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

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Tue, 22 Mar 1994 15:43:17 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 15:43:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Subject: Re: PUBLIC SERVICE ROLE OF NREN REAFFIRMED BY U.S. SENATE
To: roundtable@cni.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9403211710.A14885-0100000@world.std.com>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.89.9403221455.A15607-0100000@access2.digex.net>


On Mon, 21 Mar 1994, Miles R Fidelman wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 21 Mar 1994, Vigdor Schreibman - FINS wrote:
....
> > 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.

  The Act, H.R.820 as passed by the Senate Mar 16, Freedom of Information
Day, together with another document printed as an Amendment to H.R.820
(derived from S.4) are now going through the process of resolving
differences between the Senate and House.  Conferees representing the
House side will be drawn from the respective Committees of that body in
due time.  However, FINS was informed this morning, Mar 22, by James
Wilson, Science Consultant to the House Subcommittee on Science that all
matters included in the Act pertaining to title VI, Information Technology
Applications, sec. 609, National Research and Education Network Program
"were worked out in agreement with the House leadership on that issue." 
No controversy remains on that NREN issue.  The intention of both the
Senate and the House, disclosed to FINS by various senior staff persons
and Sen.  Hollings, personally, is to "make no change in the use of the
NREN, which has been so successfuly."  Wilson stressed this intention in 
his interview with FINS,

     The language of sec. 609, in pertinent part, is as follows:

The Network Program shall consist of the following components:
     (1) Research and development of software and hardware for
     high-performance computing and high-speed networks.
     (2) Support of experimental test bed networks for--
          (A) developing and demonstrating advanced networking
          technologies resulting from the activities described 
          in paragraph (1); and
          (B) providing connections and associated network
          services for purposes consistent with this Act.
     (3) Provision of support for researchers, educators, students, 
     libraries, and other appropriate institutions in order to
     ensure their access and use of networks.
     (4) Federal networks for linking Federal agency facilities and
     personnel to each other and to non-Federal networks.

> 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 
> each other.

  Industry has made this argument, of course.  Many networkers who have
deplored the notion that the NREN should be privatized, reject the adverse
connotations of this industry line on the grounds that the alternative
profit-centered approach to the NREN will not serve the public good. 

> 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:

  On the contrary, the great success of the Internet has flowed from 
its collaborative spirit, which would be destroyed by shifting to a 
subversive maketplace scheme.

> 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

  This cry-in-the-wild that the profit-model will not dominate the
Internet, is not serious.  Networkers have invented, developed, and
operated an networked electronic information system free from corrosive
profit pressures with freedom to experiment, which is one of the wonders
of this civilization.  When this Act is finally passed by Congress and
signed into law by the President, as now appears to be assured, all 
Americans can join with the global people in contemplating the future of 
the Information Age governed by the enlightened spirit of cybserspace. 

=========================================================================== 
BECOME A MEMBER OF FINS--COLLABORATE IN PROTECTING THE SPIRIT OF CYBERSPACE 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Membership rate: $30.00 a year.  United States and International members   
receive 24 issues of Fins News Columns a year; plus networking, or print   
reproduction rights in primary markets; plus Fins Information Age Library. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Federal Information News Syndicate, Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher, 
18 - 9th Street NE #206, Washington, DC 20002-6042.  Copyright 1994 FINS.  
Internet: fins@access.digex.net. Browse Fins Information Age Lib located at
the University of Maryland by: "All the Gopher Servers in the World"; or if
you have a Gopher client : gopher to inform.umd.edu and go to the directory
Educational_Resources/Computers_and_Society/Fins_Information_Age; or 
if you have ftp : ftp to inform.umd.edu cd to inforM/and the same directory.
=============================================================================

[CNI Home Page]