|
Monday, June 30, 2003 |
GovernanceProfessor Charles Nesson Asked some of the bloggers to come down and join at the table – Aaron Swartz, David Hornik, Zack Rosen, Frank Field, Lisa Rein – are there N: Internet had certain mob quality about it. Initial proposition that the net had an “unregulatable” quality to it… There is a question that is underneath all that we are talking about that is big and fun to talk about. So, we put this panel together on the subject of digital democracy. The net as we imagine it is potentially accessible to everyone. Search engines make it possible to find anything [yeah right]. The means of production are actually in our hands (if we have a brain to use it). We can find a message that someone else is projecting. So, the question is “what’s real, what’s not” ID for me the attributes of the net that lead us to think that it has this democratic capacity. Field: Has speech makes it heard. Lisa: Joe blow’s web page is as equal as IBM Aaron – everyone is connected to each other. Hornik: low cost, low barrier to entry Zack: got to put stuff in to get stuff out. Users are participants. Colin: public is not passive participant. We create the story. How much of these qualities has to do with architecture? Lisa: QOS issues – my packet has as much right to travel as any other. Makes me worry of protocols that discriminate. Is any of the Internet law? Colin: Laws made prevention against discriminating on phone lines… so enabled access Hornik: Law doesn’t come into play until you succeed. Once they take hold, you consider the legal implications. You might say this is true of content as well as process. Zack: It’s not just law, it is norms. Do you actually feel there is a democratic air of the internet? Yes…. Q: How is it democratic if 90% use IE6 and producers of tools is limited Field: barrier is learning curve. If you wanna do this you gotta learn something about how the net works. There is definitely a question of when technology becomes a barrier. Q: commercial sites developed that can’t be seen because of platform protocol differences. Lisa: blatant anti-competitive activity creates this. But designers must be aware of this – it is their responsible. Consumer education is a really big part of this. People create their own barriers : net is a reflection of people creating barriers. Colin: Internet is great opportunity – but you must influence TV… N: Stay with access at this moment – clearly the planet is not on the internet. I want Zittrain to focus on Tier 2. How does it work when packet sent to Africa. Who pays? Z: At some point an African ISP has to connect to the cloud. The negotiation can take form of “Hello Tier I ISP – we want to hook up – wouldn’t your folks want to connect to us? Tier I: no… You are too short to peer with me. I will not peer with you. Tier II: Ok, I’ll pay you or a non-african tier I ISP a fee (which I must pass on to my subscribers). Audience: Internet seems to have forgotten the third world – for instance, lots of N:Has the aspiration been compromised? [Ah, the discussion is now devolving to semantics – is it freedom or democracy? Does It matter?] Terry Fisher: It is helpful to persue definition of democracy – my offer is democracy has three primary meanings with inter 1) political democracy – most people think of it that way – we are governed by laws we ourselves make – a) elected officials govern b) frequent fair elections c) universal adult suffrage d) everyone can stand for election e) freedom of expression, sources of information and association [these are values] Internet can fuel these values…. 2) economic democracy a)work place participation b) Marxist idea of meaningful work c) 3) Symbiotic democracy – popular participation in meaning of culture What would you point to as evidence of internet role in democracy. Colin: www.Moveon.org N: There was a day leading up to Iraq where people protested by scheduling phone calls, fax calls, and web hits to lock Washington down… a distributed denial of service attack. [but this discussion fails to acknowledge that majority doesn’t get their info from the net] Zack: Internet is a tool with qualities that have aspects of democracy built into it… [hmm.. Zack is working for Dean] But there isn’t a way of organizing the 120,000 people that want to work for the campaign… Wants to prove you don’t need control for campaign if you have tools to do it for you. Autonomous campaign; They won’t control the network – but allow the nodes through RSS to be cross-linked. [my father-in-law will find this interesting] Also planning syndication bubbles… One user at the bottom of the system can enter something that will bubble up to the top… Audience: have to handle web ideas carefully. Have to increase diversity of public sphere. David, tell us of your blog. David: Well, started Ventureblog – to discuss process, items of interest in economy, trying to make the info clearer within the perspective of the venture capital industry. Went to WSJ conference – Mossberg – Gates,et al were there. Telling story of on background requirement of conference ground rules. But, bloggers, who didn’t know the ground rules, including David, blogged on ventureblog what was said. Then journalists who couldn’t report the primary source, pointed to David’s blog as a source. The story of bloggers breaking news becaming the story itself. Explain what you mean by blogs? Diary that is self-referential – you point to source, other people point to you. You get to publish your own website. It is not hugely expensive. And, there is a powerlog relationship as blogs refer to you and you eventually become more main stream…. Aaron, do you see this blogging phenom growing into something that is democratic? A: Yeah, it enables conversation – whatever. N: Are we talking of alternative journalism? D: In theory. The blogs that are important becomes news creators while those smaller may find stories that are reported through the larger blogs. Aaron: blogs focused on field may replace traditional journalism – eliminates journalist as middle person. Audience : in the information age the goal is to create content. Google bought blogger… Audience Mike MGuire: make the argument that blogging is the antithesis of democracy and antithesis of