roundtable: Re: PUBLIC SERVICE ROLE OF NREN REAFFIRMED BY U.S. SENATE

roundtable: Re: PUBLIC SERVICE ROLE OF NREN REAFFIRMED BY U.S. SENATE

Re: PUBLIC SERVICE ROLE OF NREN REAFFIRMED BY U.S. SENATE

Miles R Fidelman (fidelman@civicnet.org)
Mon, 21 Mar 1994 17:58:11 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 17:58:11 -0500 (EST)
From: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>
Subject: Re: PUBLIC SERVICE ROLE OF NREN REAFFIRMED BY U.S. SENATE
To: roundtable@cni.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9403211430.A4685-0100000@access2.digex.net>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.89.9403211710.A14885-0100000@world.std.com>

On Mon, 21 Mar 1994, Vigdor Schreibman - FINS wrote:
> 
> As passed by the Senate, under the leadership of Sen. Ernest F. Hollings,
> reportedly worked out with the agreement of libraries and White House
> staff Mike Nelson, the Network Program will authorize funding for (among
> other matters), test bed networks for "connections and associated network
> services."  Sen. Hollings told FINS at a news conference at the Capitol
> Mar 16, that key provisions of the substitute amendment approved by the
> Senate would assure that "there would be no change in the NREN program
> that is now working so well."  What was worked out with the administration
> and library groups, Sen Hollings added, was to set up "a fire wall" to
> make sure that the NREN "is not used to compete with private industry." 
> In short, the strict two-level network system including (1) "experimental
> networks" and (2) "production networks" that industry has been advocating
> since the fall of 1992, *has not prevailed.* Under the agreed measure the
> experimental test bed networks offered under sec. 102 of the HPC Act will
> continue to offer commercial services, provided that such services are for
> the purposes approved by the act. 


Does anybody have the exact language?  This sounds like it could have 
just the opposite of the desired effect.

For years, the "Appropriate Use Policies" of various parts of the 
Internet created situations where one group of researchers could access 
the net and others couldn't.  Later, companies with government contracts 
could access the net, while other companies (typcially smaller, 
innovative, entrepreneurial companies couldn't get on).  And once on, 
the AUPs kept large groups of people from being able to communicate with 
eachother.

Its taken a long time to get to today's situation where Internet access 
is becoming increasingly available to all comers, and where everyone on 
the net can communicate with everyone else.  And... the Internet, like 
the telephone system, becomes increasingly useful as it becomes 
increasingly populated and widely interconnected.

The last thing we want are policies that lead back toward balkenization 
of the net.  These policies can take two forms:

i. industry action to build proprietary networks that don't connect to 
the existing Internet (remember that it took a lot of customer pressure 
to get Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, AT&Tmail, MCImail, etc. to connect just 
email to the Internet -- now we see the telcos trying to create a 
national ISDN network that connects to nothing that already exists, as 
well as AT&T/Lotus trying to create a national Notes network) -- a key 
role of Federal legislation should be to keep the pressure on for 
interconnection and interoperability

ii. Federal action to restrict access to various portions of the net, 
which is what it sounds like this new language will do -- the result of 
such "firewalls" will be two fold:

----- balkanization of the net, where different communities can't talk 
to each other 

----- increasing the cost of Internet service, since commercial users 
won't be there to generate economies of scale -- as a result the cost 
to subsidize users will go up, and the number of subsidized users will 
go down 

lets get copies of this legislative language on the net ASAP - so we 
can see what's happening here -- in the networking world, there are 
too many instances of Federal policy that sounds good but backfires 
terribly


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Miles R. Fidelman                   mfidelman@civicnet.org
Executive Director                  91 Baldwin St. Charlestown MA 02129 
The Center for Civic Networking     617-241-9205 fax: 617-241-5064

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Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century
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