Open Internet Committee Seeks to Understand Itself, Define Goals
The FCC’s Open Internet Advisory Committee got an impromptu pep talk by Chairman Julius Genachowski on what the group should strive to accomplish. “I think that if in two years this group can look back and say the Internet remains free and open; that incentives for innovation and investment are strong throughout the broadband ecosystem; that early stage entrepreneurs and startups know that if they get on the Internet they can reach an audience; that infrastructure companies know that they have incentives to invest and get a return on their investment; that speakers know that if they speak on the Internet they can reach an audience -- if we can say all of those things in two years, then this will have been a success,” Genachowski said.
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At the inaugural meeting Friday, members discussed how best to meet the goals of the commission’s 2010 Open Internet Order, which called for the creation of the committee of consumer advocates, Internet experts, telecom providers and suppliers to “assist the Commission in monitoring the state of Internet openness and the effects of our rules” (http://xrl.us/bicsep). Genachowski sat in on the first part of the meeting before leaving it to Committee Chairman Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
The committee has four working groups: the Mobile Broadband group, which will examine which aspects of the order should apply to mobile broadband providers; the Specialized Services group, which will focus on VoIP, dedicated networks for healthcare teleconferencing, and certain IP-based video services; the Economic Impacts of Open Internet Frameworks group; and the Transparency working group. The committee is tasked with “tracking developments with respect to the freedom and openness of the Internet,” and will make recommendations to the full commission concerning its opening Internet framework.
The tone of the discussion was congenial, as the academics and engineers pondered what it truly means for a network to be “open.” Committee Vice Chairman David Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT, noted that in the early days of network engineering, nobody used that term. “It’s not really a part of our language,” he said. “We understood ‘generality,’ and computer scientists always worshipped the god of generality, but we didn’t say open.” In a paper he co-authored, which has been used “as sort of a religious tract far beyond what it will sustain if you are a strict constructionist, I believe I verify that paper doesn’t contain the word ‘open’ either.” Zittrain interrupted: “You've really gone multidisciplinary by invoking constitutional law principles, religious texts, and computer science all in one sentence.” Responded Clark: “Next sentence, I'll try pornography."
The order said the commission would review its open Internet rules within two years and “adjust its open Internet framework as appropriate,” but Zittrain told members they shouldn’t be in a hurry to deliver recommendations. “I really see the initial stages of this as getting the lay of the land, setting the agenda of the really good and pressing questions to answer, and doing our best to develop facts around it. I would not hasten to run with a recommendation of this, that, or the other thing.”