RFC 1259

Building The Open Road: The NREN As Test-Bed For The National Public Network 🛣️

Network Working Group 🎀 Request for Comments: 1259 💜 Author: M. Kapor, Electronic Frontier Foundation 🌸 Date: September 1991 🍓

This one is an info memo, not a standard. It doesn't obsolete or update anything.

Status of this Memo ✨

Okay so this memo is basically giving "here's some information" energy 💅 It's for the Internet community, and it does not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited 🦋

Introduction 🌸

Okay, the future of America's communications infrastructure is being debated rn, and it's highkey a huge deal 👀 What's at stake is the future of the web of information links that's organically growing out of computer and telephone systems 🕸️ By the end of the next decade, these links will connect nearly all homes and businesses in the U.S. They'll be the main channels for commerce, learning, education, and entertainment in our society. The new information infrastructure won't be built in one single step: not with a massive infusion of public funds, and not with the private capital of a few tycoons like the ones who built the railroads 🚂 Instead, the national, public broadband digital network will emerge from the "convergence" of the public telephone network, the cable television distribution system, and other networks such as the Internet.

The United States Congress is now taking a critical step toward what I call the National Public Network 🎀, with its authorization of the National Research and Education Network (NREN, pronounced "en-ren"). Not only will the NREN meet the computer and communication needs of scientists, researchers, and educators, but also, if properly implemented, it could demonstrate how a broadband network can be used in the future ✨ As policy makers debate the role of the public telephone and other existing information networks in the nation's information infrastructure, the NREN can serve as a working test-bed for new technologies, applications, and governing policies that will ultimately shape the larger national network. Congress has indicated its intention that the NREN

would provide American researchers and educators with the computer and information resources they need, while demonstrating how advanced computer, high speed networks, and electronic databases can improve the national information infrastructure for use by all Americans. (1)

As currently envisioned, the NREN

would connect more than one million people at more than one thousand colleges, universities, laboratories, and hospitals throughout the country, giving them access to computing power and information -- resources unavailable anywhere today -- and making possible the rapid proliferation of a truly nationwide, ubiquitous network... (2)

The combined demand of these users would develop innovative new services and further stimulate demand for existing network applications. Library information services, for example, have already grown dramatically on the NREN's predecessor, the Internet, because the

enhanced connectivity permits scholars and researchers to communicate in new and different ways.... Clearly, to be successful, effective, and of use to the academic and research communities, the NREN must be designed to nurture and accommodate both the current as will as future yet unknown uses of valuable information resources. (3)

So as the NREN implementation process progresses, it is vital that the opportunities to stimulate innovative new information technologies be kept in mind, along with the specific needs of the mission agencies which will come to depend on the network 🧚

Far from evolving into the whole of the National Public Network itself, the NREN is best thought of as a prototype for the NPN, which will emerge over time from the phone system, cable television, and many computer networks. But the NREN is a growth site which, unlike privately controlled systems, can be consciously shaped to meet public needs 🌈 For a wide variety of services, some of which might not be commercially viable at the outset, the NREN can

provide selective access that proves feasibility and leads to the creation of a commercial infrastructure that can support universal services.... If we fully focus on ...[current] goals and work our way through a multitude of technical and operational issues in the process, then the success of the NREN will fully support its extension to broader uses in the years to follow. (4)

In order to function as an effective test-bed, one that promotes broad access to a range of innovative, developing services, the NREN must be built so that it is easy for developers to offer new kinds of applications, and is accessible to a diversity of users. For example, to encourage the development of creative, advanced library services, it must be easy for libraries to open their data bases to users all across the network. And if these library services are to flourish through the NREN, then the services must be available to researchers and students all over the country, through a variety of channels. Though the NREN itself is intended to meet the supercomputing and networking needs of the government-financed research community, Congress has wisely recognized that it can also function as a channel for delivery of a wide range of privately-developed information services. To

encourage use of the Network by commercial information service providers, where technically feasible, the Network shall have accounting mechanisms which allow, where appropriate, users or groups of users to be charged for their usage of copyrighted materials over the Network. (5)

Congress can create an environment that stimulates information entrepreneurship by mandating that the NREN rely on open technical standards whose specifications are not controlled by any private parties and which are freely available for all to use. Such non-proprietary standards will ensure that different parts of the network built and operated by independent parties will all work together properly. By employing widely-used, non-proprietary standards, the NREN will make it easy for new information providers to offer their wares on the network. The market will snowball: as more services are offered, more users will be attracted, who will increase overall demand 📈 The NREN will also be a test-bed for development and experimentation with new networking standards that facilitate even broader, more efficient interconnection than now possible on the Internet. But throughout the stages of the NREN, all concerned should be sure that these functionalities are fostered 🫶

The NREN design and construction process is complex and will have significant effects on future communications infrastructure design:

Building the NREN has frequently been described as akin to building a house, with various layers of the network architecture compared to parts of the house. In an expanded view of this analogy, planning the NII [national information infrastructure] is like designing a large, urban city. The NREN is a big new subdivision on the edge of the metropolis, reserved for researchers and educators. It is going to be built first and is going to look lonely out there in the middle of the pasture for a while. But the city will grow up around it in time, and as construction proceeds, the misadventures encountered in the NREN subdivision will not have to be repeated in others. And there will be many house designs, not just those the NREN families are comfortable with.... The lessons we learn today in building the NREN will be used tomorrow in building the NII. (6)

