Old people know more than younger people. at RunningWithBulls.com

Old people know more than younger people.

Published by bbt January 23rd, 2007 in bernard, internet, irishblogs, personal, runningwithbulls.com, tech

Father of internet warns against Net Neutrality | The Register

Not meant to be disrespective.

This whole “net-neutrality” debate/legislation/argument in the states is more than just annoying.

When you have someone as legendary as Bob Kahn, the co-founder of TCP/IP protocol, the glue and “tubes” what is now the Internet, speaking so publically (and particularly when his view is opposite to Vince Cerf, his ex-colleague) and so simply as to why “Net Neutrality” legislation is bad, people have to listen.

As The Reg article reminds us,

“Kahn gently reminded his audience that the internet was really about interconnecting networks, a point often lost today.”

That is a key fact here.

Yes, regulate (from the point of view for operational/technical reasoning-I suppose I really mean “quality control”) the protocols that run the Inter(connected)Net(works). But there is no reason why the whole”eco-system” should be regulated.

As applied to the world eco-system, regulations will be bent, broken, changed, for financial gains. If this happens to the Internet, then it can only lead to second-class citizens/marginalisation.

“If the goal is to encourage people to build new capabilities, then the party that takes the lead is probably only going to have it on their net to start with and it’s not going to be on anyone else’s net. You want to incentivize people to innovate, and they’re going to innovate on their own nets or a few other nets,”

…and if there is any legislation hindering the innovation, then thats the end of Web 2.0/3.0-whatever (although some people say it might be a good thing!).

The point of it is, regulation slows things down, and stops people taking the risks/chances that sometimes come up with fantastic outcomes.

Well done on a good article Reg.

The Internet is only (commercially speaking) all of 20 years old. Lets not hobble it before its even legal to drink in the US

Technorati Tags: net neutrality , robert kahn , bob kahn , internet , politics , irishblogs , runningwithbulls

One Response to “Old people know more than younger people.”

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1 adam Jan 23rd, 2007 at 2:25 pm

I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as that Bernard. Kahn is a legend, but so are Cerf, Farber and Berners-Lee (both of whom also speak out for legislation), and their opinions can hardly be discounted out of hand.

(I think the funny thing about Cerf in particular - it’s Vint btw, short for Vinton - is that he’s arguing for legislation despite the fact that he’s essentially been a corporate shill for the past 12 years; for MCI since ‘94 and Google since ‘05. But I guess if anyone’s going to scream for more regulation, it’s the chair of the woefully bureaucratic (and corrupt, imho) ICANN.)

I’ve never been able to decide on this issue. On the one hand, I agree with you that regulation could stifle creativity, but on the other I’d argue that big business is perfectly capable of doing that on it’s own; has been doing that in a major, major way; and that’s the reason why we DO need it.

Network providers like PE (all of them in fact) already prioritise paying portal traffic through their networks, for example; and you can’t come up with a better example than than the MPAA and RIAA for stifling creativity.