Nicholas Johnson: Carterfone: My Story

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: John Gilmore <gnu () toad com>
> Date: October 25, 2017 at 4:54:01 AM EDT
> To: farber () gmail com, gnu () toad com
> Subject: Nicholas Johnson: Carterfone: My Story
>
>  Carterfone: My Story
>  Nicholas Johnson
>  25 Santa Clara Computer & High Tech Law Journal 677 (2009)
>  
> https://web.archive.org/web/20110725170904/http://www.chtlj.org/sites/default/files/media/articles/v025/v025.i3.Johnson.pdf
>
> Nicholas Johnson was a maverick who was somehow appointed as one of
> seven FCC Commissioners, who decided that the only way to get the FCC
> out from under the thumb of the industry was to shake things up and be
> very public.  He succeeded, but by his own account he was hated by the
> industry and most of the other commissioners.
>
> He authored the key FCC decision that enabled *modems*, which enabled
> *computer communications*, which enabled *the Internet*.  That
> decision was the "Carterfone decision" -- which was about overturning
> an insane AT&T monopoly rule that said you couldn't connect ANYTHING
> to the telephone network that wasn't provided by AT&T -- not even a
> couple of rubber suction cups with a speaker and a microphone.
>
> As he points out in the article, his fundamental reasoning came from
> his earlier employment as night watchman and janitor in an Iowa
> electric utility company.  If the *electric company* didn't even
> attempt to require that every device plugged into its dangerous
> circuits was manufactured by the company, surely the *telephone
> company*, with a much less dangerous physical plant, could handle the
> slight complications of an open market for
> things-that-plug-into-the-network.  He was right, as was his intuition
> that an open market and some serious innovation were exactly what
> society needed to get past the 100-year-old thinking of the Phone
> Company monopoly.
>
> Johnson is quite witty and also provides elaborate footnotes.  I heard
> him keynote a conference once, and he's entertaining as well as
> informative.  He now teaches cyberlaw in Iowa.  His story is
> fascinating and very readable.  He also seems to be the only FCC
> Commissioner to ever truly understand the Internet.  (See the last few
> pages of the paper.)
>
>    John



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