DISQUS

Thanks for reminding me of these very real backtracks. I guess I'm not crazy. I saw one vivid instance in person fully two years ago when Lessig massively retreated in the face of brutally incisive questioning from Peter Huber at a Telecosm conference debate.

Good analysis, Ryan.

Great analysis, Cord.

Richard, great response. To those like you and me, who've tried to explain how the Net really works and said over and over that the Net is not and has never been strictly "neutral," Google's technical actions and flirtations with the big networks aren't a surprise. What's probably news is the beginning of the broad *realization* of this fact and the apparent downshift or softening of Google's policy stance.

Matt's post is terrific, as is your analysis of it, Tim.

Unfortunately, Matt's point belies his and his friends' policy views on most topics. Myriad are the progressives, liberals, leftists -- or for that matter, even conservatives -- who profess a belief in markets, dynamism, and entrepreneurship...except, well, except in the case of health care...and maybe energy...and, oh yeah, education...and, I guess, retirement savings...and I probably have to throw in automobiles...and I suppose markets just don't work for finance, insurance, air travel, telecom, or the Internet either. And definitely not general labor markets. No, no, no. All these things are subject to dramatic and chronic market failure and are too important to be left to people and markets. But other than that, have at it!

Finally, an ALF I can attend!

Amen x 2.

Last summer I sent my then-five-year old daughter to Camp Invention with my old Sony Stereo. Two weeks later she brought home some wheeled, pullied contraption build out of 1990s printed circuit boards and stereo knobs. Not very practical, but she got to see the inside of a "black box" and put the pieces into a new form. Plus they learned about Da Vinci, Edison, and other famous inventors.

This summer, unfortunately, she did not return to Camp Invention because the theme was saving the earth from the global warming enviro-apocolypse. Her first-grade friends already question her "green cred" and her dad's heresies. So instead I taught her how to build fires on the beach and release good old CO2 into the sky.

Ethnic minorities make up something like 9.5% of China, while the Han Chinese are about 90%. But even among the Han, there are many very distinct language dialects -- Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, etc.

Although I believe "technologies of freedom" will *tend* to reduce nationalistic impulses, I think the question of nationalism in China is mostly governed by other factors. Clearly we've seen quasi-democracies and non-democracies exhibit nationalism. But very recently we've also witnessed the most modern of democracies exhibit fierce nationalism.

China is emerging from 500 years of backward underperformance, and there is a distinct sense of national mission and pride. Whether these sentiments turn into some form of dangerous nationalism is another question. Politicians will use whatever emotions they can muster in times of distress. Nationalism seems to me often to be a form of defensiveness, usually under the perception of threat -- to one's territory or culture or economic security, etc. The most obvious way to stoke nationalist embers in China would be for America, Europe, Japan, or India to mount rhetorical or policy attacks on China. Engagement, while imperfectly influential, is still the best way to build the links and trust that muffle widespread outbreaks. Saving the counterproductive policies of withdrawal or attack from the outside, I don't see mass nationalism flaming out of control.

Cerf's acknowledgement of obvious truths about the way networks work is welcome news and could be a constructive step toward the industry cooperation Adam suggests. Perhaps we can head off further bungling by the FCC. But it would have been nice for opponents of "traffic management" to acknowledge these obvious facts -- "So the real question for today's broadband networks is not whether they need to be managed, but rather how" . . . "Network capacity (bits per second or data rate) is a limiting factor in all communications networks. Users cannot send traffic faster than the amount of network capacity available to them. But when users' aggregate demand exceeds the available capacity of the network, network operators naturally seek to manage the traffic loads" -- *before* the FCC handed down its technically, legally, and procedurally wanting traffic management directive. I'm all for industry collaboration and self-regulation, but not with a heavy hand tipping the scales in any "negotiations."

Tim, what planet are you on?