The coming implementation and design of the NREN offers us a critical opportunity to shape a small but important part of the National Public Network 💖

VISIONS 🔮

okay so at its absolute best, the National Public Network could be a huge source of social benefits 💖 it could make people feel more connected while still keeping the diversity that's literally such a big American strength ✨ and that could help revitalize this country's business and culture. Senator Gore says the new national network is one of the "smokestack industries of the information age." (7) iconic comparison, honestly 👑 it'll get more people participating in common enterprise and politics 🫶 and it could also spark a whole new set of relationships, both business and personal, between Americans and the rest of the world 🌈

The names and particular visions for the emerging information infrastructure change depending on who you ask 🦋 Senator Gore calls it the "National Information Superhighway." Prof. Michael Dertouzos imagines a:

"National Information Infrastructure [which] ... would be a common resource of computer-communications services, as easy to use and as important as the telephone network, the electric power grid, and the interstate highways." (9)

And I call it the National Public Network (NPN), in recognition of the vital role information technology has come to play in public life and all that it has to offer, if it's designed with the public good in mind 🌸

To what uses can we reasonably expect people to put a National Public Network? We don't know 🙈 honestly, we probably can't know, because the users of the network will surprise us. That's exactly what happened in the early days of the personal computer industry, when the first spreadsheet program, VisiCalc, spurred sales of the Apple II computer. Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak didn't design the spreadsheet, and they didn't even conceive of it 😭 they created a platform that let someone else bring the spreadsheet into being, and everyone profited from that, including the users 💅

Based on today's systems, though, we can make a few educated guesses about the National Public Network 🧚 we know that, like the telephone, it will serve business and recreation needs, plus crucial community services. Messaging will be popular, because time and time again, from the ARPAnet to Prodigy, people have surprised network planners with how eager they are to exchange mail 💌 and "mail" won't just mean voice and text, but pictures and video too, probably with lots of new variations. Imagine two people poring over a manuscript from opposite ends of the country, marking it up at the same time and seeing each other's markings appear on the screen 🍓

We know from past demand on the Internet and commercial personal computer networks that the network will be used for electronic assembly, like virtual town halls, village greens, and coffee houses 🌈 and again, this won't just happen through shared text (like on today's computer networks), but with multi-media transmissions, including images, voice, and video. Unlike the telephone, this network will also be a publications medium, distributing electronic newsletters, video clips, and interpreted reports. (10) main character energy for sure ✨

We can speculate about novel uses of the network, but we can't be sure 🔮 an information marketplace will include electronic invoicing, billing, listing, brokering, advertising, comparison-shopping, and matchmaking of all kinds. "Video on demand" won't just mean ordering current movies, like they're spooling down from the local videotape store. It'll open floodgates to huge amounts of independent work, with high quality thanks to the plummeting prices of professional-quality desktop video editors 🎀 customers will get used to dialing up two-minute demos of homemade videos before ordering the full program and storing it on their own blank tape 📼

There will also be other important uses of the network as a simulation medium for experiences that are impossible to get in the mundane world 🧪 if scientists want to explore the surface of a molecule, they'll do it in simulated form, using wrap-around three-dimensional animated graphics that create a convincing illusion of being in a physical place. This visualization of objects, from molecules to galaxies, is already becoming an extraordinarily powerful scientific tool 🔭 networks will amplify that power until these simulation tools take their place as fundamental scientific apparatus, right alongside microscopes and telescopes. Less exotically, a consumer or student might walk around the inside of a working internal combustion engine, without getting burned 🔥

Perhaps the most significant change the National Public Network will give us is a new way of building communities, the same way the telephone, radio, and television did 💜 people often think of electronic "communities" as far-flung communities of interest between followers of a particular discipline. But we're learning, through examples like the PEN system in Santa Monica and the Old Colorado City system in Colorado Springs, that digital media can serve as a local nexus, an evanescent meeting-ground that adds levels of texture to relationships between people in a particular locale 🥹 as Jerry Berman of the ACLU Information Technology Project has said:

Computer and communications technologies are transforming speech into electronic formats and shifting the locus of the marketplace of ideas from traditional public places to the new electronic public forums established over telephone, cable, and related electronic communications networks. (11)

To both local and long-distance communities, accessible digital communications will be increasingly important 🌐 by the end of this decade, the "body politic," the "body social," and the "body commercial" of this country will depend on a nervous system of fiber-optic lines and computer switches. Wild to think about 🤯

But whatever details the vision and names give to the final product, a network that responds to a wide spectrum of human needs won't evolve by default 🫠 just like it's necessary for an architect to know how to make a home suitable for human habitation, it's necessary to consider how humans will actually use the network in order to design it 🏡

In that spirit, I offer a set of recommendations for the evolution of the National Public Network 🎀 I first encountered many of the fundamental ideas behind these proposals in the computer networking community. Some of the recommendations address immediate concerns, and others are more long-term. There's a focus on the role of public access and commercial experiments in the NREN, which complement its research and education mission. The recommendations are organized according to the main needs they'll serve: first, ensuring that the design and use of the network remains open to diversity, and second, safeguarding the freedom of users. The ultimate goal is to develop a habitable, usable, and sustainable system, a nation of electronic neighborhoods that people will feel comfortable living within 🌸💖

