[CAnet - news] Letter to the Internet Community: - "For an Open Internet"

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[From Dave Farber's IPer list -- BSA]





                                                  David J. Farber
                                                  Peter G. Neumann
                                                  Lauren Weinstein

                                                  January 8, 2006


                    A Letter to the Internet Community

               IOIC - International Open Internet Coalition

                         "For an Open Internet"

                          http://www.ioic.net


The marvel that is the Internet is under an increasing barrage of policy,
regulatory, and related technologically-enabled attacks against its
fundamental open-access, "end-to-end" operational model.  Under the auspices
of PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility), we have established a new
organization -- the International Open Internet Coalition (IOIC) --
dedicated to the proposition that the Internet should remain an open and
neutral resource, free from unreasonable interference or restrictions on the
actions of businesses, organizations, individuals, or others related to
their access or use of the Internet.

IOIC has been created as an entity to serve the common interests of everyone
concerned about the increasing levels of restrictions being planned or
implemented relating to the Internet and its users.  Such parties and
stakeholders are likely to include all manner of Web/Internet-based and
other businesses, educational and non-profit organizations, regulatory and
government entities, individual Internet users, and many others.

We cordially invite your participation in what will be a major, ongoing
effort for establishing, preserving, and promoting the critical concepts of
an Open Internet.

The attacks on the Open Internet model -- now seeming to spring forth daily
from a variety of powerful entities -- threaten to permanently cripple or
destroy the very aspects of the Internet that have turned it into an
indispensable utility for all manner of commerce, speech, education,
communication, entertainment, and many other major aspects of people's
lives.

Around the world, both domestic governments and increasingly large and
consolidated Internet Service Providers (ISPs) -- including ILECS, cable
companies, and other telecommunications firms engaging in ISP activities --
restrict or threaten to restrict their citizens and Internet users from
access to outside Web services of all sorts.  The list of affected services
includes search engines, e-commerce sites, databases, e-mail, VoIP, audio
and video streaming/downloading, P2P and other legitimate file sharing
applications, discussion forums, and a wide range of others.

These have become the targets of controls and censorship directed against
the free flow of commerce, communications, free speech, and other
activities, implemented via throttling and limiting bandwidth to subscribers
and/or by totally blocking or disrupting specific services and communication
types.

In some cases, these moves are part of restrictive regulatory or political
agendas.  In other cases, these actions or threats of restrictions are key
to carefully calculated plans by ISPs to give "walled garden" preferential
treatment to their own service offerings, and to extract "premium access"
fees from remote Web services and other Internet services who are not their
subscribers.

The range of issues that are of concern is vast, but the common thread is
clear.  An Internet that is increasingly biased away from being a neutral
and open resource is at risk for serious degradation of its commercial and
social values and usefulness, and is ripe for massive and dangerous abuses.

Our hope and expectation is that IOIC, by providing a focal point for
education, information, discussion, brainstorming, and strategic planning
relating to these issues, will be an effective force for helping to assure
the best possible Internet not only for its services and users today, but
for the future as well.

To participate in this effort or for more information, please send an
appropriate note (which will be read by a human!) to:

    [email protected]

or feel free to contact Lauren by phone (09:30-17:30 PST) via:

    +1 (818) 225-2800


Thank you very much for your consideration.

Sincerely,

David Farber
[email protected]
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~farber/
Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy,
    Carnegie Mellon University
Tel: +1 (412) 726-9889

Peter G. Neumann
[email protected]
http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/
Principal Scientist - Computer Science Lab,
    SRI International
Co-Founder, People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Chairman, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Tel: +1 (650) 859-2375

Lauren Weinstein
[email protected]
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public
Policy
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800


(Affiliations shown for identification purposes only.)


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