As Internet turns 40, barriers threaten openness that spawned email

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As Internet turns 40, barriers threaten openness that spawned email

Mon Aug 31, 8:17 AM

By Anick Jesdanun, The Associated Press

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 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 4.6-metre grey 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 email 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 favour 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 warranty-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 emails.

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

behaviour, 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.