[iDC] lambda lambda lamda
Brooke Singer
brooke at bsing.net
Tue Feb 21 09:59:53 EST 2006
hi eric,
thanks for you thoughts on this. do you (or anyone else) know of
community based groups using a similar model? the technology is not
particularly interesting here but what fascinates me is a model of a
flat hierarchy (ok, not exactly the case with WiFi-NY) in which there
is no central governing body. the implications it seems would be that
if the government does subpoena electronic records they would have to
go directly to the individual users of the network--ridding the current
problem of "lack of notification" by service providers to its
customers. it would be great to see the government address this
systematic issue properly but i am not overly enthusiastic at the
moment in the US.
best, brooke
On Feb 21, 2006, at 8:43 AM, Eric Goldhagen wrote:
>
>
>
>> I don't know if people are familiar with Paul Garrin's latest
>> project, WiFi-NY. He is building a wireless network in NYC using a
>> user-stakeholder model in an attempt to bolster electronic privacy
>> and network neutrality.
>
> WiFi-NY is a for profit corporation run by Paul Garrin (WiFi-NY LLC to
> be exact). It is far from a non-commercial alternative to anything, in
> my opinion. It is not a non-profit project, not run by a 501(c)3
> community organization.
>
> WiFi-NY is using a multi-level-marketing amway type model, not a
> community based model. WiFi-NY does not exist as a service for a
> community, it exists to attempt to make profit for its investors.
>
> A small cafe a couple of blocks from my apartment used to offer "free"
> wireless to its customers. Now they subscribe to WiFi-NY and sell
> access tokens (and get a share of wifi-ny's profit). While I see how
> that benefits Paul, I fail to see how that in any way provides an
> alternative community based option, or bolsters net-neutrality. There
> is no subscriber or community control or feedback mechanism within
> WiFi-NY to prevent it from being just as evil as Verizon.
>
> When WiFi-NY says "We do not purchase bandwidth through Verizon nor
> Time Warner, and only use their infrastructure as mandated by the FCC
> where no other means exists to connect our network to the Internet."
> It looks to me like a smokescreen. While he might not purchase
> bandwidth directly from verizon the last part of that statement seems
> to imply that they go through verizon anyway at some point "where no
> other means exists". That's too big an out to leave and expect me to
> feel in any way safer about how my data is routed into the internet.
>
> The problems of net-neutrality can not be fixed by rouge cowboys like
> Garrin and WiFi-NY. Short of building our own people's internet, we
> sadly have to rely on regulation to ensure public access and net
> neutrality. This is a systemic issue that must be addressed in a large
> scale way by community and government, not by individual capitalists.
>
> Is WiFi a model that can be replicated by community based groups?
> Probably, but that is because WiFi-NY is a cooptation of models built
> by people interested in creating genuine alternatives.
>
> WiFi-NY will most likely end up just as his NameSpace project for the
> same reason. He is taking ideas that should be developed on a
> community-centric and collective manner and taking the corporate
> model instead.
>
> to quote from:
> http://www.projects.v2.nl/~arns/Texts/Media/No_Toy_War_ArtIndia_1.pdf
>
> Firstly, there was Paul Garrin as the lonely fighter. On the Internet
> protocols and standards have always been developed collectively, as
> Rop Gongrijp noticed in the discussion: "This is not a problem that
> you solve on your own or with a few friends. Internet is built by
> hundreds of thousands of people that have programmed it. You can't
> solve this with three people, not from the structure Name.Space has
> now. You solve this by working with large groups, involving
> universities etc."
>
> Garrin ignored this unwritten rule by developing his own standards by
> himself. In his own words he clearly favoured the "quick’ corporate
> model compared to the slow’ basic democratic decision models".
>
>
> I'll end this rant here:
> boycott wifi-ny; build real community based alternatives.
>
> --Eric
>
>
>> In his words:
>> "WiFi-NY is a subscriber-supported non-commercial alternative access
>> provider whose mission is to provide affordable broadband access to
>> local communities while building locally owned and operated
>> communications infrastructure. We do not purchase bandwidth through
>> Verizon nor Time Warner, and only use their infrastructure as
>> mandated by the FCC where no other means exists to connect our
>> network to the Internet. As WiFi-NY grows we seek to provide other
>> "last mile" solutions that reduce our dependency on monopoly
>> ownership of infrastructure both in interconnecting to the Internet
>> and delivering service to our subscribers." http://wifiny.net/
>>
>> Hopefully this won't come to the same conclusion as his NameSpace
>> project in the late 1990s.
>>
>> On Feb 20, 2006, at 12:03 PM, Martin Lucas wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Brian's suggestion that legal means may be a route to controlling
>>> the net is quite intriguing. It prompts me to think of how previous
>>> systems of communication have been defined. To look at the
>>> decimation of the ecology in the interest of the proprietary in
>>> radio for instance.
