'Father of the internet': Why we must fight for its freedom ( Important! )

Hello ATS.

I am choosing to skip the introductory passages I would normally throw in - so that I can get right down to the nitty gritty:

The internet empowers each one of us to speak, create, learn and share. Today, more than two billion people are online — about a third of the planet.

According to a new OECD study, the net already accounts of 13% of American business output, impacting every industry, from communications to cars, and restaurants to retail. Not since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, or Alexander Graham Bell the telephone, has a human invention empowered so many and offered so much possibility for benefiting humankind.

Today, this free and open net is under threat. Some 42 countries filter and censor content out of the 72 studied by the Open Net Initiative. This doesn't even count serial offenders such as North Korea and Cuba. Over the past two years, Freedom House says governments have enacted 19 new laws threatening online free expression.

Some of these governments are trying to use a closed-door meeting of The International Telecommunication Union that opens on December 3 in Dubai to further their repressive agendas. Accustomed to media control, these governments fear losing it to the open internet. They worry about the spread of unwanted ideas. They are angry that people might use the internet to criticize their governments.

Source

This is a subject that I covered a week ago in this thread. At the time there were some who didn't see the veracity of my claims, nor the implications of the coming meeting in Dubai. Understandable as I'm just a guy on the Internet. But now a man who is considered one of the legitimate Fathers of the Interent has weighed in on the subject... and he sounds every bit as serious as the subject demands.

A bit about Vinton Cerf:

Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf[1] (/ˈsɜrf/; born June 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist, who is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with American computer scientist Bob Kahn.[His contributions have been acknowledged and lauded, repeatedly, with honorary degrees and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and membership in the National Academy of Engineering.

In the early days, Cerf was a program manager for the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funding various groups to develop TCP/IP technology. When the Internet began to transition to a commercial opportunity during the late 1980s, Cerf moved to MCI where he was instrumental in the development of the first commercial email system (MCI Mail) connected to the Internet.

Vinton Cerf was instrumental in the funding and formation of ICANN from the start. Cerf waited in the wings for a year before he stepped forward to join the ICANN Board. Eventually he became the Chairman of ICANN. Cerf was elected as the president of the Association for Computing Machinery in May 2012.

Cerf was born in New Haven, Connecticut, Cerf's first job after obtaining his B.S. degree in Mathematics from Stanford University was at IBM, where he worked for less than two years as a systems engineer supporting QUIKTRAN. He left IBM to attend graduate school at UCLA where he earned his M.S. degree in 1970 and his PhD degree in 1972. During his graduate student years, he studied under Professor Gerald Estrin, worked in Professor Leonard Kleinrock's data packet networking group that connected the first two nodes of the ARPANet, the predecessor[ to the Internet, and "contributed to a host-to-host protocol" for the ARPANet. While at UCLA, he also met Robert E. Kahn, who was working on the ARPANet hardware architecture. After receiving his doctorate, Cerf became an assistant professor at Stanford University from 1972–1976, where he conducted research on packet network interconnection protocols and co-designed the DoD TCP/IP protocol suite with Kahn. Cerf then moved to DARPA in 1976, where he stayed until 1982.

As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982–1986, Cerf led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet. Cerf rejoined MCI during 1994 and served as Senior Vice President of Technology Strategy. In this role, he helped to guide corporate strategy development from a technical perspective. Previously, he served as MCI's senior vice president of Architecture and Technology, leading a team of architects and engineers to design advanced networking frameworks, including Internet-based solutions for delivering a combination of data, information, voice and video services for business and consumer use.

Cerf has worked for Google as a Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist since September 2005. In this function he has become well known for his predictions on how technology will affect future society, encompassing such areas as artificial intelligence, environmentalism, the advent of IPv6 and the transformation of the television industry and its delivery model.

Since 2010, Cerf has served as a Commissioner for the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, a UN body which aims to make broadband internet technologies more widely available.
Cerf joined the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1999, and served until the end of 2007.

Folks, a resume' of qualifications doesn't get any more dignified than that. The man invented freaking E-mail!. He worked for DARPA, ICAAN, Google, and has worked with NASA, Interplanetary Internet, and JPL. He is on the board of Scientists and Engineers for America, CRDF Global, ARIN, and StopBadware.

He has testified before Congress on the issue of Network Neutrality.

He was considered for the post of Chief Technology Officer by Barack Obama.

Oh and then there's this:

Cerf is the co-chair of Campus Party Silicon Valley, the US edition of one of the largest technology festivals in the world, along with Al Gore and Tim Berners-Lee.

On May 24, 2012, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) announced that Cerf was elected to the 2 year term post of President beginning July 1, 2012.

When this man talks, we should listen.

And he is talking!

Tell me ATS. Am I like a fly buzzing in your ear about this yet? Have I sang this one note long, and loudly enough that you just want to stand up and scream? I truly hope I have because between the Cybersecurity EO, the ITU meeting in Dubai, and several other factors that are all converging at once, and in a very rapid manner threaten to silence my one note song forever. It threatens to silence all of our voices and we must make others aware.

