Show Report: Vint Cerf on Regulation

This morning at the NGN Conference, I'm sitting in on the keynote presentation by none other than Mr. Vint Cerf, daddy of the Internet (OK, co-designer of TCP/IP), where he's expected to talk on telecommunications regulation...a topic befitting the day after our presidential election. What follows are my notes from this keynote. Actually, this time out, I think I'll post the most memorable quotes and thoughts.

"To understand the Internet, you must look at it from the side to see the layers--looking down from the top conflates all functions into one solid mass. The regulatory world sees the Internet from the top down."

Presently, we regulate via silos:

Side note: Apparently Vint made t-shirts stating, "IP On Everything." Note to self: check eBay for said shirt.

Yochai Benkler's proposed regulatory system looks like so:

content layer
logical/code layer
physical layer

MCI is open to reinvestigating this, but is suggesting a four layer model:

content/transactions layer
apps layer
logical network layer
physical network layer (transport/access)

So we don't want a regulatory structure that would allow one layer of the Internet to differentiate handling of information based upon information at a higher layer.

Consider a cable service. You don't want the cable operator to decide not to transport someone's content.

Transparency Thesis: The fact that layer-violating regulations inherently damage the transparency of the Internet, combined with the fact that Internet transparency lowers the barriers to innovations, provides compelling support for the principle of layer separation.

Here's an example: A country called Myanmar didn't want its citizens to access the Net. So they regulated access to the wire (no modems, fax machines, computers, etc.) just to keep people from the content.

Another example: Jewish students in France sued Yahoo! because they could access Nazi war memorabilia (auctions), which goes against the accord that does not allow for profiteering of this sort. So Yahoo! had to figure out how to block access to these people, based upon IP address. Of course, that didn't work. Yahoo! lost the case and in the end removed the content from everywhere because it couldn't remove access for specific parties.

DSL is a transport service completely independent from IP and it should be treated that way.

You don't want regulation at all if there is no possibility of abuse (read: enough competition).

Conclusion: Layered analysis adds clarity to regulatory thinking, even if it's not applied literally, to actual regulatory policy.