journalism. How do you verify that source. Lisa: How do you know conventional media is verifiable? Frank: The interesting thing that you find among the media is that they do have interests and what they say are affected by that… You can tell when a blogger is affected by his agenda. David: this point is important aspect of internet. There is reputation system on the internet. Ebay does not exist without reputation system. [This is devolving into discussion of blogging as tools] David: Internet is incredible tool to distribute to diverse audiences. Frank: Whether this same set of tools can be used to cloud folk’s minds… Terry Fisher: related the value deTocqueville noted in engaging in public debate. Blogging facilitates the participation in the debate. A side of the debate is represented by Sunstein (Cass) – that a subgroup is fragmenting meaning of group participation that the multiplication of channels on the internet will create peculiar and smaller groups of interest (well, that is how real world works). Lessig: need to pay attention to difference of engaging in argument by writing about it – and listening to multiple views. Serving on juries is important to citizenship because they had to engage in deliberation with other citizens to arrive at an opinion [ does it not say much of our society when you consider all those that try to avoid jury duty]. People who participate in juries become more engaged citizens. This links to Dean campaign story – it will be a story between participating members of a campaign and recipient members of campaign. It is far different to have someone participating than to have someone receiving emails. Could be it is just as powerful to have conversations going on in 100,000 small groups – we don’t have to hear or participate in such groups for it to be effective… Steve: but newspapers are more representative of the community whereas blogs are narrow [boy this ignores mass media ownership of papers and the fact that papers in 18th and 19th centuries were highly partisan in nature] Ray London: pops up with a lot of stats talking about conglomerates owning mass media. Blogs offer alternatives. comment [] 8:44:29 PM
|
Porn and Jurisdiction(An interactive exercise – Zittrain is typing – Lessig is asking the questions which Z is trying to answer – a very lively exchange to explore the problem) Question is “How do we solve pornography problem”
Comments on CIPA decision: A modified # 4 as government contends funding based on doing what legislation requires. Sup Ct is not so sensitive to coercion of funding… as Court is increasingly willing to let government intervene to place tech’s on net to filter porn.
On to Jurisdiction Discusses Yahoo-France case and difficulty of courts imposing will against other country’s companies…. Discusses Quova to discover geographic location of internet participants. When L: so, in this world, each country could see the internet differently. Seems like it is technically easier for local jurisdictions to filter to their own tastes…. What is upon us is no conflict of laws… But, the statement is still in flux … but may be true in 2-3 years. Bottom line: The Internet is not going to be this anarchic space it once was. comment [] 6:10:16 PM
|
Code and the law
Lessig (missed first 5 mins while the techies tried to get my machine connected) · What Things (4 modalities) regulate o Ex ante rule – know in advance – enforced if you break the rule (that’s the way law works) o Norms – (e.g. social norm – cig smokers in CA are treated with disdain) o Market – if you work for 4 hours you have enough money to buy lunch (quid pro quo) · If I sing, you pay me not to – qui pro quo to regulate my not singing · Gasoline at $2.5/g imposes a restraint on your driving o Architecture – the way the world is constrains your behavior · Put windows where nothing can be seen to keep bored people form not paying attention to lectures § Wireless connections allow people to not pay attention as well (hmm… mine is still not working, guess that is a good thing)
Q – There is a point where you can’t architect against social norms (or acceptance which is it?) – at some point there is a time when architecture can’t stand in way of natural forces A – let’s put this two ways. Law of nature – speed of light for example – can’t architect against those (definite constraint). Perhaps humans have constraints but don’t assume too much of laws of nature of human behavior. So within those constraints there is much we can do. Q – Your argument laid out primacy of law over other three – but within those three there is some affect – are you arguing primacy of law here? A – no, within context, any is on top. But, law is the one place where it seems appropriate that you self-consciously understand what you are trying to affect. The one place where it is appropriate where you can remake the world is law. (That is where you architect social structure). Law has that role in the context of democratic legitimacy. [JDF1] Q – Libertarian’s use government for coercion without acknowledging that is what they are doing A – (Stupid name for a chapter – what libertarians don’t get) – Governments use it. To defend a claim that libertarians should worry about these regulators. Mills wrote about restraints imposed by social norms. He worries there is too much intolerance of deviant ideas that will ultimately kill society. The diversity of regulators is recognized by different parts of the world differently. E.g. Americans like to think they don’t worry about norms – but they do. Back to the lecture What is Cyberspace - it is a particular architecture of a particular design which has consequences. For example – TCP/IP Government can’t know who you are, what you are doing or what you are doing (i.e. the internet gives you relative anonymity) thus they can’t regulate you. The web forgets who you are – business don’t like that. So, they want to fix this bug to identify you (e.g. bots, cookies, etc) – Libertarians like it… hence the conflict of what business/government want the net for and what the original designers want the net to be. e.g. no porn to kids
When the market tries to regulate by making sure you pay
The mistake of “is-ism”
How do you solve the problem of “un-regulability”?
