* * * * * Immiment Death of the Internet: mpeg @ 127.0.0.1 > The [phone/TV (Television) cable] carriers are going to lobby for the laws > and regulations they need, and they're going to do the deals they need to > do. The new system will be theirs, not ours. The NEA principle [1]—Nobody > owns it, Everybody can use it, Anybody can improve it— so familiar to the > Free Software [2] and Open Source [3] communities will prove to be a > temporary ideal, a geek conceit. Code is not Law [4]. Culture is not Free > [5]. From the Big Boys' perspective, code and culture are stuff nobody > cares about. > > That's us: Nobody. > > The new carrier-based Net will work in the same asymmetrical few-to- many, > top-down pyramidal way made familiar by TV, radio, newspapers, books, > magazines and other Industrial Age media now being sucked into Information > Age pipes. Movement still will go from producers to consumers, just like it > always did. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Literally. > “Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes [6]” > Network Neutrality, that is, a network that just delivers the packets, > stupid, with no cognizance of what app, device, or end-user generated them, > is an public good that gives rise to much innovation, value creation and > economic growth at the application layer. It is the single greatest factor > in the success of the current Internet. > > But a Network Neutrality rule, even a strong one, can fail. > “http://isen.com/blog/2005/12/what-network-neutrality-rule- wants.html [7]” > If you want to help save the net [8], bug your provider for IPv6 (Internet > Protocol Version 6) today. > > If you want to **ensure** the Net remains a free place for ideas and > services - you - yes you, dear reader, must also take action. Implement > IPv6 at home, and at work. Get a ipv6 tunnel [9] and publish your AAAA > records! Don't ask for permission. Just. Do. It. > “One escape from the silo - ipv6 [10]” Each article is a definite must-read if you value the future of the Internet. I know that David Isenberg [11] has been saying this for a long time on isen.blog [12], but it seems to be coming to a head, what with the entrenched phone and cable companies wanting to carve out the Internet in their own (incompatible) images. And IPv6 would prevent a lot of networking problems [13] and return us once again to a true “point-to-point” nature of the early (pre- commercial) Internet. [1] http://www.worldofends.com/#BM_8 [2] http://www.gnu.org/ [3] http://opensource.org/ [4] http://www.code-is-law.org/ [5] http://www.free-/ [6] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8673 [7] http://isen.com/blog/2005/12/what-network-neutrality-rule- [8] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8673 [9] http://www.google.com/search?q=ipv6+tunnel&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en- [10] http://the-/ [11] http://www.isen.com/ [12] http://www.isen.com/blog/ [13] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2003/11/21.1 Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org .