---

I. Encourage Competition Among Carriers 🦋

In the context of the NREN, act now to create a level and competitive playing field for private network carriers (whether for-profit or not-for-profit) to compete. Do not give a monopoly to any carrier. The growing network must be a site where competitive energy produces innovation for the public benefit, not the refuge of monopolists 👑

The post-divestiture phone system offers us a valuable lesson 📞 a telecommunications network can be managed effectively by separate companies, even including bitter opponents like AT&T and MCI, as long as they can connect equitably and seamlessly from the user's standpoint. The deregulated telecommunications system may not work perfectly and may produce too much litigation, but it does work ✅ we should never go back to a monopoly arrangement like the pre-divestiture AT&T, which held back market-driven innovation in telecommunications for half a century 🙅‍♀️ given the interconnection technology available now, we should never again have to accept the argument that we have to sacrifice interoperability for efficiency, reliability, or easy-of-use 💅

Similarly, the NREN, and later the National Public Network, must be allowed to grow without being dominated by any single company 🫶 contracting requirements in the current legislation advance this goal:

The Network shall be established in a manner which fosters and maintains competition within the telecommunications industry and promotes the development of interconnected high-speed data networks by the private sector. (12)

Absent a truly competitive environment, a dominant carrier might use its privileged access to stifle competitors unfairly, like: "Use our local service to connect to our undersea international links, without the $3 surcharge we tack on for other carriers." 💀 the greatest danger is "balkanization," where the net is broken up into islands, each developing separately, without enough interconnecting bridges to satisfy users' desires for universal connectivity. Strong interoperability requirements and adherence to standards must be built into the design of the NREN from the outset. (13) no notes, this is a must-have 🌈

After 1992, private companies will manage an ever-greater share of the NREN cables and switches 🧚 the NSF should use both carrot and stick to encourage as much interconnection as possible. For example, the NSF could make funding to NREN backbone carriers contingent on participation in an internetwork exchange agreement that would serve as a framework for a standards-based environment. As the NREN is implemented, some formal affirmation of fair access is needed, ideally by an "Internet Exchange Association" formed to settle common rules and standards. (Their efforts, if strong enough, could forestall a costly, wasteful crazy-quilt of new regulations from the FCC and 50 State Public Utilities Commissions. 🙃) This association should decide upon a "basket" of standard services, including messaging, directories, international connections, access to information providers, billing, and probably more, that are guaranteed for universal interconnection 🍓 the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), formed in 1991 by three commercial inter-networking carriers, represents a substantive, initial move in this direction ✨

II. Create an Open Platform for Innovation ✨

Okay so the goal here is to encourage information entrepreneurship through an open architecture (non-proprietary) platform, with low barriers to entry for information providers 🎀. Basically, make it easy for anyone with a good idea to show up and build something 💅.

Bestie, the most valuable thing the computer industry has given us in the last generation isn't a machine. It's an idea: the principle of open architecture 🧠. Usually a hardware company (think Apple or IBM) doesn't design its own applications software, and it doesn't require licenses from the companies that make its apps. Both of those were the norm back in the mainframe era, so this is a big glow-up 🦋. Instead, in the personal computer market, the hardware company makes a "platform," which is a shared set of specs published openly so that other independent firms (often smaller ones) can build their own products, like a spreadsheet program, to work with it 💜. So the host company gets to soak up the smaller companies' ingenuity and creativity. It's giving collab 🤝.

Even interfaces that one manufacturer controls super tightly, like the Macintosh, still vibe with the platform concept 🍎. Two years ago, when Apple started planning the System 7 release of its Macintosh operating system, one of its first moves was to ask software companies like Macromind, Aldus, Silicon Beach, and T/Maker for their input. There were substantive, sometimes very argumentative sessions 🙈 where Apple showed these independents the capabilities it planned. Honestly, they knew their customers and needs way better than Apple did. One multi-media company argued that Apple should take a different technical turn, and then, lowkey iconic, it actually ended up doing the work in a joint project 🤝. The most useful job of Apple's famous "evangelists" isn't selling the Mac specs. It's listening to outsiders and helping Apple stay flexible enough to work with independent innovators effectively 👑.

Now for the NREN 🌐. Information entrepreneurship is best promoted by building with open standards, and by making the network super attractive to as many service providers and developers as possible 🌸. The standards that get adopted must meet the needs of a broad range of users, not just the narrow needs of the mission agencies responsible for overseeing the early stages of the NREN. It's not a one-agency party 🙅. Positive efforts should be made to encourage experimental commercial services of all kinds, and that should happen without requiring the negotiation of any bureaucratic procedures 📋.

Here's the tea 🫖. In the early days of an industry, low barriers to entry stimulate competition 🔥. They give consumers a huge initial pile of products to pick from. Then the market learns to ignore almost all of them and standardizes on a few, like Lotus 1-2-3 💅. The winners get widely emulated in the next generation of products, and that creates an even more refined kind of marketplace feedback. So early chaos quickly evolves into a set of high-demand products and product categories ✨. Main character energy 👑.

This whole market-driven innovation thing gets a boost 🚀 when you create an environment where it's inexpensive and easy for entrepreneurs to develop products. The more independent enterprises there are, each one putting its risk-takers' intellectual and economic capital at voluntary risk, the better the way to find out what the market really wants 🎯. The businesses that succeed at this are the ones that will prosper 🌈.

