O'Reilly Media Asks: Is It Time To Build A New Internet? (oreilly.com)

An anonymous reader shares an article from O'Reilly Media's VP of content strategy: It's high time to build the internet that we wanted all along: a network designed to respect privacy, a network designed to be secure, and a network designed to impose reasonable controls on behavior. And a network with few barriers to entry -- in particular, the certainty of ISP extortion as new services pay to get into the "fast lane." Is it time to start over from scratch, with new protocols that were designed with security, privacy, and maybe even accountability in mind? Is it time to pull the plug on the abusive old internet, with its entrenched monopolistic carriers, its pervasive advertising, and its spam? Could we start over again?

That would be painful, but not impossible... In his deliciously weird novel Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town, Cory Doctorow writes about an alternative network built from open WiFi access points. It sounds similar to Google's Project Fi, but built and maintained by a hacker underground. Could Doctorow's vision be our future backboneless backbone? A network of completely distributed municipal networks, with long haul segments over some public network, but with low-level protocols designed for security? We'd have to invent some new technology to build that new network, but that's already started.
The article cites the increasing popularity of peer-to-peer functionality everywhere from Bitcoin and Blockchain to the Beaker browser, the Federated Wiki, and even proposals for new file-sharing protocols like IPFS and Upspin. "Can we build a network that can't be monopolized by monopolists? Yes, we can..."

"It's time to build the network we want, and not just curse the network we have."

Comments

Confusing wording/philosophy?

[Anonymous Coward]

"a network designed to respect privacy, a network designed to be secure, and a network designed to impose reasonable controls on behavior."

Privacy, secure and... "controls on behavior"?

"designed with security, privacy, and maybe even accountability in mind?"

Again, it speaks of security, privacy and... accountability?

I'm not arguing against this as I don't understand what is meant. I simply want to understand how privacy can work together with that last thing they keep bringing up.

Re:Confusing wording/philosophy?

[skids]

Make your own wires and leave all the spies and rent seekers and thought police behind.

...and when you try to control the flood of criminal sploit traffic making those wires useless, you become the spy. ...and when you cannot afford to keep that wire working, you become the rent seeker. ...and when you decide you don't want your pipe used for something you find morally unconscionable, you become the thought police.

All I can say is, if the idea of a "new Internet" gets tried yet fucking again, there are plenty of technologies already available to implement it. Some of them are really well designed. Ignore them, because whoever implements it will select the worst of the bunch and/or roll their own amateur crap.

Reasonable to whom?

[BitterOak]

and a network designed to impose reasonable controls on behavior.

Who gets to decide what controls are "reasonable"? What kind of "behavior" is to be controlled, and how?

It's definately time

[Maxo-Texas]

The current internet has almost become worthless.

Festering with ads and malware.

Tracking everything you search for and selling that data to the highest bidder.

First World Problems

[Kohath]

I have instant access to the world's people and knowledge. But there are ads and Netflix might have to write a check to Comcast (or something equally dire).

So yeah, let's scrap it in favor of a bunch of stuff that's barely more than an idea.

You can't have privacy & accountability

[rsilvergun]

the two are fundamentally incompatible. Privacy only matters when powerful organizations (basically government & mega corps) are abusing it. Accountability requires consequences that are enforced. Meaning no anonymity since if you're anonymous punishment can't be enforced.

Sorry O'Reilly, but there are no simple answers to the complex problems caused by global telecom network open to all commers. It's either going to be a hodge podge of solutions tailored to solve specific problems, a broken chaotic mess or locked down by the ruling class. I'm for the first option.

This isn't about a physical network

[MobyDisk]

Half of the trouble we face today with the internet doesn't require a new *physical* network. We need instead to prefer standard protocols, and stop centralizing information with big companies. That means run your email address from your own domain instead of using gmail for everything. Don't use Facebook to login to everything. Share pictures with friends over email. Put your public thoughts on your own blog instead of tweeting them. If people are interested in following you, they will use your RSS or Atom feed.

Everything these big companies are doing to mine your data and overwhelm you with useless information are inferior (but more convenient!) replacements for the standard decentralized protocols we already had.

Unfortunately, having a few monopolies control the wires is the cheapest most efficient way to build a network. Mesh networks are just not enough to span planet earth. We are only going to address the neutrality issue with appropriate regulation. As-is, the regulation stifles competition rather than promoting it.