ISPs should own your eyes and ears, say AT&T, Cisco, McCurry

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
Date: September 26, 2008 9:23:25 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: ISPs should own your eyes and ears, say AT&T, Cisco, McCurry

Dave - new post on my blog, if you want to share with IP.

Permalink: http://www.reed.com/blog-dpr/?p=36

ISPs should own your eyes and ears, say AT&T, Cisco, McCurry
The hottest new faux-digerati lobby firm in DC in the communications  
field is Mike McCurry’s new firm Arts+Labs.  McCurry is an old  
political hand, Bill Clinton’s press secretary, looking for a second  
career after the Clintons. Apparently there’s no big cash to be had  
protecting our freedom of speech, but Cisco and AT&T are happy to fund  
him to run a firm to defend ISP’s right to do “deep packet  
inspection” (DPI).

Only Arts+Labs doesn’t dare call it DPI, which sounds just a bit  
scary and Big Brotherish.  Instead they call it the “intelligent  
network” that will smooth our experience, cleansing it of all those  
uneven experiences.   Those of us who are as old as I am - 56 - might  
remember that the term “Intelligent Network” was a Bell Labs idea  
that failed due to the success of the Internet.  As David Isenberg  
told it, the Internet was the “Rise of the Stupid Network“.

The Internet is a simple network, a stupid network, that just connects  
your computer to another computer with no interference. That’s  
opposed to old smarty-pants networks that tried limit users to those  
things that maximized the operators’ monopoly profits, by taxing the  
content providers and preventing innovators from attaching new  
devices, inventing new services at the edges, etc.  The Internet won,  
for a good reason: it enabled innovation, and it kept busybody  
operators from having to tinker with or spy on their users’ traffic.   
It delighted users, rather than holding them hostage.

The Arts+Labs site looks cool, very Web 2.0′ish.  But hidden in that  
beautiful design, behind the slick and seductive words, is a dangerous  
idea, one that the founders of the United States rejected in the First  
Amendment.  The Arts+Labs site tries to convince you (and Congress) of  
the idea that it’s a “good thing” to allow your ISP to decide  
what you can see or hear or use.  That’s the same ISP that is given  
by Fed, State, or local regulators a monopoly or oligopoly over your  
ability to connect at high speed to the Internet.  For that monopoly  
to examine your traffic, make guesses as to what it means, and to  
decide for you which services you should connect to, using what  
protocols.

Don’t believe Mike McCurry, AT&T and Cisco’s new shill.  He may be  
connected, but it’s pretty clear that he wants to disconnect us.





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