Worth noting 📝: not a single major PC software company today dates from the mainframe era. Yesterday's garage shop is today's billion-dollar enterprise 💰, iykyk. So policies for the NPN should therefore not only accommodate existing information industry interests, but also anticipate and promote the next generation of entrepreneurs 🧚.

The wide-ranging needs of all these users will create demand for thousands of information proprietors on the net 🌐, just like there are thousands of personal computer software producers today and thousands of book and magazine publishers 📚. It should be as easy to provide an information service as it is to order a business telephone 📞. Big and small information providers will probably coexist, the way they do in book publishing, where the players range from multi-billion-dollar international conglomerates all the way down to firms whose head office is a kitchen table 🍓. They can coexist because everyone has access to production and distribution facilities (printing presses, typography, and the U.S. mails and delivery services) on a non-discriminatory basis. Honestly, the sub-commercial print publications are an ecological breeding ground where mainstream authors and editors rise 🌱. Nobody can guarantee when an application as useful as the spreadsheet will show up for the NPN (like it did for personal computers) 🤷. But open architecture is the best way for it to happen, and to spread once it does 🦋.

The PC revolution happened without direct public support 💻. Entrepreneurs risked their investors' capital for the sake of opportunity 🎲. Some hit it big, but many others lost their entire investment 💸. That's just how the marketplace goes. We should take a much more cautious attitude about committing public money 🧐. Without proven demand for new applications, the government should not be spending billions of dollars on building broadband networks 🚫. And telephone companies should not be allowed to pass on the costs of the NPN in a way that would raise rates for ordinary voice telephone service ☎️.

Instead, we should position the NREN to prove there's a market for network applications 🔍. The commercial experiments just beginning on the Internet are one source of innovation 🌐. Rolling out a national ISDN platform in the next few years is another relatively inexpensive seed bed 🌱. As those experiments show more proven demand for public network services, the private sector should be able to make the investments to build the broadband NPN, using experience from the NREN 💜.

---

Meanwhile, while the NREN is being debated and developed 🧵, telephone companies keep pushing at the limits set on them by the "Modification of Final Judgment" (MFJ) of divestiture, the 1982 anti-trust agreement that split up the Bell system. (14) ⚖️ Under pressure from the D.C. Court of Appeals, Judge Greene recently lifted the information services restrictions on the BOCs, even with all the competitive tension between the telephone companies, cable TV carriers, and newspapers 📺📰. So in the next year or so, Congress may well be forced to define a new set of rules for regulated telecommunications. (15) Like the AT&T divestiture decision, this would be a fundamental shift in national policy, with enormous and unpredictable consequences 😬.

Lots of consumer and industry groups are worried that once the MFJ restrictions are lifted, the RBOCs will dominate the design of the emerging National Public Network 😟, shaping it to fit their business goals more than the public interest. The Communications Policy Forum, a coalition of public interest and industry groups, has recently started to figure out what kinds of safeguards will be needed to keep a competitive information services market that still allows RBOC participation 🛡️. The role the RBOCs end up playing in the nation's telecommunications infrastructure is, of course, an issue that must be carefully considered on its own 🧐. But in this context, the NREN is a critical opportunity to create a model for what a public network can offer, free from commercial pressures 💖.

With all the uncertainty around the RBOCs' entry into the information services market, we should use the NREN to learn how to build a network environment where competitive entry is easy enough that the RBOCs' opportunity to engage in anti-competitive behavior would be minimized 🧠. There's evidence that the RBOCs are resisting attempts to turn the public telephone system into a truly open public network (16), even though the FCC has stated its intention to implement Open Network Architecture (17) 👀. But since the NREN standards and procedures can be designed away from the dominance of the RBOCs, a fully open network design is within reach ✨. In this sense the NREN can be a test-bed for "safeguards" against market abuse, just as it's a test ground for new technical standards and innovative network applications 🧪.

An open platform network model carried from the NREN to the National Public Network would actually make some MFJ restrictions less necessary 🤯. Phone companies were originally prohibited from being information providers because their bottleneck control over the local exchange hubs gives them an unfair advantage 🚫. But on a network where the local switch is open to information providers (because the platform itself is so rich and well-designed), creativity and quality triumph over monopoly power 👑. Instead of restricting information providers, National Public Network developers should encourage the entry of as many new parties as possible 🚪. Just like personal computer companies started in garages and attics, tomorrow's information entrepreneurs will too, if we give them a chance 🧚. Their prototypes today, like small computer networks, electronic newsletters, and chat lines, are among the most vibrant and imaginative "publishers" in the world 🦋.

III. Encourage Pricing for Universal Access 💸

Okay, everyone agrees in theory that universal service is a great idea 🌈. Like, any person who wants to should be able to connect to a National Public Network. But that's just a nice-sounding platitude unless there's an inclusive pricing plan backing it up 💅.