>>>
>>> It is instructive to remember that the radio acts of 1912 and 1927
>>> took a medium, radio, which had two-way potential, not to say
>>> educational potential (e.g. in a non-profit universe) and defined it
>>> as a one-way commercial medium built around a few large monopolies
>>> in a clever way. The effect was very thorough. The 1911 Webster¹s
>>> defines Œbroadcasting¹ as a method of throwing seeds with a flick of
>>> the wrist, with no mention of radio, still seen as point-to-point.
>>> By the time of Brecht¹s famous article on ³The Radio as a Method of
>>> Communication² in 1932, the notion of radio as a two-way
>>> communications tool has disappeared, and the heirarchical broadcast
>>> model is reified in a combo of software, hardware, legislation and
>>> financial arrangements. The two-radio option was legislated into
>>> a geek ghetto for Œhams¹, a move that has some analogies in terms of
>>> a way of culturally separating the politics from the technology in
>>> newer communications forms.
>>>
>>> Brian goes on to suggest that the use of these legal means and
>>> public debate at least means the issues are discussed. This is
>>> true. It is a difficult discussion that is seen as esoteric. (I
>>> remember Ted Byfield and DeeDee Halleck arguing at N5M4NYC about how
>>> useful popular campaigns on these issues are.) My own experience
>>> with cable access legislation suggests that this kind of discussion
>>> is both difficult and necessary. And unlike radio and television
>>> there is both the more utopian history and the larger weight of
>>> small players for the Net.
>>>
>>> best,
>>>
>>> Marty Lucas
>>>
>>>
>>> On Feb 20, 2006, at 5:44 AM, Brian Holmes wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ryan Griffis wrote:
>>>> What does decentralization really mean
>>>>> in a proprietary ecology? maybe i'm taking this somewhere way out
>>>>> in left field, but i guess i think this is important in relation
>>>>> to potential crises (not unlike recent earthquakes and
>>>>> hurricanes, but in a more mundane way, economic problems as
>>>>> well).
>>>>
>>>> I wish I understood the excursion into left field, because the
>>>> question itself is great.
>>>>
>>>> The idea provoking the question - Christian Sandvig's claim that
>>>> the Internet is centrally controlled because each major piece of it
>>>> represents an investment in routers and backbones - is partly true,
>>>> and I think, partly a simplification.
>>>>
>>>> The true side has to do with the specific agendas that have led to
>>>> each piece of the hardware being built and maintained by its
>>>> specific owner. This has been done partially on university research
>>>> mandates (with complex calculations about the benefits of national
>>>> and international cooperation), and partly on projections of
>>>> commercial benefit (with equally complex questions of speculative
>>>> investment for tomorrows that may not come). Of course all the
>>>> parties involved expected specific payoffs, and they still run
>>>> their systems for the benefits derived.
>>>>
>>>> Which of course means that the cables go to certain places, for
>>>> certain people, and all you have to do is look at a map of undersea
>>>> cables or a map showing the intensity of Internet connections
>>>> between the different areas of the globe, and you will see the
>>>> geographical expression of these specific interests.
>>>>
>>>> The ruse of history, however, seems to be that the university came
>>>> before the market and bequeathed a basic set of protocols which
>>>> don't involve control functions on what can be transmitted,
>>>> accentuating the possibilities of cooperation and resource-sharing
>>>> instead. Then the speculative boom meant that lots of hardware got
>>>> installed very fast, for use with these initial protocols.
>>>>
>>>> Now it seems that just technically blocking certain kinds of
>>>> transmission (eg. mp3, torrent, etc.) isn't possible, indeed just
>>>> turning off a website by remote control isn't possible either, and
>>>> yet the Internet has proved so useful for so many things that just
>>>> shutting the whole system down is out of the question. So the only
>>>> recourse is to go after the authors of the contested transmissions
>>>> using legal means. Which is a more interesting situation, because
>>>> it at least requires a public debate about what knowledge,
>>>> cooperation, sharing, use-value and freedom of expression are good
>>>> for. In fact that public debate has been one of the more
>>>> interesting aspects of life in neoliberal society in recent years.
>>>>
>>>> That would be the way I understand the paradox of "decentralization
>>>> in a proprietary ecology."
>>>>
>>>> Now it is clear, with Digital Rights Management and many related
>>>> initiatives, but also with Total Information Awareness, MATRIX and
>>>> probably many other spy-programs we don't know about, that this
>>>> element of partial decentralization is considered a big big problem
>>>> by some very powerful forces, particularly but not only in American
>>>> society. What will they do next?
>>>>
>>>> The perennial interest of the content-producing industries in
>>>> cables that can bring products right into peoples' homes, while
>>>> also conveniently providing a payment system directly attached to
>>>> the mode of delivery, was one of major commercial dreams initially
>>>> driving speculation on the Internet, and of course it explains the
>>>> interest these industries now show in "lambda lambda lambda," which
>>>> sounds like the real open sesame of video-on-demand. But you can
>>>> bet they want more control over transmission this time! Could that
>>>> not be the magic formula of Internet2?
>>>>
>>>> I'm afraid the ecology will get left in the dust by the
>>>> proprietary. But maybe I never made it to left field where the
>>>> really interesting part of the question lies.
>>>>
>>>> best, Brian
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>
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