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(Chair-FCC, 4/16, "The Plot to Block Internet Freedom", http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/16/plot_block_internet_freedom?page=full)

The Internet has created an extraordinary new democratic forum for people around the world to express their opinions. It is revolutionizing global access to information: Today, more than 1 billion people worldwide have access to the Internet, and at current growth rates, 5 billion people -- about 70 percent of the world's population -- will be connected in five years. But this growth trajectory is not inevitable, and threats are mounting to the global spread of an open and truly "worldwide" web. The expansion of the open Internet must be allowed to continue: The mobile and social media revolutions are critical not only for democratic institutions' ability to solve the collective problems of a shrinking world, but also to a dynamic and innovative global economy that depends on financial transparency and the free flow of information. The threats to the open Internet were on stark display at last December's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, where the United States fought attempts by a number of countries -- including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia -- to give a U.N. organization, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), new regulatory authority over the Internet. Ultimately, over the objection of the United States and many others, 89 countries voted to approve a treaty that could strengthen the power of governments to control online content and deter broadband deployment. In Dubai, two deeply worrisome trends came to a head. First, we see that the Arab Spring and similar events have awakened nondemocratic governments to the danger that the Internet poses to their regimes. In Dubai, they pushed for a treaty that would give the ITU's imprimatur to governments' blocking or favoring of online content under the guise of preventing spam and increasing network security. Authoritarian countries' real goal is to legitimize content regulation, opening the door for governments to block any content they do not like, such as political speech. Second, the basic commercial model underlying the open Internet is also under threat. In particular, some proposals, like the one made last year by major European network operators, would change the ground rules for payments for transferring Internet content. One species of these proposals is called "sender pays" or "sending party pays." Since the beginning of the Internet, content creators -- individuals, news outlets, search engines, social media sites -- have been able to make their content available to Internet users without paying a fee to Internet service providers. A sender-pays rule would change that, empowering governments to require Internet content creators to pay a fee to connect with an end user in that country. Sender pays may look merely like a commercial issue, a different way to divide the pie. And proponents of sender pays and similar changes claim they would benefit Internet deployment and Internet users. But the opposite is true: If a country imposed a payment requirement, content creators would be less likely to serve that country. The loss of content would make the Internet less attractive and would lessen demand for the deployment of Internet infrastructure in that country. Repeat the process in a few more countries, and the growth of global connectivity -- as well as its attendant benefits for democracy -- would slow dramatically. So too would the benefits accruing to the global economy. Without continuing improvements in transparency and information sharing, the innovation that springs from new commercial ideas and creative breakthroughs is sure to be severely inhibited. To their credit, American Internet service providers have joined with the broader U.S. technology industry, civil society, and others in opposing these changes. Together, we were able to win the battle in Dubai over sender pays, but we have not yet won the war. Issues affecting global Internet openness, broadband deployment, and free speech will return in upcoming international forums, including an important meeting in Geneva in May, the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum. The massive investment in wired and wireless broadband infrastructure in the United States demonstrates that preserving an open Internet is completely compatible with broadband deployment. According to a recent UBS report, annual wireless capital investment in the United States increased 40 percent from 2009 to 2012, while investment in the rest of the world has barely inched upward. And according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, more fiber-optic cable was laid in the United States in 2011 and 2012 than in any year since 2000, and 15 percent more than in Europe. All Internet users lose something when some countries are cut off from the World Wide Web. Each person who is unable to connect to the Internet diminishes our own access to information. We become less able to understand the world and formulate policies to respond to our shrinking planet. Conversely, we gain a richer understanding of global events as more people connect around the world, and those societies nurturing nascent democracy movements become more familiar with America's traditions of free speech and pluralism. That's why we believe that the Internet should remain free of gatekeepers and that no entity -- public or private -- should be able to pick and choose the information web users can receive. That is a principle the United States adopted in the Federal Communications Commission's 2010 Open Internet Order. And it's why we are deeply concerned about arguments by some in the United States that broadband providers should be able to block, edit, or favor Internet traffic that travels over their networks, or adopt economic models similar to international sender pays. We must preserve the Internet as the most open and robust platform for the free exchange of information ever devised. Keeping the Internet open is perhaps the most important free speech issue of our time.

Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. Usually this results from: natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease, poor information flow and corruption. But we’re luckier than our predecessors because we command a technology that no one else possessed: a rapid communication network that finds its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in which the net has vastly reduced the threat of societal collapse. Epidemics can be deflected by telepresence One of our more dire prospects for collapse is an infectious-disease epidemic. Viral and bacterial epidemics precipitated the fall of the Golden Age of Athens, the Roman Empire and most of the empires of the Native Americans. The internet can be our key to survival because the ability to work telepresently can inhibit microbial transmission by reducing human-to-human contact. In the face of an otherwise devastating epidemic, businesses can keep supply chains running with the maximum number of employees working from home. This can reduce host density below the tipping point required for an epidemic. If we are well prepared when an epidemic arrives, we can fluidly shift into a self-quarantined society in which microbes fail due to host scarcity. Whatever the social ills of isolation, they are worse for the microbes than for us. The internet will predict natural disasters We are witnessing the downfall of slow central control in the media: news stories are increasingly becoming user-generated nets of up-to-the-minute information. During the recent California wildfires, locals went to the TV stations to learn whether their neighbourhoods were in danger. But the news stations appeared most concerned with the fate of celebrity mansions, so Californians changed their tack: they uploaded geotagged mobile-phone pictures, updated Facebook statuses and tweeted. The balance tipped: the internet carried news about the fire more quickly and accurately than any news station could. In this grass-roots, decentralised scheme, there were embedded reporters on every block, and the news shockwave kept ahead of the fire. This head start could provide the extra hours that save us. If the Pompeiians had had the internet in 79AD, they could have easily marched 10km to safety, well ahead of the pyroclastic flow from Mount Vesuvius. If the Indian Ocean had the Pacific’s networked tsunami-warning system, South-East Asia would look quite different today. Discoveries are retained and shared Historically, critical information has required constant rediscovery. Collections of learning -- from the library at Alexandria to the entire Minoan civilisation -- have fallen to the bonfires of invaders or the wrecking ball of natural disaster. Knowledge is hard won but easily lost. And information that survives often does not spread. Consider smallpox inoculation: this was under way in India, China and Africa centuries before it made its way to Europe. By the time the idea reached North America, native civilisations who needed it had already collapsed. The net solved the problem. New discoveries catch on immediately; information spreads widely. In this way, societies can optimally ratchet up, using the latest bricks of knowledge in their fortification against risk. Tyranny is mitigated Censorship of ideas was a familiar spectre in the last century, with state-approved news outlets ruling the press, airwaves and copying machines in the USSR, Romania, Cuba, China, Iraq and elsewhere. In many cases, such as Lysenko’s agricultural despotism in the USSR, it directly contributed to the collapse of the nation. Historically, a more successful strategy has been to confront free speech with free speech -- and the internet allows this in a natural way. It democratises the flow of information by offering access to the newspapers of the world, the photographers of every nation, the bloggers of every political stripe. Some posts are full of doctoring and dishonesty whereas others strive for independence and impartiality -- but all are available to us to sift through. Given the attempts by some governments to build firewalls, it’s clear that this benefit of the net requires constant vigilance. Human capital is vastly increased Crowdsourcing brings people together to solve problems. Yet far fewer than one per cent of the world’s population is involved. We need expand human capital. Most of the world not have access to the education afforded a small minority. For every Albert Einstein, Yo-Yo Ma or Barack Obama who has educational opportunities, uncountable others do not. This squandering of talent translates into reduced economic output and a smaller pool of problem solvers. The net opens the gates education to anyone with a computer. A motivated teen anywhere on the planet can walk through the world’s knowledge -- from the webs of Wikipedia to the curriculum of MIT’s OpenCourseWare. The new human capital will serve us well when we confront existential threats we’ve never imagined before. Energy expenditure is reduced Societal collapse can often be understood in terms of an energy budget: when energy spend outweighs energy return, collapse ensues. This has taken the form of deforestation or soil erosion; currently, the worry involves fossil-fuel depletion. The internet addresses the energy problem with a natural ease. Consider the massive energy savings inherent in the shift from paper to electrons -- as seen in the transition from the post to email. Ecommerce reduces the need to drive long distances to purchase products. Delivery trucks are more eco-friendly than individuals driving around, not least because of tight packaging and optimisation algorithms for driving routes. Of course, there are energy costs to the banks of computers that underpin the internet -- but these costs are less than the wood, coal and oil that would be expended for the same quantity of information flow. The tangle of events that triggers societal collapse can be complex, and there are several threats the net does not address. But vast, networked communication can be an antidote to several of the most deadly diseases threatening civilisation. The next time your coworker laments internet addiction, the banality of tweeting or the decline of face-to-face conversation, you may want to suggest that the net may just be the technology that saves us.