People have been saying this for ages 😭:

In light of the possibilities for new service offerings by the 21st century, as well as the growing importance of telecommunications and information services to US economic and social development, limiting our concept of universal service to the narrow provision of basic voice telephone service no longer services the public interest. Added to universal basic telephone service should be the broader concept of universal opportunity to access these new technologies and applications. (18)

The problem of uneven access to information resources has come up in other telecom spaces too 👀. Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Subcommittee of Telecommunications and Finance of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, warns that:

[i]nformation services are beginning to proliferate. The challenge before us is how to make them available swiftly to the largest number of Americans at costs which don't divide the society into information haves and havenots and in a manner which does not compromise our adherence to the long-cherished principles of diversity, competition and common carriage. (19)

For the long game, there's pending legislation that would widen the universal phone service guarantee to universal access to advanced telecommunications services 🧐. Senator Burns has proposed amending the universal service guarantee statement in the Communications Act of 1934 so that it includes access to:

a nation-wide, advanced, interactive, interoperable, broadband communications system available to all people, businesses, services, organizations, and households..." (20)

For the short game, the NREN can be a lab 🧪 for testing a bunch of pricing and access schemes, so we can figure out how best to bring basic network services to large numbers of users. The NREN platform should facilitate the offering of fee-based services for individuals ✨.

Cable TV is a seriously good model 📺. Joining costs an investment of $100 for a TV set, which 99% of households already own, about $50 for a cable hookup, and maybe $15 per month for basic service. Anything beyond that, like premium movie channels or pay-per-events, costs extra. Similarly, a carrier connecting you to the mature National Public Network might charge a one-time startup fee and then a low fixed monthly rate for access to basic services, which would include a voice telephone capability 📞.

Now here's the tea ☕. Regulators are worried about any telephone service that might make the price of basic voice service go up, so they're unwilling to approve new services that don't immediately pay for themselves. They're afraid any deficit will get passed on to consumers as higher charges for standard services. So phone companies end up being super conservative about how much demand they expect for new services. Prices for new services wind up way higher than what universal digital service would require. It's a total catch-22 🙃: lower prices won't be set until demand goes up, but demand will never go up if prices aren't low enough.

Open architecture could help phone companies offer lower rates for digital services 🔓. If information entrepreneurs have opportunities and incentives, they'll create the services that stimulate demand, increase volume, and generate more revenue-producing traffic for the carriers. In a competitive market, with higher volumes, lower prices follow 💖.

---

IV. Make the Network Simple to Use 🪄

The ideal way to access the NPN won't be a personal computer as we know it today. It'll be a much simpler, streamlined information appliance, a hybrid of the telephone and the computer 📱💻.

"Transparency" is the Holy Grail of software designers 🏆. When a program is perfectly transparent, people forget they're even using a computer. The mechanics of the program stop intruding on their thoughts. The most successful computer programs are nearly always transparent. A spreadsheet, for instance, is as self-evident as a ledger page. Once users grasp a few concepts (like rows, cells, and formula relationships), they can say to themselves, "What's in cell A-6?" without feeling like they're speaking an alien language 🛸.

Personal computer communications, by contrast, are practically opaque 🙈. Users have to be aware of baud rates, parity, duplex, and file transfer protocols, all of which a reasonably well-designed network could handle for them. It's like, every time you wanted to drive to the store, you had to pop the hood and adjust the spark plugs 🚗. On most Internet systems it's even worse. Newcomers find themselves facing what John Perry Barlow calls a "savage user interface" 💀. Messages bounce, conferencing commands are confusing, headers look like gibberish, none of it is documented, and nobody seems to care. The excitement about being part of an extended community quickly vanishes. On a National Public Network, this invites failure. People without the time to invest in learning arcane commands would simply not participate. The network would become needlessly exclusionary 🚫.

Part of the NREN goal of "expand[ing] the number of researchers, educators, and students with ... access to high performance computing resources" (21) is making all network applications easy-to-use 🎯. As the personal computer industry has shown, the only way to bring information resources to large numbers of people is with simple, easy-to-learn tools 🍓. The NREN can be a place where different approaches to user-friendly networks get tested and evaluated 🧪.

Technically trained people aren't troglodytes 🦖. They approve of human-oriented design, even though they manage to use the network today without it. For years, leaders in the Internet community have been taking steps to improve ease of use on the network 🙌. But the training of the technical community as a whole has given them little practice making their digital artifacts suitable for non-technical people. They aren't often rewarded for doing so either. To a phone company engineer designing a new high-speed telephone switch, or a computer scientist pushing the limits of a data compression algorithm, making electronic mail as simple as a fax machine may sound sensible. But it also feels like someone else's job 🤷‍♀️. Being technically minded themselves, they feel comfortable with the specialized software they use and seldom empathize with the newbie. The result is a pile of arcane, clumsy tools in both hardware and software, defended by the cognoscenti (the in-the-know crowd 🤓): "I use the "vi" editor all the time -- why would anyone have trouble with it?"

If we have the vision and commitment to try this, the transformation of the network frontier from wilderness to civilization doesn't need to look like the brutality of 19th century imperialism 🌸. As commercial opportunities to offer applications and services develop, entrepreneurs will discover that ease of use sells 💸. The normal, sometimes slow, play of competitive markets should push industry to commit resources to serving the market by making access more transparent. But at the start, transparency will need deliberate encouragement, if only to overcome the inertia of old habits 🦋.

---

V. Develop Standards of Information Presentation 📝

The National Public Network will need an integrated suite of high-level standards for exchanging richly formatted and structured information, whether it's text, graphics, sound, or moving images 🎨🔊. Use the NREN as a test-bed for a variety of information presentation and exchange standards on the road toward an internationally-accepted set of standards for the National Public Network 🛣️.

