[Note from Matthew Gaylor: I have tons of respect for the CATO
Institute http://www.cato.org/ . But CATO's Director of Technology
Policy Wayne Crews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> see
http://www.cato.org/people/crews.html seems to have a bad idea here.
While I support privatization philosophically, and I do support
private efforts to create private networks, I don't think Mr. Crew
has thought through the technical and political ramifications of his
proposal. Personally, while it requires great effort to stay and
fight to keep the Internet free, I don't think isolationism in this
case is a good idea. Besides efforts to control "perverts" on the
Internet are in my humble opinion just subterfuge by the powers that
be to control everyone. Mr. Crews' wrote: "Do people really want to
be connected to everyone? I don't think so." Crews said.
"Fundamentally, people want to be connected to other people like
them." How silly, I don't, but some might and that's ok too. ]
Libertarian, or Just Bizarro? By Aparna Kumar
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43216,00.html
2:00 a.m. April 25, 2001 PDT
What if you could take all the haters and the perverts and the
spammers and stick them on their own private Internet?
That way, they could do whatever they want without bothering the rest
of us, and we wouldn't have to spend our money or time regulating
them.
If it sounds too simple, it probably is. But Clyde Wayne Crews, the
new director of technology studies at the Cato Institute, the
libertarian think-tank, thinks it's something worth considering. In
a one-page editorial in the April 2 issue of Forbes, Crews outlined
his vision for what he calls "splinternets," or parallel Internets
that would be run as distinct, private, and autonomous universes.
Lamenting the flood of regulation over privacy, children's safety,
copyright, gambling, taxation, and other issues on the Internet,
Crews asks, "how about more Internets, not more regulations?" The
Internet as we know it -- what people are already calling the "Big-I
Internet" or the commodity Internet -- "is a classic example of the
tragedy of the commons," Crews said.
"When you have a public resource where anarchy reigns, there's
basically two things you can do -- either regulate it, which
(libertarians) hate to see happen, or further privatize it, so
companies could set their own rules," he said. Though the idea may
have appeal among some of the special-interest groups above as well
as Web anarchists and dyed-in-the-wool libertarians, nobody seems
clear on what exactly splinternets are, how they would work, or what
Crews is really talking about. Even Crews admits that he hasn't
worked out the logistics or a clear-cut definition for what he
envisions. But like a true visionary, that hasn't stopped him from
pushing the idea.
"These are difficult questions and I don't have all the answers,"
Crews said. "I'm coming at this from a policy standpoint, not from a
technical one."
Naturally, libertarians, who stand for individual liberties above
all, have a long-standing beef with ICANN -- the multilateral
nonprofit body that regulates domain names and Internet protocol. But
while they continue to fight the powers-that-be on the Internet, very
few libertarians are jumping on Crew's separatist boat.
"The thing (Crews) seems to be advocating is techno-isolationism,
which goes against the very spirit that makes the Internet great,"
said Sonia Arrison, director of the Center for Freedom and Technology
at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, another
libertarian think-tank.
<snip>
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