The problem is that “IT” can happen – as Internet is increasingly regulatable – you need to worry about Q – About cookie technology – does not invade privacy does not trespass – IS the cookie a violation of any rule or law? A – In the Doubleclick is a good example of a company that has come to terms with how to live within the Internet world. So, they adopted aggressive internet privacy policy explicitly stating what they do and that they do not violate rules… Q – What is the answer re: Gilmor and Barlow – A – they understand it – are not naïve Are very much aware that govt can muck it up. One obvious point – these modalities create certain constraints They interact – less of one can mean more of another For ex: Spam Initially, law rejected as Internet was meant to be without censorship – and the community norm (small and homogenous) respects the rules. No one wanted to be flamed. Enter American OnLine – millions join the community – some who don’t know the norms or could care less – so the norm that regulated content on the net disappears. Thus, spam gets an entry. Enter vigilantes
Ah, we go out there and try to use technologies to control spam. And that technology tries to block email from servers that seemingly don’t respect the rules. Of course, there is some judgement as to what is good spam versus bad spam. And, there is disagreement as to that distinction. (gave story of arms race that broke out when HP blocked MIT and MIT started blocking HP…) The problem of differences in policy between two different users is still an issue. (Vigilantes are trying to do good – but the technology they try to implement does not necessarily achieve the objective but does decrease the ability of Internet to be a free speech medium.) The point is that architecture as a response can do more harm to a free speech value than… A Law So, it comes in and regulates in some way – taking care of problem of spam – therefore the need for architecture to regulate spam is removed. This bit of law can remove need of private law wherease absence of law can increase need for private law (e.g. architecture)… 1) Code is law – Mitch Kapor said architecture is politics. 2) Code is plastic – can be changed as values change 3) No law can beget bad code (read absence of law=no law) 4) Good law can avoid bad code (maybe) Q – noticed deterioration of rule of law in US – I don’t see that primacy with clarity you do. We have problem of moving away from respect of public law – in so many different power centers – are you going to address that? A – I am enormously pessimistic of power of law in this country. It is in fact perverting important fundamental values [hmm… reminds me of BusinessWeek article on the dissonance evident between law good for business and conservative views of law]. Q – some vigilantes could take over – by “black-holing” you [note story of A – When people think they don’t have to defend their actions – then the private action should give way to government regulation. Q – looking at American law and how it affects the market and architecture – especially how it relates to influencing other states. A – architecture of Internet has exported values of free speech better than any other activity this country has ever undertaken. Barbara – a lot of vigilantism actually blocks entire region – like Lessig – should that trouble us?
|
|
Wentworth is bloggin at copyfight comment [] 6:07:44 PM
|
Video blogging ILAWLisa Rein is video blogging. comment [] 5:16:20 PM
|
Blog, blog everwhere a blog.Just visited some of the other bloggers noting this conference, then took a look at the NECC blogs being written. This evening, I will do some meshing -- as I see things picked up that I missed. comment [] 5:00:50 PM
|
ILAW bloggingI am not going to even try to do what Donna Wentworth and others are accomplishing --- so, take my notes as they are. But, Donna does leave a list of accomplished bloggers: comment [] 4:47:59 PM
|
|
The Debate on what government would look like if... I had this very same discussion with multiple persons last week...