Standards, the internal language of networks, are arranged in a series of layers 🥞. The lower levels detail how the networks' subterranean "wiring" and "plumbing" is managed. Well-developed sets of lower-level standards such as TCP/IP are in wide use and keep being refined and extended, but these alone aren't enough 🔧. The uppermost layers contain specifications like how text appears on the screen and the components that documents are made of. These are the concerns that matter most to users who want to communicate 💬. Independent efforts to develop high-level standards for document formats have started recently, but those projects aren't yet being integrated into computer networks 🧩.

Today, for example, the only common standard for computer text is the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) 😬. But ASCII is inadequate. It ignores fonts, type styles (like boldface and italics), footnotes, headers, and other formats people use all the time. Each word processing program codes these formats differently, and there's still no intermediary language that can handle all of them 🙅‍♀️. The National Public Network will need such a language to get past the visual poverty and monotony of today's telecommunicated information ✨. It'll also need additional standards beyond what's been developed for message addresses and headers, a common set of directories (the equivalent of the familiar white pages and yellow pages), common specifications for coding and decoding images, and standards for other major services 📒.

Congress has provided that the National Institute of Standards and Technology:

shall adopt standards and guidelines ... for the interoperability of high-performance computers in networks and for common user interfaces to systems. (22)

As the NREN moves forward, we have to make sure standards development stays both a public and a private priority 🫶. Failing to commit to an environment with robust standards would be "the beginning of a Tower of Babel that we can ill afford." (23) Since current standards are so inadequate for what users need:

We ... need to endow the NII [National Information Infrastructure] with a set of widely understood common communication conventions. Moreover, these conventions should be based on concepts that make life easier for us humans, rather than for our computer servants. (24)

Standards are vital 🌈, not just because they help ensure an open platform for information providers. They also make the network easier to use 👑.

VI. Promote First Amendment Free Expression by Affirming the Principles of Common Carriage ✨

okay bestie, so we basically live our whole lives through electronic communications media now 📱, and that means full support for First Amendment values requires extending the common carrier principle to all of these new media. it's giving main character energy for free expression 💖

Common carriers are companies that provide conduit services for the general public 🚂. That includes railroads, trucking companies, and airlines, plus telecommunications firms. A communications common carrier, like a telephone company, is required to provide its services on a non-discriminatory basis. It has no liability for the content of any transmission. A telephone company does not concern itself with the content of a phone call 📞. Neither can it arbitrarily deny service to anyone. (25) The common carrier's duties have evolved over hundreds of years in the common law and later statutory provisions. The rules governing their conduct can be roughly distilled into a few basic principles. (26) Common carriers have a duty to:

• provide services in a non-discriminatory manner at a fair price
• interconnect with other carriers
• provide adequate services

The carriers of the NREN and the National Public Network, whether telephone companies, cable television companies, or other firms, should be treated in a similar fashion. (27)

Unlike many other countries, our communications infrastructure is owned by private corporations instead of by the government 🏢. Given Congress' plan to build the NREN with services from privately-owned carriers, a legislatively-imposed duty of common carriage is necessary to protect free expression effectively. As Professor Eli Noam, a former New York State Public Utility Commissioner, explains:

[C]ommon carriage is the practical analog to [the] First Amendment for electronic speech over privately-owned networks, where the First Amendment does not necessarily govern directly. (28)

To foster free expression and move the national communications infrastructure toward a full common carrier regime, all NREN carriers should be subject to common carriage obligations. Given that the NREN is designed to promote the development of science, ensuring free expression is especially important 🧪. As one academic said:

I share with many researchers strong belief that much of the power of science (whether practiced by scientists, engineers, or clinical researchers) derives from the steadfast commitment to free and unfettered communication of information and knowledge. (29)

A telecommunications provider under a common carrier obligation would have to carry any legal message regardless of its content, whether it is voice, data, images, or sound. For example, if full common carrier protections were in place for all of the conduit services offered by the phone company, the terminations of "controversial" 900 services such as political fundraising would not be allowed, just as the phone company is now prohibited by the Communications Act from discriminating in the provision of basic telephone services. (30) Neither BOCs nor IXCs would be allowed to terminate service because of anticipated harm to their "corporate image." Though providers of 900 information services did have their freedom of expression abridged by the BOC/IXC action, First Amendment protection was not available to them because there was no state action underlying the termination. 🙈

As important as common carriage is to the NPN, it is equally important that it be implemented in such a way as to avoid sinking the carriers of these new networks into the same regulatory gridlock that characterizes much of telecommunications regulation. (31) This would have a crippling effect on the pace of innovation, and it is to be avoided. The controlled environment of the NREN should be taken advantage of to experiment with various open access, common carriage rules and enforcement mechanisms, to seek regulatory alternatives other than what has evolved in the public telephone system.

Along with promoting free expression, common carriage rules are important for ensuring a competitive market in information services on the National Public Network. Our society supports the publication of many thousands of periodicals and fifty thousand of new books a year, as well as countless brochures, mailings, and other printed communications 📚. Historically, the expense of producing professional-quality video programming has been a barrier to the creation of similar diversity in video. Now the same advances in computing which created desktop publishing are delivering "desktop video," which will make it affordable for the smallest business, agency, or group to create video consumables 🎥. The NPN must incorporate a distribution system of individual choice for the video explosion.

