8 February 2002
Comments welcome; send to jya@pipeline.com
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 15:01:46 -0800
From: John Young <jya@PIPELINE.COM>
Subject: Protocols of Controls
To: CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
On Seth's control/decontrol challenges, Siva Vaidhyanathan spoke at NYU's Information Law Institute on a book he's writing on the societal benefits of distributed networks, drawing a comparison/distinction between "protocols" and "controls."
He offered these as examples:
| Protocols | Controls | |
| Common law | Statuatory law | |
| Jury of peers | Prison | |
| Distributed system | Centralized hierarchy |
Siva acknowledged the lack of sharp division between protocols and controls and the likely betrayals they proffer doublecrossers.
An admirable Siva admonition for a controlling law school to heed in protocolling a future for its graduates:
"It's time to take anarchies seriously."
Siva Vaidhyanathan, Lecture on Life in a Distributed Age, NYU Information Law Institute, February 6, 2002. Vaidhyanathan is author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity.
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 15:51:04 -0500
From: Mark Milone <milone@MINDSPRING.COM>
Subject: Re: Protocols of Controls
To: CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Building on John's account of the lecture, Mr. Vaidhyanathan also provided the following allegory: a protocol is a handshake, while a control is a full nelson.
Mr. Vaidhyanathan drew some interesting parallels between distributed systems and various governmental systems. For instance, Al Qaeda could be thought of as a distributed network with no ruling authority and open protocols. He stated that the US Government's centralized control system necessitates the careful consideration of stochastic systems (my wording, not his) such as Napster's decentralized model and apply the values intrinsic to such systems into a meaning political dialogue. He also questioned whether we (I assume he meant the world, and not just the US) can create an open system that facilitates the democratic, free flow of information. One audience member (I believe she was a NYU professor) raised the point that centralized systems do not, however, equate with control of such information...
Some more in depth discussions regarding societal benefits/implications of distributed systems can be found in Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy available at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382/:
"The fight for the future is not between the armies of leading states, nor are its weapons those of traditional armed forces. Rather, the combatants come from bomb-making terrorist groups like Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, or drug smuggling cartels like those in Colombia and Mexico. On the positive side are civil-society activists fighting for the environment, democracy and human rights. What all have in common is that they operate in small, dispersed units that can deploy anywhere, anytime to penetrate and disrupt. They all feature network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology attuned to the information age. And, from the Intifadah to the drug war, they are proving very hard to beat."-- John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt (editors), Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, November 2001
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 15:08:37 -0800
From: "Tom W. Bell" <tbell@CHAPMAN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Protocols of Controls
To: CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
I like that distinction and think it should prove fruitful. Along similar lines, I've described the liberal society ("liberal" here having its classical and general meaning) as a "packet switched society." Here's the relevant portion:
"[T]wo models of society drive the debate over copyright policy. In one, collective deliberation guides central authorities who, after a delicate balancing of competing interests and in the name of the general welfare, define iron-clad terms of access to expressive works. In this model, politicians invoke State power to override private rights, laying down unbreakable lines of communication between copyrighted works and the public. It strongly recalls how the power of eminent domain violates private rights so as to build telecommunications infrastructure and how regulators define the public obligations of common carriers. Call it, then, the circuit-switched model of information policy."An alternative model inspires the present call for opening an escape from copyright: packet switching. A packet-switching protocol drives Internet communications, of course, making them flexible, robust, scalable, and resistant to central control. But packet switching also explains the success of yet another vital network--the network we call the liberal society.
"Persons in a liberal society pursue countless different goals, some shared and some unique. Each person chooses his, her, or its own route through a web of consent-rich relationships. No one authority directs all these countless various pursuits of happiness. Nor could it, given the complexity of the system. Our packet-switched society instead relies on a few simple rules -- based in common courtesy and common law -- to define a protocol universal in form, but local in application. Order arises spontaneously, the result of conscious action but not conscious design.
"As wire-bound parts of the Internet demonstrate, a packet-switched network may sometimes rely on a circuit-switched infrastructure. Similarly, liberal societies typically rely on some measure of State intervention to help patch the gaps where private means fail. But in neither case should one confuse an old fix for a necessary feature."
From "Escape from Copyright: Market Success vs. Statutory Failure in the Protection of Expressive Works," 69 U. Cin. L. Rev. 741, 804-05 (2001) (footnotes ommitted), available at <http://www.tomwbell.com/writings/(C)Esc.html>.
--
Tom W. Bell
Associate Professor, Chapman School of Law
tomwbell@tomwbell.com