comment [] 4:43:23 PM
|
Jon Zittrain – ilaw Stanford 2003-06-30Internet Technologies and why they matterWhy tech matters
[Question – how much US portion of Internet costs – and who is paying for it?] Answer: Don’t know, how do you even approach accounting for the cost. Q – Try equipment cost – A – part of the fuzziness is that such a decentralized network defies definition. Industry people are concerned about cost of building the Internet out to each house. Graham Freeman – no answer – he has a van that can be a point as a wireless relay on the Internet (a temporary hub). Q – what happens in the clouds? A – there is a vision of clouds within the clouds – but there are only a handful of tier I providers. If they are shut down – then there could be a problem. Getting Tier I to agree to something like sniffing out P2P packets could prove devastating to P2P. But, that ain’t gonna happen. Q – Do packets take a direct route and only circuitous routes if prevented or is it random A – rougly the network maps roughly to geography. AOL dial-up is direct (fed ex) connecting to Dulles. But Internet is a bit more random. Q – Is there some intelligence in the network? A – routers either advertise a route or they don’t (hmm… there are some cost calculations here) A - Barbara Roseman (ICANN – formerly Global Crossing) – some interior networks do more precise routing control. Q – Lauren Smith – Can you say more about physical lines and where they are located. A – Because of Natl Sec requirements, I can’t say (joke) – different media dictates different routes, connections, locations (CAIDA.org – cool graphs mapping the internet) Q – Lisa Raine – On Lisa Raine’s radar – question about jurisdiction – A - SeaLand is more of a destination than a direction. Brief discussion of a “there goes the neighborhood” attitude – and efforts to build I2 – instead of managing Internet. Q – Turkish Internet traffic affected by collapse of fiber in sea damaged by Algerian quake.
[JDF2]He certainly knows how to reduce examples to simplistic, graphic forms. Imagine counting mailboxes as hops and we helped to deliver our own mail… hmm… if free why not? [JDF3]If Zittrain is this entertaining for every lecture – boy, lawschool would be a hoot!
|
Blog attendee notesHmm.. Tracy Mitrano from Cornell is here... comment [] 12:41:14 PM
|
Dis-connectedHmm... I am here but my network connection is not working - course if you read this, the connection is working - a conundrun indeed. Course the techie sneered at my Wintel machine - oh well, I am in Rome. Met Donna Wentworh, I see Larry Lessig. It is almost like meeting celebrities that you have spent way too myc time reading about. Ran into a gentleman (Ray London, Human Studies Center, Irvine) who has been to two other Internet Law Conferences. Says they are great. I am looking forward to it. comment [] 11:59:50 AM
|
Blogging from ILAW...Donna Wentworth will be blogging the conference. comment [] 10:16:45 AM
|
Blogging projectsThe folks from Georgia are in Seattle this week attending NECC. For the first time, the group will use blogs to record their experiences and hopefully carry forward any conversations they may start. Edublogger Anne Davis has been in Seattle for the past couple of days and has posted here and here. Watch here for participant entries. comment [] 9:26:07 AM
|
Libel protection for bloggers.This will hold only if not abused.
 comment []
9:20:39 AM
|
Open Government and TechnologyKudos to the Savannah Police Department for allowing the public to "self-service" their need for information on crime. If more governments would just "push" the information out there, we would be better off. And, the Governor's Task Force on Telecommunications and Technology finally releases the report that has been ready since April. I'll have anlysis later. I'd be interested in any comments you may have. [Note: I've tried uploading the pdf file but keep getting an error. Is 2 megs too big?] comment [] 9:12:09 AM
|
Political Ideas Toolcomment [] 1:13:25 AM
|
Tech Biz BlogsHad a good talk with my friend Mike Adkinson, publisher of Techlinks in Atlanta. He is very interested in blogs following our discussion. So, this bit from Doc Searls is appropriate. Mike, if you read this, also check out Dan Gillmor's blog in Silicon Valley. comment [] 1:04:10 AM
|
Internet LawWell, just arrived in Palo Alto for the Internet Law Program 2003 sponsored by the Berkman Center and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Am looking forward to meeting Lessig and others that I have read much of... comment [] 12:48:35 AM
|
Last update: 7/12/2004; 4:14:15 PM .