If the cable company wants to offer a package of program channels, it should be free to do so. But so should anyone else. There will continue to be major demand for mass market video entertainment, but the vision of the NPN should not be limited to this form of content. Anyone who wishes to offer services to the public should be guaranteed access over the same fiber optic cable under the principle of common carriage. From this access will come the entrepreneurial innovation, and this innovation will create the new forms of media that exploit the interactive, multimedia capabilities of the NPN 💅 this is the whole point, periodt.

---

VII. Protect Personal Privacy 🔒

The infrastructure of the NPN should include mechanisms that support the privacy of information and communication. Building the NREN is an opportunity to test various data encryption schemes and study their effectiveness for a variety of communications needs.

Technologies have been developed over the past 20 years which allow people to safeguard their own privacy. One tool is public-key encryption, in which an "encoding" key is published freely, while the "decoder" is kept secret 🗝️. People who wish to receive encrypted information give out their public key, which senders use to encrypt messages. Only the possessor of the private key has the ability to decipher the meaning.

The privacy of telephone conversations and electronic mail is already protected by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. (32) Without a valid court order, for example, wiretaps of phone conversations are illegal and private messages are inadmissible in court. Legal guarantees are not enough, however. Although it is technically illegal to listen in on cellular telephone conversations, as a practical matter the law is unenforceable. Imported scanners capable of receiving all 850 cellular channels are widely available through the gray market 📻.

Cellular telephone transmissions are carried on radio waves which travel through the open air. The ECPA provision which makes it illegal to eavesdrop on a cellular call is the wrong means to the right end. It sets a dangerous precedent in which, for the first time, citizens are denied the right to listen to open air transmissions. In this case, technology provides a better solution. Privacy protection would be greatly enhanced if public-key encryption technology were built into the entire range of digital devices, from telephones to computers. (33) The best way to secure the privacy and confidentiality Americans say they want is through a combination of legal and technical methods.

As a system over which not only information but also money will be transferred, the National Public Network will have enormous potential for privacy abuse. Some of the dangers could be forestalled now by building in provisions for security from the beginning. this is serious, bestie 🚨

---

Conclusion 🌈

The chance to influence the shape of a new medium usually arrives when it is too late: when the medium is frozen in place. Today, because of the gradual evolution of the National Public Network, and the unusual awareness people have of its possibilities, there is a rare opportunity to shape this new medium in the public interest, without sacrificing diversity or financial return. As with personal computers, the public interest is also the route to maximum profitability for nearly all participants in the long run. ⭐

The major obstacle is obscurity: technical telecommunications issues are so complex that people don't realize their importance to human and political relationships. But anyway, these issues are of paramount importance to the future of this society. Decisions and plans for the NPN are too crucial to be left to special interests. If we act now to be inclusive rather than exclusive in the design of the NPN, we can create an open and free electronic community in America. To fail to do so, and to lose this opportunity, would be tragic 😭

