I don't think you should make too much of his words, as he was also
calling for the abolishment of the FCC, so he clearly has no appetite for
government interference in how the net is run. I think he was referring
more to last-mile links like cable and phone lines rather than backbones
or ISPs or anything. He mentioned that many of the local governments that
run their own last-mile infrastructures actually contract out the
maintenance and sometimes operation to for-profit entities; but that this
is distinct from the total hands-off way most municipalities deal with
cable operators, etc. I would much prefer to think of all of the strands
of copper going from my house to a distribution point as either my
personal property or government property; the same way that even while we
have toll bridges and highways, there's no way a toll road on my own
driveway or my local street would ever fly.
Brian
On Thu, 26 Jun 2008, Gautam John wrote:
Bejeezus! This would be such a horrifically bad idea.
______________________________
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.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/320057895/
--
Please read our new blog at:
http://blog.prathambooks.org/
