[Infowarrior] - As Internet turns 40, barriers threaten its growth

[Richard Forno]

As Internet turns 40, barriers threaten its growth
By ANICK JESDANUN
The Associated Press
Sunday, August 30, 2009 3:00 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/30/AR2009083001406_pf.html
NEW YORK -- Goofy videos weren't on the minds of Len Kleinrock and his  
team at UCLA when they began tests 40 years ago on what would become  
the Internet. Neither was social networking, for that matter, nor were  
most of the other easy-to-use applications that have drawn more than a  
billion people online.

Instead the researchers sought to create an open network for freely  
exchanging information, an openness that ultimately spurred the  
innovation that would later spawn the likes of YouTube, Facebook and  
the World Wide Web.

There's still plenty of room for innovation today, yet the openness  
fostering it may be eroding. While the Internet is more widely  
available and faster than ever, artificial barriers threaten to  
constrict its growth.

Call it a mid-life crisis.

A variety of factors are to blame. Spam and hacking attacks force  
network operators to erect security firewalls. Authoritarian regimes  
block access to many sites and services within their borders. And  
commercial considerations spur policies that can thwart rivals,  
particularly on mobile devices like the iPhone.

"There is more freedom for the typical Internet user to play, to  
communicate, to shop - more opportunities than ever before," said  
Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor and co-founder of Harvard's Berkman  
Center for Internet & Society. "On the worrisome side, there are some  
longer-term trends that are making it much more possible (for  
information) to be controlled."

Few were paying attention back on Sept. 2, 1969, when about 20 people  
gathered in Kleinrock's lab at the University of California, Los  
Angeles, to watch as two bulky computers passed meaningless test data  
through a 15-foot gray cable.

That was the beginning of the fledgling Arpanet network. Stanford  
Research Institute joined a month later, and UC Santa Barbara and the  
University of Utah did by year's end.

The 1970s brought e-mail and the TCP/IP communications protocols,  
which allowed multiple networks to connect - and formed the Internet.  
The '80s gave birth to an addressing system with suffixes like ".com"  
and ".org" in widespread use today.

The Internet didn't become a household word until the '90s, though,  
after a British physicist, Tim Berners-Lee, invented the Web, a subset  
of the Internet that makes it easier to link resources across  
disparate locations. Meanwhile, service providers like America Online  
connected millions of people for the first time.

That early obscurity helped the Internet blossom, free from regulatory  
and commercial constraints that might discourage or even prohibit  
experimentation.

"For most of the Internet's history, no one had heard of it," Zittrain  
said. "That gave it time to prove itself functionally and to kind of  
take root."

Even the U.S. government, which funded much of the Internet's early  
development as a military project, largely left it alone, allowing its  
engineers to promote their ideal of an open network.

When Berners-Lee, working at a European physics lab, invented the Web  
in 1990, he could release it to the world without having to seek  
permission or contend with security firewalls that today treat unknown  
types of Internet traffic as suspect.

Even the free flow of pornography led to innovations in Internet  
credit card payments, online video and other technologies used in the  
mainstream today.

"Allow that open access, and a thousand flowers bloom," said  
Kleinrock, a UCLA professor since 1963. "One thing about the Internet  
you can predict is you will be surprised by applications you did not  
expect."

That idealism is eroding.

An ongoing dispute between Google Inc. and Apple Inc. underscores one  
such barrier.

Like some other mobile devices that connect to the Internet, the  
iPhone restricts the software that can run on it. Only applications  
Apple has vetted are allowed.

Apple recently blocked the Google Voice communications application,  
saying it overrides the iPhone's built-in interface. Skeptics,  
however, suggest the move thwarts Google's potentially competing phone  
services.

On desktop computers, some Internet access providers have erected  
barriers to curb bandwidth-gobbling file-sharing services used by  
their subscribers. Comcast Corp. got rebuked by Federal Communications  
Commission last year for blocking or delaying some forms of file- 
sharing; Comcast ultimately agreed to stop that.

The episode galvanized calls for the government to require "net  
neutrality," which essentially means that a service provider could not  
favor certain forms of data traffic over others. But that wouldn't be  
a new rule as much as a return to the principles that drove the  
network Kleinrock and his colleagues began building 40 years ago.

Even if service providers don't actively interfere with traffic, they  
can discourage consumers' unfettered use of the Internet with caps on  
monthly data usage. Some access providers are testing drastically  
lower limits that could mean extra charges for watching just a few DVD- 
quality movies online.

"You are less likely to try things out," said Vint Cerf, Google's  
chief Internet evangelist and one of the Internet's founding fathers.  
"No one wants a surprise bill at the end of the month."

Dave Farber, a former chief technologist at the Federal Communications  
Commission, said systems are far more powerful when software  
developers and consumers alike can simply try things out.

Farber has unlocked an older iPhone using a warrantee-voiding  
technique known as jail-breaking, allowing the phone to run software  
that Apple hasn't approved. By doing that, he could watch video before  
Apple supported it in the most recent version of the iPhone, and he  
changed the screen display when the phone is idle to give him a  
summary of appointments and e-mails.

While Apple insists its reviews are necessary to protect children and  
consumer privacy and to avoid degrading phone performance, other phone  
developers are trying to preserve the type of openness found on  
desktop computers. Google's Android system, for instance, allows  
anyone to write and distribute software without permission.

Yet even on the desktop, other barriers get in the way.

Steve Crocker, an Internet pioneer who now heads the startup Shinkuro  
Inc., said his company has had a tough time building technology that  
helps people in different companies collaborate because of security  
firewalls that are ubiquitous on the Internet. Simply put, firewalls  
are designed to block incoming connections, making direct interactions  
between users challenging, if not impossible.

No one's suggesting the removal of all barriers, of course. Security  
firewalls and spam filters became crucial as the Internet grew and  
attracted malicious behavior, much as traffic lights eventually had to  
be erected as cars flooded the roads. Removing those barriers could  
create larger problems.

And many barriers throughout history eventually fell away - often  
under pressure. Early on, AOL was notorious for discouraging users  
from venturing from its gated community onto the broader Web. The  
company gradually opened the doors as its subscribers complained or  
fled. Today, the company is rebuilding its business around that open  
Internet.

What the Internet's leading engineers are trying to avoid are barriers  
that are so burdensome that they squash emerging ideas before they can  
take hold.

Already, there is evidence of controls at workplaces and service  
providers slowing the uptake of file-sharing and collaboration tools.  
Video could be next if consumers shun higher-quality and longer clips  
for fear of incurring extra bandwidth fees. Likewise, startups may  
never get a chance to reach users if mobile gatekeepers won't allow  
them.

If such barriers keep innovations from the hands of consumers, we may  
never know what else we may be missing along the way.

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Anick Jesdanun, deputy technology editor at The Associated Press, has  
been writing about the Internet since its 30th anniversary in 1999. He  
can be reached at njesdanun(at)ap.org.

© 2009 The Associated Press