I know that this was a long time ago but I've been cut off from cyberspace for *days* (months in net time) while PANIX was down. S >From: smb@research.att.com S >Or -- envision, if you will, an ukase that the FCC will regulate the S >Internet, and that anyone who wants to connect will have to agree to an S >acceptable use policy that includes the requirement that all mail be S >digitally signed, both by the individual and by the site, and that S >mailers enforce this requirement. Can't happen? Since the Internet is an international entity, it is probably not subject to FCC regulation. Even if domestic accounts are somehow regulated, it is no problem to telenet from my regulated account, (or make a long distance phone call) to Demon Internet Services in London and access my account there automatically downloading encrypted mail and news files. As most of the comments on the Bell Atlantic/TCI merger suggest, there is little appetite even in the Clinton Administration for telecommunications reregulation. Such a move would seem to run counter to the domestic and international trends in telecoms policy. If the Bundesposte has had to surrender *its* monopoly, I doubt if mere US regulatory authorities can prevail in the winds that are blowing now. Further, such rules do not now govern private networks and setting up a secure, encrypted "enterprise network" is simple and cheap these days. The regulators will have enough on their plate trying to chase down all those people downloading porno from Zimbabwae and setting up their very own private "virtual" phone companies to compete with the licensed monopolies. Each node on a network can be a network of its own as large or larger than the network of which it is a part. S >Nor do I think that ``offshore data havens'' will help. Apart from S >the fact that most major governments are basically in accord on the S >question of who makes the rules (them, not the people -- or did you S >see any governments denouncing Clipper? I saw lots of endorsements), S >there is a potent weapon that can be used: mandatory disconnection S >from the net for any country that doesn't co-operate enough. The Feds can't even keep *me* off the nets (without arresting me), how can they keep a whole country off the nets. Shutting off the nets would be the equivalent of shutting down the phone system (since those will both soon be the same thing). You couldn't do that to one of the OECD countries at this point. It would be an Act of War. It would also cause a total financial panic since everyone would worry about other shutoffs and investors involved in the shutoff country would engage in a run to cash. Global liquidity depends on a microsecond by microsecond flow of data. This flow is bound to increase as time goes on. There is not even an international authority capable of imposing that sort of ban. It would also be technically difficult since the nets are topologically complex. S >Wanna place any bets on creating a whole new S >anonymity structure?) For that matter, international bandwidth is a S >matter for diplomats as well as technicians; permission to create new S >circuits will simply be withheld. If you doubt me, try placing a S >call to Cuba, or to the former USSR. After your Nth ``circuits busy" S >message, don't bother asking why the long distance carriers haven't S >installed more trunks, when there's obviously a demand for them. That was then. This is now. There is a guy in Havana right now selling satellite dishes. Thousands of Russian computers a month are joining Internet since the links were opened up a few months ago. With all of the dark fiber now going into the ground/ocean and data compression and multiplexing continuing to improve, I doubt that the regulators will have much effect on bandwidth allocation which is a child of scarcity. When lines are expensive, you can support expensive central switching and large monopolies. When virtual "lines" are nearly free, even force majure can't cope with 5 billion people shopping 'till they drop for cheap telecoms. S >Cryptographic technology is an enabling mechanism for various social S >changes. It by no means makes them inevitable. Don't delude S >yourself on that; the political will to do something is more important S >when various alternatives exist. I've always considered the "action at a distance" capabilities of the nets to be more important than encryption per se. Since governments are geographically-based entities, technologies which enable us to weaken the bonds of place reduce the ability of states to exact a "monopoly rent" based on their control of certain land areas. S >And throughout the centuries, governments have had no trouble stripping S >hated minority groups of their assets, without any need for computers. True. Computers, and jet travel, and other things don't make the government enormously more powerful than it's ever been but they *do* make us vastly more powerful than *we've* ever been. Louis XIV and Slick Willy could both destroy a village "so that no stone was standing upon a stone" but we are not bound to the soil like the peasants of 18th century France. S >If you want a Brave New Digital World, it isn't sufficient to build S >the tools. You also have to convince people that it's a good idea. S >Oh, the online world is coming; no doubt about that. But people have S >to be convinced that privacy and the like is in their interests, that S >it will solve problems that *they* will have. I think that a 30% to 50% increase in income via elimination of effective tax liability is quite an inducement. The artificial profitability of untaxed over taxed income has been enough to support thousands of offshore financial subsidiaries of all the world's banks for years now. This when they have had to pay substantial costs associated with offshore operations. When the Bank of the Internet brings offshore banking as close as your terminal, such "arbitrage" between taxed and untaxed transactions will grow explosively. S >Equally important, they have to be convinced that it will not create S >new problems, to their perception (and the perception may have little S >to do with reality. 500 -- nay, 500,000 -- channels of digital S >information to the home will do nothing to educate those who prefer to S >learn about the world from McData Services, or from S >CBS/NBC/ABC/Fox/AP/UPI. What's this got to do with the price of Yak butter in Ulan Bator? What does it matter what other people think in the fibersphere (thanks George) in which everyone who wants to controls their own switching capabilities. In which there is no effective central control and no way to prevent communication between or among any individuals or groups that want to communicate. "Early adopters" such as ourselves will develop the fibersphere and lots of others will follow. As soon as they discover that they can make "free" LD video calls anywhere on earth, see any pictures, play any games, find work, "sex", and all things imaginable and unimaginable many more will come. What they will find is freedom. They will not be convinced by a close reading of "Human Action," they will *live* it. Freedom is what you get when human interactions cannot be blocked. And don't tell me that we still have to live in the physical world. If 90% of the GWP (including *almost all* the money) consists of non-physical goods and services on the nets, government control over the remaining 10% is not statistically significant. Since "unbundling" of services from physical goods is already going on and will be accelerated as people discover the tax consequences of non-physical services performed on the nets, large chunks of the GWP are bound to transfer to the nets. Look at the explosion in the forex market on the nets (tripled in size since 1986) once it "slipped the surly bonds of earth." S > --Steve Bellovin Duncan Frissell "Prediction -- The global information/communications phenomenon as highlighted by this week's Bell Atlantic-TCI merger will be at least as big in its impact on human society as the Industrial Revolution. You heard it here first." -- John McLaughlin "The McLaughlin Group" NBC Sunday 17 October 1993 --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165