Lessig: Tiered Internet Bad for Innovation

TMCnet's Patrick Barnard wrote a great article today about the status of U.S. telecommunications legislation. Patrick refers to a quote in BusinessWeek in November 2005 by AT&T's CEO Ed Whitacre:

"Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment -- and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes (for) free is nuts!"

This quote struck me because Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig used this same quote in a presentation I attended last week in New York City, sponsored by the ILO Institute. Lessig is founder of Creative Commons, an organization set up to initiate new approaches to intellectual property. Lessig has also commented on the Net Neutrality question, one of the central issues in the current U.S. legislative battle.

In his presentation, Lessig likened the Internet to a highway in that the infrastructure is designed so that "any kind of vehicle works on it." What the telecommunications giants are proposing to do now, he says, is "set up reserved lanes" on the highway, "like Moscow under communism." The network owner can then "sell the reserved lanes, and the rest of the people using the Internet will be pushed into the slow lanes."

Lessig says allowing the network owner to exert this kind of control works against innovation. The Internet, he says, was originally designed as an end-to-end (e2e) network without central control. An "end-to-end Internet is massively more valuable than an Internet centrally controlled by AT&T." Giving control to the network operator allows that operator to say, "Vonage, you're making it harder for me to sell telephone service. If you have an innovation, bring your permission slip."

AB -- 3/30/06