Writing in the comments at Plastic Bag, Doc Searls explains the motivation for his “World of Ends” fantasy about the Internet:
I’ll admit to a political agenda for World of Ends, to the extent that we do want it to influence legislation and regulation (in a mostly libertarian direction, fwiw).
A question: Who among us here likes the DMCA? Who wants to see Hollywood tell Intel how to make its chips and Dell how to make its PCs? Who wants the telcos and cable companies to keep building out the “last mile” of the Net as an asymmetrical plumbing system biassed for entertainment? Who wants companies like AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft to continue making non-interoperable instant messaging systems (or longs for the days when email systems couldn’t send messages to each other)? Who wants to see the feds continue protecting the telcos, the record companies and other walking fossils from the new facts of market life in the far more connected world the Net has made? Who wants to see more, rather than less, federal regulation of wireless networking such as wi-fi? Who wants to see fewer frequency bands made available for free and open wireless networking?
Probably none of us.
Are we going to sit on our hands and watch quietly while Hollywood, the telcos, the cable companies, the media giants, Congress and regulators continue to treat the Net like something that needs more limitation, more regulation, more industrial protection? That’s what we’re up against here. And that’s what World of Ends is about.
As political agendas go, it’s not unreasonable, and I probably agree with more of it than I disagree with. But the question about the World of Ends document is whether it’s legitimate to promote a false picture of the Internet in order to advance a political agenda. I say this because the World of Ends doesn’t describe the Internet accurately, and in most respects it’s not even close. Some of the main problems:
* The Internet is not, and never has been, the simplest way to connect any A to any B. The simplest way to do this is connect A and B to a common hub and let that do the switching. The Internet is the most robust and scalable way to do this, but it’s far from being the simplest.
* Adding value to the Internet, which means such real-world developments as fatter pipes, doesn’t take value away from it, it increases its utility.
* Legislation should not prevent business people from making dumb decisions; the freedom to do dumb things is just as important as the freedom to do things judged smart by self-appointed critics of business strategy.
* The Internet did not reach a zenith of technical perfection in the 1980s. It’s a governed by a dynamic set of agreements, and as technology evolves, so will these agreements.
* All Internet traffic is not equal. Spam is not equal to personal mail, and illegal traffic, such as stolen CDs and kiddie porn, is not equal to legal traffic. It’s perfectly reasonable to filter or block nuisance or illegal traffic.
* It’s perfectly reasonable for the companies carrying the traffic on their proprietary links to charge as they see fit for the use of their networks. Presently, dialup Internet users are subsidized by telephone company customers who don’t use dial-up. Nobody deserves a free ride.
* You don’t get good policy on the foundation of a fabric of lies. This has been proven over and over again, so no matter how noble your cause, you aren’t entitled to promote it by misrepresenting reality.
The most amazing thing about the World of Ends is how dogmatic and authoritarian it is, dictating what protocols you can and can’t use, how much the telcos can charge, and what kind of residential services each of us must have. It’s profoundly anti-choice.