inadequate to the demands of users:

We ... need to endow the NII [National Information Infrastructure] with a set of widely understood
common communication conventions.  Moreover, these conventions should be based on concepts that
make life easier for us humans, rather than for our computer servants.23
The development of standards is vital, not just because it helps ensure an open platform for information
providers; it also makes the network easier to use.
VI. Promote First Amendment Free Expression by Affirming the Principles of Common Carriage

In a society which relies more and more on electronic communications media as its primary conduit for
expression, full support for First Amendment values requires extension of the common carrier principle
to all of these new media.

    Common carriers are companies which provide conduit services for the general public.  They
include railroads, trucking companies, and airlines as well as telecommunications firms.  A
communications common carrier, such as a telephone company, is required to provide its services on a
non-discriminatory basis.  It has no liability for the content of any transmission. A telephone company
does not concern itself with the content of a phone call.  Neither can it arbitrarily deny service to
anyone.24  The common carrier's duties have evolved over hundreds of years in the common law and
later statutory provisions.  The rules governing their conduct can be roughly distilled in a few basic
principles.25  Common carriers have a duty to:

    •provide services in a non-discriminatory manner at a fair price
    •interconnect with other carriers
    •provide adequate services

The carriers of the NREN and the National Public Network, whether telephone companies, cable
television companies, or other firms should be treated in a similar fashion.26

    Unlike arrangements found in many countries, our communications infrastructure is owned by
private corporations instead of by the government.  Given Congress’ plan to build the NREN with
services from privately owned carriers, a legislatively imposed duty of common carriage is necessary to
protect free expression effectively.  As Prof. Eli Noam, a former New York State Public Utility
Commissioner, explains:

[C]ommon carriage is the practical analog to [the] First Amendment for electronic speech over privately-
owned networks, where the First Amendment does not necessarily govern directly.27
To foster free expression and move the national communications infrastructure toward a full common-
carrier regime, all NREN carriers should be subject to common-carriage obligations.  Given that the
NREN is designed to promote the development of science, ensuring free expression is especially
important.  As one academic said:

I share with many researchers [a] strong belief that much of the power of science (whether practiced by
scientists, engineers, or clinical researchers) derives from the steadfast commitment to free and unfettered
communication of information and knowledge.28
    A telecommunications provider under a common carrier obligation would have to carry any legal
message regardless of its content whether it is voice, data, images, or sound.  For example, if full
common-carrier protections were in place for all of the conduit services offered by the phone company,
the terminations of "controversial" 900 services such as political fundraising would not be allowed, just as
the phone company is now prohibited by the Communications Act from discriminating in the provision
of basic telephone services.29  Neither BOCs not IXCs would be allowed to terminate service because of
anticipated harm to their "corporate image."  Though providers of 900 information services did have their
freedom of expression abridged by the BOC/IXC action, First Amendment protection was not available
to them because there was no state action underlying the termination.

    As important as common carriage is to the NPN, it is equally important that it be implemented in
such a way as to avoid sinking the carriers of these new networks into the same regulatory gridlock that
characterizes much of telecommunications regulation.30  This would have a crippling effect on the pace
of innovation and is to be avoided.  The controlled environment of the NREN should be taken advantage
of to experiment with various open access, common carriage rules and enforcement mechanisms to seek
regulatory alternatives other than what has evolved in the public telephone system

    Along with promoting free expression, common-carriage rules are important for ensuring a
competitive market in information services on the National Public Network.  Our society  supports the
publication of many thousands of periodicals and fifty thousand new books a year as well as countless
brochures, mailings, and other printed communications.  Historically, the expense of producing
professional-quality video programming has been a barrier to the creation of similar diversity in video.
Now the same advances in computing which created desktop publishing are delivering "desktop video"
which will make it affordable for the smallest business, agency, or group to create video consumables.
The NPN must incorporate a distribution system of individual choice for the video explosion.

    If the cable company wants to offer a package of program channels, it should be free to do so.
But so should anyone else.  There will continue to be major demand for mass-market video
entertainment, but the vision of the NPN should not be limited to this form of content.  Anyone who
wishes to offer services to the public should be guaranteed access over the same fiber optic cable under
the principle of common carriage.  From this access will come the entrepreneurial innovation, and this
innovation will create the new forms of media that exploit the interactive, multimedia capabilities of the
NPN.
VII. Protect Personal Privacy

The infrastructure of the NPN should include mechanisms that support the privacy of information and
communication.  Building the NREN is an opportunity to test various data encryption schemes and study
their effectiveness for a variety of communications needs.

    Technologies have been developed over the past 20 years that allow people to safeguard their
own privacy. One tool is public-key encryption, in which an "encoding" key is published freely, while the
"decoder" is kept secret.  People who wish to receive encrypted information give out their public key,
which senders use to encrypt messages.   Only the possessor of the private key has the ability to decipher
the meaning.


