From: Strata Rose Chalup (strata@virtual.net)
Date: Thu Dec 28 2000 - 12:51:00 PST
Back when DNS was implemented with root cache servers, the net was
sufficiently benevolent that, AFAIK, there wasn't a lot of discussion
about how a single-rooted hierarchical service could be used to exert
centralized control on the network.
Even now in the beginnings of the Great Rediscovery[1], there seems to
be little thought about how naturally an extremely restrictive set of
affordances will come to govern the use of content. The customary
altruism of the FreeNet and Gnutella/Napster type models has been
sampled, and found to be another tragedy of the commons. Therefore most
of the interesting content will be hosted by "somebody else", and that
somebody will use the tools available to remunerate themselves for
making the content available.
When the only data that lives "out there" is data that you have to pay
for, will you still be so happy with the broadband revolution? What
about when even the data you pay to access is routinely censored? When
you don't even know what's being censored because you don't keep a local
archive of mailing lists and news stories anymore, but instead use a big
search engine that now can't find the censored material? Or you just
host all your data "out there", but your AUP says that the provider can
remove any data which violates copyright, trade secrets, etc etc?
John's famous line about the Internet treating censorship as damage and
routing around it will be much more difficult to make true for an
Internet where most data is hosted and subject to
filtering/modifications at the hosting protocol point. Unless the P2P,
H2H, and other NbyN protocols and systems you build will let folks truly
serve content, and discover it, in a way that benefits from
centralization but can fall back on ad-hoc.
All you folks out there working on killer apps and APIs and transport
technologies, you have the power to help or hinder that future. Choose
wisely.
_Strata
Adam Rifkin wrote:
> [...]
> But this gets to a bigger issue: the world of always-on broadband. In
> that world, the only stuff I need locally is my cache (e.g., the stuff
> I'm most likely to use next). Having big honking amounts of data that
> live "out there" should become dirt-cheap once the costs of hosting and
> storage have become completely commoditized to the point where they cost
> practically nothing.
> [...]
[1] "Oh my gosh! Computers can be both servers AND clients! My
connection could be on ALL THE TIME! We're geniuses! We'll be rich!
Wow! It'll be just like the old ARPANet days, except I can't say that
because I don't know that because I was either a grade-schooler or a
tadpole in the late 70's/early 80's..."
-- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** =========================================================================
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