Promoting innovation to prevent the Internet from becoming a wasteland.

Images of a wasteland abound in our political, economic, and cultural vocabulary. T.S. Eliot, in his famous poem, was drawing on religious representations of a land rendered barren by God's wrath. (1) Eliot was referring to a metaphorical barrenness: the spiritual and existential impoverishment of post-World War I-Europe. Wasteland as physical or spiritual barrenness has come to dominate the notion of the wasteland in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The mayor of Hiroshima, speaking on the fifty-fourth anniversary of his city's bombing, referred to the nuclear holocaust as a "scorched wasteland"; and, recently, Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, similarly referred to his nation as a "wasteland."

Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow's famous 1961 speech evokes a different kind of wasteland. (2) Speaking to a gathering of TV executives, he lamented that television, rather than serving the "public interest" with "a soul and a conscience," had become

In this gloomy vision, television is suffering from profusion rather than barrenness--and yet the net result is much the same as in the other wasteland metaphors: unfulfilled potential, wasted resources, and lack of innovation.

IS THE INTERNET A WASTELAND?

More than four decades have passed since Minow's speech, and in that time, we have seen the emergence of a new form of electronic communication, one that has held as much, if not more, promise than did television in Minow's America. In 1999, drawing an analogy with earlier forms of communication such as radio and television, I pointed out that the potential of the Internet was tremendous, but by no means fulfilled. I underscored that there was a distinct possibility that the Internet would disappoint those who saw it as a force for positive social transformation. (4) The intervening three years has made even clearer that we confront numerous challenges regarding access to information, and distribution of content on the Internet. Is the Internet in danger of becoming the new wasteland?

The first part of this Essay explains why we should continue to be optimistic about the Internet. The second part, however, points out that the Internet is confronting several important challenges that, if left unattended, could take us down a path leading toward a new form of Minow's wasteland. The third part suggests some ways of dealing with these challenges: it proposes a framework for Internet governance that would permit innovation and the public interest to flourish.

WHY THE INTERNET IS NOT A WASTELAND

The Internet is the fastest-growing communications network in history. In just about a decade, it has grown from a peripheral experiment to a global resource that is central to the lives of more than 600 million users around the world. (5) In both the developing and developed worlds, it is providing access to a huge resource of information, pictures, museums, stories, and countries. It is transforming the way people take part in the political process, introducing efficiencies into the delivery of government services, and spurring productivity and economic and social development. To cite just a few numbers: Nearly 80% of American Internet users went online in 2002 to look for information on political candidates; (6) 73 million Americans searched for online health information; (7) and globally, the size of e-commerce transactions now amounts to more than $2.293 trillion, a figure that is estimated to grow by nearly 54% over the next four years. (8)

Perhaps the main reason the Internet has spread so quickly is because of its underlying architecture--especially the end-to-end principles and the emphasis on technology neutrality. Both features are intrinsically supportive of creativity and diversity, mainly because they have enabled innovation to flourish at the ends of the network. Rather than relying upon a centralized group of corporate innovators, the Internet marshals the skills and capabilities of millions of users around the world. The result is a network that is fundamentally nurturing of imagination and talent: anyone with a connection can innovate on the Internet. And indeed, every day we see new technologies and applications emerge and new and better ways of communicating, conducting business, and retrieving and storing information.

CHALLENGES CONFRONTING THE INTERNET

Threats to the potential of the Internet to meet public needs arise from the consolidation of the industry that is taking place, the confusion over rights to use of content, and the lack of capital for innovation. The Internet does indeed confront some very real challenges today. To an extent, these challenges may be inevitable on any maturing network--we are entering a new phase in the development of the Internet. Moreover, the mere existence of difficulties does not mean that the Internet is a wasteland, or even that it is in danger of becoming one. I remain fundamentally optimistic about the future of the Internet. But if the Internet is to continue growing, and if it is to remain supportive of innovation, then we need to deal with some of the growing pains it is confronting today.

To understand the challenges facing the Internet, I would like to invoke a framework for thinking about the Internet that was developed by Professor Yochai Benkler. (9) Professor Benkler organizes the Internet into three "layers": the "physical infrastructure" layer underlying the Internet and through which applications operate and information travels; the "code" or "logical" layer that controls the infrastructure and the information; and the "content" layer, which is the information that runs through the network. Each of those layers faces different challenges, and each may require a different solution. The purpose of what follows is to draw attention to some major challenges at each layer; needless to say, the range of challenges is vast, and these examples are intended simply to be illustrative.

Infrastructure

At the infrastructure layer, the challenge we are facing today is the tension between the need for universal (i.e., everybody) and ubiquitous (i.e., everywhere) access on the one hand, and on the other, the economic, structural, technical, and regulatory limitations that make providing such access difficult. This challenge is manifest in the so-called local loop, the network that links individuals and homes to exchanges, and which is essential to providing connectivity.

Universal and ubiquitous access is essential to bringing all individuals into the digital age. More users would allow the network to tap into the talents of a greater variety of individuals, and would thus mean more creativity and more innovation. More users would also have social and economic spin-off benefits, as people would be able to communicate and engage in dialogue with each other, and access the wide range of real-time information available on the Web. The problem is that providing such access is expensive: The so-called last-mile of connection, which is essential to linking homes to local exchanges and the backbone, accounts for a significant (if not majority) portion of overall network costs, (10)

The way spectrum is allocated will be an essential component of any solution to this challenge. Wireless technologies (e.g., cellular and Wi-Fi), which are cheaper to install in the local loop, can play a crucial role in ensuring universal, ubiquitous access, particularly access to broadband. But to ensure that this potential is fulfilled, spectrum policy needs to: take advantage of technological advances that can improve the efficiency with which we use spectrum; make spectrum available to a broad array of services and of users; allow for the use of fallow spectrum; and carefully define the bundle of rights conveyed through spectrum licensing to maintain the public's interest in this resource.

Code

We find similar challenges at the code, or logical, layer, where software controls the infrastructure. Here, we are witnessing the emergence of technologies that appear to go against the principles of end-to-end and technology neutrality--for example, the increasingly common secure platforms and other technologies that would enhance the security and stability of the Internet. Such technologies, properly deployed, could be instrumental to the continued growth of the Internet. But enhanced digital security (as in the non-digital world) also poses challenges to individual rights.

Such trusted computing platforms if not properly developed, could also be used to give software makers and content providers an unprecedented degree of control over users and their machines. Such control could threaten privacy (e.g., by allowing unauthorized commercial tracking of users' surfing habits), lead to anti-competitive practices (e.g., by unfairly excluding competitors' products), and could lead to draconian copyright enforcement by allowing manufacturers to verify the software or content on user computers. Striking the wrong balance between security and privacy could reduce the capacity for individual creativity, and it would also lower consumer trust and confidence in the system--a prospect that could be seriously damaging to the Internet in the long-term.

Content

Finally, at the content layer, we face similarly difficult choices in the field of intellectual property--a field that is emerging as one of the key battlegrounds of the digital age. On one side stand certain content creators arguing that tighter copyright protection is necessary to safeguard the rights of inventors and innovators in an era where copyright violations have grown easier. They point to software tools like Napster and Kazaa, declining CD sales, and the increased possibility of making and distributing perfect digital copies of all forms of creativity. On the other side, stand those who argue that strengthening intellectual property protection will stifle free speech and erode fair-use rights in existing copyright law.

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