Clément Perarnaud, “Finding the path to a more open internet. A new European approach toward internet standards,” Open Future, 02-12-2024, https://openfuture.pubpub.org/pub/internet-standards/release/3

V. Conclusion: Building an alternative imaginary and trajectory for the future of the open internet

Catherine R. Gellis, “Brief of Amici Curiae Members of Congress in Support of Defendant-Appellant and For Reversal,” United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 09-25-2017, https://law.resource.org/pub/us/cfr/regulations.gov.astm.appeal/1694498.pdf

It seems unlikely that SDOs would refuse to participate in the legislative process were they to be denied a copyright interest in the resulting law, as their membership is generally comprised of individuals and entities with a direct stake in the outcome of any law or regulation. They also often profit in ancillary ways from their contributions, such as through publishing complementary publications or providing other explanatory services. See e.g., All Published Symposia Papers & STPs, ASTM (last visited Sep. 23, 2017) 5 ; Books and Other Products, ANSI(last visited Sep 23, 2017). 6

Amanda Reid, “Copyright Policy as Catalyst and Barrier to Innovation and Free Expression,” Catholic University Law Review, 03-07-2019, https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3485&context=lawreview

Notwithstanding future-proof aspirations, copyright’s expansion is ill-fit for current use and potential future technology. It has proven hard to anticipate and keep up with future technology.70 Mark Twain could hardly have envisioned ebooks, and our Congress is at a similar disadvantage.71 Anticipating the future value of innovations is notoriously difficult.72 Technological innovation injects “unknown unknowns” into the calculus.73 One of the shortcomings of attempting to future-proof is, as Brad Greenberg noted, that “we cannot predict whether applying a law to a new technology will promote—or undermine—the law’s policy goals.”74

Jiayang Sun, Raymond S. Ray, Yiying Fan, “Does Copyright Law Promote Creativity? An Empirical Analysis of Copyright's Bounty,” Vanderbilt Law Review, 11-xx-2009, https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1483&context=vlr

The argument may be simply summarized: if a little copyright is good, more is better. While logical, this position is still a theory and, like all theories, can be tested. Unfortunately, even though copyright has existed and continuously expanded for hundreds of years, there has been little research done to test the theoretical basis for copyright's expansion.' 3 In fact, so little has been done that one author specifically pled for more empirical research. 14 This study responds to that need.

Michele Boldrin and David Levine, “Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy,” Washington University in St. Louis, 03-05-2009, https://source.wustl.edu/2009/03/economists-say-copyright-and-patent-laws-are-killing-innovation-hurting-economy/

Abolishing patent and copyright law sounds radical, but two economists at Washington University in St. Louis say it’s an idea whose time has come. Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine see innovation as a key to reviving the economy. They believe the current patent/copyright system discourages and prevents inventions from entering the marketplace. The two professors have published their views in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, from Cambridge University Press.

Tim Simcoe, “Chapter 8: Open Standards and Intellectual Property Rights,” Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, 09-16-2005, https://people.bu.edu/tsimcoe/documents/published/OpenStandards_IPR.pdf

Why, then, do firms participate in “open” standards development? The short answer is that open standards usually produce more value than closed standards. For consumers, open standards create value by promoting competition between implementations. This leads to a combination of lower prices and improved product quality. For the firms selling products that implement a standard, open-ness increase demand by resolving the uncertainties associated with potential coordination failures. Open-ness can also reduce implementers’ costs through explicit restrictions on the “tax” that can be imposed by technology licensors or through ex ante (i.e. pre-standardization) competition between the sponsors of rival technologies.

Catherine R. Gellis, “Brief of Amici Curiae Members of Congress in Support of Defendant-Appellant and For Reversal,” United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 09-25-2017, https://law.resource.org/pub/us/cfr/regulations.gov.astm.appeal/1694498.pdf

Furthermore, Public Resource’s activity does not harm SDOs’ incentives to create standards. As the Fifth Circuit has said, “. . . it is difficult to imagine an area of creative endeavor in which the copyright incentive is needed less. Trade organizations have powerful reasons stemming from industry standardization, quality control, and self-regulation to produce these model codes; it is unlikely that, without copyright, they will cease producing them.”