    The privacy of telephone conversations and electronic mail is already protected by the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act.31 Without a valid court order, for example, wiretaps of phone
conversations are illegal and private messages are inadmissible in court. Legal guarantees are not enough,
however.  Although it is technically illegal to listen in on cellular telephone conversations, as a practical
matter the law is unenforceable.   Imported scanners capable of receiving all 850 cellular channels are
widely available through the gray market.

    Cellular telephone transmissions are carried on radio waves which travel through the open-air.
The ECPA provision which makes it illegal to eavesdrop on a cellular call is the wrong means to the right
end. It sets a dangerous precedent in which, for the first time, citizens are denied the right to listen to
open air transmissions.  In this case, technology provides a better solution.  Privacy protection would be
greatly enhanced if public-key encryption technology were built into the entire range of digital devices,
from telephones to computers.32  The best way to secure the privacy and confidentiality Americans say
they want is through a combination of legal and technical methods.

    As a system over which not only information but also money will be transferred, the National
Public Network will have enormous potential for privacy abuse. Some of the dangers could be forestalled
now by building in provisions for security from the beginning.



Conclusion

    The chance to influence the shape of a new medium usually arrives when it is too late: when the
medium is frozen in place. Today, because of the gradual evolution of the National Public Network, and
the unusual awareness people have of its possibilities, there is a rare opportunity to shape this new
medium in the public interest, without sacrificing diversity or financial return. As with personal
computers, the public interest is also the route to maximum profitability for nearly all participants in the
long run.

    The major obstacle is obscurity: technical telecommunications issues are so complex that people
don't realize their importance to human and political relationships. But be this as it may, these issues are
of paramount importance to the future of this society.  Decisions and plans for the NPN are too crucial to
be left to special interests.  If we act now to be inclusive rather than exclusive in the design of the NPN we
can create an open and free electronic community in America.  To fail to do so, and to lose this
opportunity, would be tragic.

* Mitchell Kapor is President, Electronic Frontier Foundation Jerry Berman is Director, Information
Technology Project, ACLU. The authors wish to thank Art Kleiner and Danny Weitzner for contributing
to the writing of this article.  A version of the article will be published in Building Information
Infrastructure: Issues in the Development of the National Research and Education Network (B. Kahin, ed.,
McGraw-Hill), a collection of papers from a symposium sponsored by the Science, Technology and Public
Policy Program and Strategic Computing and Telecommunications in the Public Sector Program of the
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

1  High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, H.R. 656, S.272 §2(6).
2  High-Performance Computing And Communications Act of 1991: Hearing before the Subcommittee on
Science, Technology, and Space of the Senate Comm. on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 102nd
Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1991)(Opening Statement by Senator Gore)(hereinafter 1991 Senate NREN Hearing).
3  1991 Senate NREN Hearing 101, 103 (Statement of the Association of Research Libraries).
4  1991 Senate NREN Hearing 99 (Statement of Dr. Kenneth M. King, President, EDUCOM).
5  S.272 (Commerce-Energy compromise) §102(e)
6  Michael M. Roberts, Positioning the National Research and Education Network. EDUCOM Magazine
13 (Summer 1991).
7  1991 Senate NREN Hearing 1 (Opening statement of Sen. Gore).
8  Details of the visions vary in their content and expression. Senator Gore's NREN bill mandates that
federal agencies will serve as information providers, side by side with commercial services, making (for
instance) government-created information available to the public over the network. Individuals will gain
"access to supercomputers, computer data bases, other research facilities, and libraries." (Gore imagines
junior high school students dialing in to the Library of Congress to look up facts for a term paper.)  High
Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, H.R. 656, S.272.  Apple CEO John Sculley has
predicted that "knowledge navigators" will use personal computers to travel through realms of virtual
information via public digital networks.
Such visions are powerful, but they sometimes seem too much like sales tools; too vague and
overconfident to set direction for research. People often infer from the Apple's "knowledge navigator"
videotape, for instance, that human-equivalent computer speech recognition is just around the corner; but
in truth, it still requires fundamental research breakthroughs. Network users will still need keyboards or
pointing devices for many years. Nor will the network be able (as some have suggested) to translate
automatically between languages. (It will allow translators to work more effectively, posting their work
online.)