These are the very points we've all been making for YEARS. We've been saying that the NN advocates don't know how the Net works. That the content companies already purchase all sorts of bandwidth and SLA-level services from the network companies. That the CDNs already help speed priority content to priority customers. That new switching and routing technologies are already sorting packets based on priority. Yes, yes, yes. Keep letting these private architectures, partnerships, vending relationships, and prices evolve.

Do NOT inject a new regulatory regime into this mix. It is ***Net Neutrality*** that would be the break with the status quo market of Internet technologies, products, and relationships.

Adam is right. Price is intimately intertwined with all the technologies, platforms, architectures, services, and applications involved and almost always becomes an/the issue. The price paid by the end-user is not the only price we're talking about. There are many prices within the network that NN could regulate. Remember TELRIC and UNE-P? The end-user didn't know anything about those price controls, yet they were devastating to the network ecosystem.

NN advocates have for several years now wanted to force service providers into one business plan where the end-user pays ALL the costs of the network. It would be like forcing magazines to charge $500 per year for a subscription and forego all advertising, or ordering Google to charge for search rather than use the advertising model. Who knows? Maybe end-users will end up paying most of the cost of the network. Fine by me. But we should let the market find the way in this dynamic arena.

NN is bad precisely because it interrupts the very private negotiations and experiments by network innovators that Tim rightly lauds. I agree we want to keep *that* model, not one where architectures and prices are preemptively -- and peremptorily -- decided in Washington.

Tim, good question. But that is just one of this paradigm's many new angles and features. I held the view posed in your question -- that only the control data of online games and worlds would need to traverse he Net -- until I met Jules Urbach, the inventor of much of the technology used here, in Hollywood a little over a year ago.

In fact, many of the interactive games and virtual worlds that will use the new systems will be processed and rendered at data centers in the cloud. Intel, AMD, Google, nVidia, and others are experimenting with graphics processors as a new "general purpose" engine not just in game boxes and PCs but in centralized clusters.

There will be different mixes of centralized and local processing. Some will be all local; some all centralized; some a coordinated combination, depending on factors like latency, the degree of interactivity, and the graphics capabilities of the end-user device. Major gaming companies are already adopting the concept for the next generation of games. (Among other advantages, imagine how a centrally hosted, DVD-less, streamed system will limit piracy of video games in Asia.)

Of course, hosting real-time 3D virtual worlds and interactive games in the cloud requires huge amounts of bandwidth -- and traffic management. One virtual world based on this concept with, say, one million users, could generate Internet traffic of 100 petabytes per month. That's around 10% of the entire U.S. Internet in 2006.

Best,

Bret

Tim,

As you'll see, I was in the middle of posting a reply to your original comment when I saw your expanded post.

Just one additional point to my comment below: Lessig often seems to take a libertarian-ish view on a topic, only to contradict himself or at least contradict what one thought he meant. For example, in this new National Review interview of Lessig (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDNhMzdlZD...), which I just happened across this morning by coincidence, he advocates abolishing the FCC. Hooray! But then he turns around and suggests it's mostly for the reason that Congress would do a better job of regulating communicaitons without the downside of regulatory capture. Earlier in the interview he says we should have gone with Al Gore's proposal in the 90s that we basically deregulate the whole Internet, but Lessig has been a huge proponent of intrusive, anti-profit, anti-property Net Neutrality regulation. Now he's moved on to all sorts of public-election-financing and other "progressive" causes.

Thanks again for distinguishing between Free Culture, the book, and Free Culture the worldview. As mentioned, the point was my own distinction between Free! -- the model of economic abundance -- and Free Culture -- the "progressive" worldview.

Best,

Bret

Tim,

I started writing this reply to your comment and then realized you expanded in another post above.

Anyway, I was using Free Culture as a broad description of Lessig's overall worldview, which includes all sorts of progressive and "quasi-socialist" impositions. I agree there was much in Free Culture, the book, to educate and even to applaud. Perhaps I should have clarified.

The point was to distinguish between Anderson's Free! and Lessig's views, which many people might know generally and broadly label Free Culture.

Best,

Bret