Pamela Samuelson, “Questioning Copyright in Standards,” University of California, Berkeley, https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/BC%20questioning%20standards.pdf

Fourth, the Internet and World Wide Web now make it very cheap and easy to disseminate standards. Given the rise of volunteer information-posting on the Web, there is reason to be confident that users of a successful standard will put the standards online for all to use.

Pamela Samuelson, “Questioning Copyright in Standards,” University of California, Berkeley, https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/BC%20questioning%20standards.pdf

Third, SSOs generally use the revenues they derive from selling or licensing the standards to subsidize other activities of their organizations, rather than to recoup investments in the making the standard.159 Even without copyright in the standards, SSOs can derive revenues from sales of print materials embodying the standard and value-added products or services. 160

Pamela Samuelson, “Questioning Copyright in Standards,” University of California, Berkeley, https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/BC%20questioning%20standards.pdf

Second, SSOs generally do not actually develop the standards in which they claim copyrights. 157 Rather, they typically rely upon volunteer service by experts in the field to develop standards and require volunteers to assign any copyright interests to the SSOs. The community development of a standard is a reason to treat the standard itself as a shared resource. 158

Pamela Samuelson, “Questioning Copyright in Standards,” University of California, Berkeley, https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/BC%20questioning%20standards.pdf

The principal argument in favor of copyright protection for industry standards is the claim SSOs make that they need copyright incentives to develop standards.153 The Supreme Court’s Feist decision, however, informs us that copyright protection is not available to information artifacts just because they are products of industrious efforts and their developers assert the need for copyright incentives. 154 Several considerations reinforce doubts about incentive-based arguments for copyright in standards.155

Harald Alvestrand, “The role of the standards process in shaping the Internet,” IEEE, 08-09-2004, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1323284/authors#authors

It is obvious to me that standards will be needed in the future—people will continue to want communication, they will continue to resent artificial borders of incompatibility, and they will continue to want the open marketplace to function for them.

Harald Alvestrand, “The role of the standards process in shaping the Internet,” IEEE, 08-09-2004, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1323284/authors#authors

First of all, of course, global connectivity requires standards (or a global monopoly—but that is considered undesirable by most actors). And the existence of a global infrastructure such as the Internet creates by its existence a marketplace for the service of connecting to it—something that could not exist without the standards.

Harald Alvestrand, “The role of the standards process in shaping the Internet,” IEEE, 08-09-2004, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1323284/authors#authors

The Internet has been a great vehicle for economic growth. Many companies have made fortunes out of supplying equipment and services for the Internet.

Ian Levy, “Get ready for the death of the global internet. It won’t be pretty,” WIRED, 01-29-2021, https://www.wired.com/story/internet-balkanisation-ian-levy/

In 2021, new alliances will form around the creation of indigenous and sovereign versions of the technology we use to communicate and manage modern life. We will see standards bodies fragment and supply chains and infrastructure redesigned to align with these new realities.

Clément Perarnaud, “Finding the path to a more open internet. A new European approach toward internet standards,” Open Future, 02-12-2024, https://openfuture.pubpub.org/pub/internet-standards/release/3

Standards are indeed at the center of many states’ and companies’ strategies to exert global influence and shape the internet “in their own image.” Standards allow for the interoperability between the tens of thousands of autonomous systems connecting worldwide. Standards have become arguably the most important pieces of the infrastructure making the internet a global network of networks. Due to their economic and strategic importance, internet standards are thus inevitably the subject and reflection of intense economic and political battles.

Sorcha Bradley, “How greater online regulation is prompting fears of a ‘splinternet’,” The Week, 05-26-2023, https://theweek.com/news/technology/961002/what-is-the-splinternet

Is the internet fragmenting?

Andrew Sullivan, “Misguided Policies the World over Are Slowly Killing the Open Internet,” Internet Society, 03-01-2023, https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2023/03/misguided-policies-the-world-over-are-slowly-killing-the-open-internet/

Wherever we live, there is plenty to be afraid of. Wars are raging on. Authoritarians are on the rise. The climate is changing so fast that we are unable to keep up. And yet, we seem unable to do anything about it. With all that on our minds, it is not surprising another threat is being overlooked: the global drift toward “splinternet.”