9  M. Dertouzos, Building the Information Marketplace, Technology Review 29, 30 (January 1991).
10  See FCC Hearing on “Networks of the Future” (Testimony of M. Kapor)(May 1, 1991).
11  S.272, §5(d). This section continues: "(1) to the maximum extent possible, operating facilities needed
for the Network should be procured on a competitive basis from private industry; (2) Federal agencies
shall promote research and development leading to deployment of commercial data communications and
telecommunications standards; and (3) the Network shall be phased into commercial operation as
commercial networks can meet the needs of American researchers and educators.
12  The distinction between strong support for interoperability and something less is illustrated in the
NREN compromise debate occurring as this paper is being written.  The bill from the Senate Commerce
Committee (S.272) calls for "interoperability among computer networks," §701(a)(6)(A), while the
compromise currently being discussed with the Energy Committee adopts a more watered down goal of
"software availability, productivity, capability, portability." §701(a)(3)(B).  Without a mandate to develop,
test, and evaluate interoperability strategies and technologies, the NREN’s role as testbed for the NPN
will be significantly diminished.
13  552 F.Supp 151 (D.D.C. 1982)(Greene, J.).  The MFJ restrictions barred the BOCs from providing long
distance services, from manufacturing telephone equipment, and from providing information services.
14  The Senate, under the leadership of Sen. Hollings, has just recently voted to lift the manufacturing
restrictions against the BOCs contained in the MFJ.
15  In The Matter of Advanced Intelligent Network, Petition for Investigation, filed before the FCC by
Coalition of Open Network Architecture Parties (November 16, 1990).
16  Amendment of Sections 64.702 of the Commission's Rules and Regulations, 104 FCC 2d 958
(COMPUTER III), vacated sub nom, California v. FCC (9th Cir. 1990).
17  NTIA Telecomm 2000 at 79.
18   Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, Hearings
on Modified Final Judgment, 101st Cong., 1st Sess., 1-2 (May 4, 1989).
19  Communications Competitiveness and Infrastructure Modernization Act of 1991, S. 1200, Title I,
Amending Communications Act §1, 47 USC 151.
20  S.272, §2(b)(1)(B).
21  S.272 Commerce-Energy Compromise §203(a).
22  1991 Senate NREN Hearing at 32 (Statement of Hon. D. Allan Bromley, Director, Office of Science and
Technology Policy).
23  M. Dertouzos at 31.
24  See 47 USC §201.
25  See ACLU Information Technology Project, Report to the American Civil Liberties Board from the
Communications Media Committee to Accompany Proposed Policy Relating To Civil Liberties Goals and
Requirements of the United States Communications Media Infrastructure. (Draft, July 15, 1991)
[hereinafter, ACLU Report]. "Non-discriminatory access to new communications systems must be
guaranteed not simply because it is the economically efficient thing to do, but more importantly because
it is the only way to ensure that freedom of expression is preserved in the Information Age."
26  Though common carriage principles have historically been applied to telephone and telegraph
systems, the preservation of First Amendment values of free expression and free press was not the
motivating factor.  Prof. de Sola Pool notes that telephone and telegraph systems inherited their common
carrier obligations not so much out of First Amendment concerns, but in order to promote commerce.
The more appropriate model to look to in extending First Amendment values to new communications
technologies is the mails.  As reflected in the post clause, empowering Congress to "establish post offices
and post roads," the Constitutional drafters felt that creation of a robust postal system was vital in order
to ensure free expression and healthy political debate.  As Sen. John Calhoun said in 1817:
Let us conquer space.  It is thus that . . . a citizen of the West will read the news of Boston still moist from
the press.  The mail and the press are the nerves of  the body  politic.
Non-discriminatory access to the mails has been secured by the Supreme Court as a vital extension of
First Amendment expression.  In a dissent which is now reflective of current law, Justice Holmes argued
that
[t]he United States may give up the Post Office when it sees fit, but while it carries it on the use of the
mails is almost as much a part of free speech as the right to use our tongues. (Milwaukee Social
Democratic Publishing Co. v. Burleson, 255 US 407 (1921) (Holmes, J., dissenting)(emphasis added). This
principle was finally affirmed in Hannegan v. Esquire, 327 US 146 (1945) (cited in de Sola Pool).
See de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom 77-107.
27 E. Noam, FCC Hearing "Networks of the Future" (May 1, 1991).
28  1991 Senate NREN Hearing at 52 (Statement of Donald Langenberg, Chancellor of the University of
Maryland System).
29  47 USC §201.  Following much controversy about obscene or indecent dial-a-message services, a
number of BOCs and interexchange carriers (IXCs, ie. MCI, Sprint, etc.) have adopted policies which limit
the kinds of information services for which they will provide billing and collection services.  Recently,
some carriers have gone so far as to refuse to carry the services at all, even if the service handles its own
billing.  See ACLU Report, op. cit. at 25.
30  See J. Berman & W. Miller, Communications Policy Overview, Communications Policy Forum (April
1991), 14-24.
31  Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, 18 USC 2510 et seq.  See also J. Berman & J. Goldman,
“A Federal Right of Information Privacy: The Need for Reform,” Benton Foundation Project on
Communications & Information Policy Options (1989).
32  See Statement In Support Of Communications Privacy, following 1991 Cryptography and Privacy
Conference, sponsored by Electronic Frontier Foundation, Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility, and RSA Software. (June 10, 1991).


For More Information Contact:

EFF
1001 G Street, NW
Suite 950 East
Washington, DC  20001
[phone]  tel
[phone]  fax
[e-mail]  internet