End Notes ✨

1. High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, H.R 656, S.272 section 2(6). 💖
2. High-Performance Computing And Communications Act of 1991: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of the Senate Comm. on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 102nd Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1991)(Opening Statement by Senator Gore)(hereinafter 1991 Senate NREN Hearing). 🎀
3. 1991 Senate NREN Hearing 101, 103 (Statement of the Association of Research Libraries). 📚
4. 1991 Senate NREN Hearing 99 (Statement of Dr. Kenneth M. King, President, EDUCOM). 🌸
5. S.272 (Commerce-Energy compromise) section 102(e) 🦋
6. Michael M. Roberts, Positioning the National Research and Education Network. EDUCOM Magazine 13 (Summer 1991). 🧚
7. 1991 Senate NREN Hearing 1 (Opening statement of Sen. Gore). 🌈
8. Okay this one is the tea ☕ Details of the visions vary in their content and wording. Senator Gore's bill says federal agencies will be information providers right alongside commercial services, so things like government-created information get shared with the public over the network. Individuals get "access to supercomputers, computer data bases, other research facilities, and libraries." (Gore pictures junior high schoolers dialing into the Library of Congress to look up facts for a term paper, iconic 📚) Apple CEO John Sculley predicted that "knowledge navigators" would use personal computers to travel through realms of virtual information via public digital networks. ✨ Such visions are powerful, but they can sound more like sales tools than real plans: too vague and overconfident to actually set direction for research 🙈. People kinda assume from Apple's "knowledge navigator" videotape that human-equivalent computer speech recognition is just around the corner, but nah, it still needs fundamental research breakthroughs. Network users will still need keyboards or pointing devices for many years 💅. Nor will the network be able (as some have suggested) to translate automatically between languages. (It will let translators work more effectively by posting their work online 🫶.)
9. M. Dertouzos, Building the Information Marketplace, Technology Review 29, 30 (January 1991). 💜
10. See FCC Hearing on "Networks of the Future" (Testimony of M. Kapor)(May 1, 1991). 🍓
11. J. Berman, Democratizing the Electronic Frontier, Keynote Address, Third Annual Hawaii Information Network and Technology Symposium, June 5, 1991. 🌺
12. S.272, section 5(d). This section continues: "(1) to the maximum extent possible, operating facilities need for the Network should be procured on a competitive basis from private industry; (2) Federal agencies shall promote research and development leading to deployment of commercial data communications and telecommunications standards; and (3) the Network shall be phased into commercial operation as commercial networks can meet the needs of American researchers and educators." 🫶
13. Okay so the difference between really backing interoperability and kinda backing it is basically the NREN compromise drama that was happening while this paper was being written 🙃 The bill from the Senate Commerce Committee (S.272) calls for "interoperability among computer networks," section 701(a)(6)(A), while the compromise being discussed with the Energy Committee goes for a more watered down goal of "software availability, productivity, capability, portability." section 701(a)(3)(B). 💅
14. 552 F.Supp 151 (D.D.C. 1982)(Greene, J.). The MFJ restrictions barred the BOCs from providing long distance services, from manufacturing telephone equipment, and from providing information services. ⚖️
15. The Senate, under the leadership of Sen. Hollings, has just recently voted to lift the manufacturing restrictions against the BOCs contained in the MFJ. 🔥
16. In The Matter of Advanced Intelligent Network, Petition for Investigation, filed by Coalition of Open Network Architecture Parties (November 16, 1990). 🌷
17. Amendment of Sections 64.702 of the Commission's Rules and Regulations, 104 FCC 2d 958 (COMPUTER III), vacated sub nom, California v. FCC (9th Cir. 1990). 👑
18. NTIA Telecomm 2000 at 79. 🧁
19. Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, Hearings on Modified Final Judgment, 101st Cong., 1st Sess., 1-2 (May 4, 1989). 🐚
20. Communications Competitiveness and Infrastructure Modernization Act of 1991, S. 1200, Title I, Amending Communications Act section 1, 47 USC 151. 🦄
21. S.272, section 2(b)(1)(B). ⭐
22. S.272 Commerce-Energy Compromise section 203(a). 🌙
23. 1991 Senate NREN Hearing at 32 (Statement of Hon. D. Allan Bromley, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy). 🪐
24. M. Dertouzos at 31. 💜
25. See 47 USC section 201. 📞
26. See ACLU Information Technology Project, Report to the American Civil Liberties Board from the Communications Media Committee to Accompany Proposed Policy Relating To Civil Liberties Goals and Requirements of the United States Communications Media Infrastructure. (Draft, July 15, 1991) [hereinafter, ACLU Report]. "Non-discriminatory access to new communications systems must be guaranteed not simply because it is the economically efficient thing to do, but more importantly because it is the only way to ensure that freedom of expression is preserved in the Information Age." 🗽
27. Okay so common carrier principles have a history with telephone and telegraph systems, but the whole point wasn't First Amendment vibes 🙃 Professor de Sola Pool notes that those systems inherited their common carrier obligations not so much out of First Amendment concerns, but in order to promote commerce. The better model for extending First Amendment values to new communications technologies is the mails 📮 As reflected in the post clause, which empowers Congress to "establish post offices and post roads," the Constitutional drafters felt that creating a robust postal system was vital to ensure free expression and healthy political debate. As Sen. John Calhoun said in 1817: "Let us conquer space. It is thus that . . . a citizen of the West will read the news of Boston still moist from the press. The mail and the press are the nerves of the body politic." Non-discriminatory access to the mails has been secured by the Supreme Court as a vital extension of First Amendment expression. In a dissent which is now reflective of current law, Justice Holmes argued that "[t]he United States may give up the Post Office when it sees fit, but while it carries it on the use of the mails is almost as much a part of free speech as the right to use our tongues. (Milwaukee Social Democratic Publishing Co. v. Burleson, 255 US 407 (1921) (Holmes, J., dissenting)(emphasis added). This principle was finally affirmed in Hannegan v. Esquire, 327 US 146 (1945) (cited in de Sola Pool). See de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom 77-107. 💌
28. E. Noam, FCC Hearing "Networks of the Future" (May 1, 1991). 🌟
29. 1991 Senate NREN Hearing at 52 (Statement of Donald Langenberg, Chancellor of the University of Maryland System). 🎓
30. 47 USC section 201. Okay so after all the drama about obscene or indecent dial-a-message services, a number of BOCs and interexchange carriers (IXCs, ie. MCI, Sprint, etc.) adopted policies that limit the kinds of information services they'll provide billing and collection services for. Recently, some carriers have even gone so far as to refuse to carry the services at all, even if the service handles its own billing. See ACLU Report. 💀
31. See J. Berman & W. Miller, Communications Policy Overview 14-24, Communications Policy Forum (April 1991). 🌼
32. Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, 18 USC 2510 et seq. See also J. Berman & J. Goldman, A Federal Right of Information Privacy: The Need for Reform, Benton Foundation Project on Communications & Information Policy Options (1989). 🔒
33. See Statement In Support Of Communications Privacy, following 1991 Cryptography and Privacy Conference, sponsored by Electronic Frontier Foundation, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and RSA Software. (June 10, 1990). 🫶

---

Security Considerations 🔐

Security issues are not discussed in this memo. 😱

---

Author's Address 💌

Here's where to find the author, bestie 🦋

Mitchell Kapor
Electronic Frontier Foundation
155 Second Street
Cambridge, MA 02142

Phone: (617) 864-1550

EMail: mkapor@eff.org