How We Ruined The Internet
In this paper we examine an assumption that underpinned the development of the Internet architecture, namely that a loosely synchronous point-to-point datagram delivery service could adequately meet the needs of all network applications, including those which deliver content and services to a mass audience at global scale. We examine how the inability of the Networking community to provide a public and affordable mechanism to support such asynchronous point-to-multipoint applications led to the development of private overlay infrastructure, namely CDNs and Cloud networks, whose architecture stands at odds with the Open Data Networking goals of the early Internet advocates. We argue that the contradiction between those initial goals and the monopolistic commercial imperatives of hypergiant overlay infrastructure operators is an important reason for the apparent contradiction posed by the negative impact of their most profitable applications (e.g., social media) and strategies (e.g., targeted advertisement).
How We Ruined The Internet
Micah Beck, Terry Moore
arXiv:2209.03482306.01101, June 2023
Submitted to Communications of the ACM
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Breaking Up A Digital Monopoly
The dominating power of today's global data monopolies - most prominently Google, Facebook, and Amazon - has alarmed people around the world. Governments have been moved to seek ways to rein in such monopolies and establish reasonable conditions for competition in the services they offer. Their business models (e.g., targeted advertising) also raise major issues of personal security and privacy, so measures that control their tendencies toward monopoly may also help to address the threats they pose to civil and political liberties. We propose a regulatory strategy that addresses the naturally monopolistic nature of these services by isolating the core acquired data collection and management functions. Acquired data is derived from the discourse of society
at large and so the public retains a legitimate ownership interest in it. Our proposal requires companies to compete by innovation rather than through monopolistic control over data.
Breaking Up A Digital Monopoly
Micah Beck and Terry Moore
Communications of the ACM, June 2023, Vol. 66 No. 6, Pages 38-41.
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