Spread the word ATS - as far and as loudly as you can. OUR INTERNET IS IN PERIL!

~Heff

reply to post by Hefficide


There is only one problem with your article. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the "Father Of The Internet"

inventors.about.com...

Originally posted by alldaylong
reply to post by Hefficide

 

There is only one problem with your article. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the "Father Of The Internet"

inventors.about.com...

Not trying to argue with you but you are both wrong, we all know that Al Gore invented the internet. He says so all the time.

Originally posted by Nucleardiver

Originally posted by alldaylong
reply to post by Hefficide

 

There is only one problem with your article. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the "Father Of The Internet"

inventors.about.com...

Not trying to argue with you but you are both wrong, we all know that Al Gore invented the internet. He says so all the time.

Does Al Gore live in a fantasy world?

reply to post by alldaylong


Not accurate.

I said:

But now a man who is considered one of the legitimate Fathers of the Interent has weighed in on the subject... and he sounds every bit as serious as the subject demands.

Notice the plural.



Source

Cerf and Kahn invented IP and TCP - the protocols upon which the WWW, which was invented by Lee, works.

This is why they, and a handful of others, are considered the fathers of the Internet.

~Heff

Originally posted by Hefficide
reply to post by alldaylong

 

Not accurate.

I said:

But now a man who is considered one of the legitimate Fathers of the Interent has weighed in on the subject... and he sounds every bit as serious as the subject demands.

Notice the plural.

Cerf and Kahn invented IP and TCP - the protocols upon which the WWW, which was invented by Lee, works.

This is why they, and a handful of others, are considered the fathers of the Internet.

~Heff

The protocols that The World Wide Web work through are HRML HTTP and URLs. All developed by Lee and his team at CERN.

inventors.about.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by alldaylong


You do realize that there is more to the Internet than the web? No?

Since you like the about.com source, I'll use it to make my point - and then bring things back on topic.

Father of the Internet Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee was the man leading the development of the World Wide Web (with help of course), the defining of HTML (hypertext markup language) used to create web pages, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and URLs (Universal Resource Locators). All of those developments took place between 1989 and 1991.
Tim Berners-Lee was born in London, England and graduated in Physics from Oxford University in 1976. He is currently the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, the group that sets technical standards for the Web.

Besides Tim Berners-Lee, Vinton Cerf is also named as an internet daddy. Ten years out of high school, Vinton Cerf begun co-designing and co-developing the protocols and structure of what became the Internet.

Source

One opposing view to ARPAnet's origins comes from Charles M. Herzfeld, the former director of ARPA. He claimed that ARPAnet was not created as a result of a military need, stating "it came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country and that many research investigators who should have access were geographically separated from them." ARPA stands for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the military that developed top secret systems and weapons during the Cold War.

The first data exchange over this new network occurred between computers at UCLA and Stanford Research Institute. On their first attempt to log into Stanford's computer by typing "log win", UCLA researchers crashed their computer when they typed the letter 'g'.

Four computers were the first connected in the original ARPAnet. They were located in the respective computer research labs of UCLA (Honeywell DDP 516 computer), Stanford Research Institute (SDS-940 computer), UC Santa Barbara (IBM 360/75), and the University of Utah (DEC PDP-10). As the network expanded, different models of computers were connected, creating compatibility problems. The solution rested in a better set of protocols called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) designed in 1982.

To send a message on the network, a computer breaks its data into IP (Internet Protocol) packets, like individually addressed digital envelopes. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) makes sure the packets are delivered from client to server and reassembled in the right order.

Under ARPAnet several major innovations occurred: email (or electronic mail), the ability to send simple messages to another person across the network (1971); telnet, a remote connection service for controlling a computer (1972); and file transfer protocol (FTP), which allows information to be sent from one computer to another in bulk (1973).

As non-military uses for the network increased, more and more people had access, and it was no longer safe for military purposes. As a result, MILnet, a military only network, was started in 1983. Internet Protocol software was soon being placed on every type of computer, and universities and research groups also began using in-house networks known as Local Area Networks or LAN's. These in-house networks then started using Internet Protocol software so one LAN could connect with other LAN's.

In 1986, one LAN branched out to form a new competing network, called NSFnet (National Science Foundation Network). NSFnet first linked together the five national supercomputer centers, then every major university, and it started to replace the slower ARPAnet (which was finally shutdown in 1990). NSFnet formed the backbone of what we call the Internet today.

Source

With Cerf and Kahn, Lee's work would have been pointless - as there would be no way to transmit data over networks.

~Heff

reply to post by Hefficide


The protocols that Lee developed are what enable you and i and millions of others from around the world to communicate with each other on our PC's.
That is all that is important to me.

Sorry alldaylong - Heff is correct. Without TCP/IP there would be no internet, thus no world wide web.
I was on the "internet" in 1978 - we called it Aloha-net back then and later ARPANet.
HTTP and HTML are merely access and display protocols that sit on top of the TCP/IP layer which allows the actual communication to take place. If you'd like to address non-IP related communication protocols used in proprietary networks I can go there too.

I'll give you that your man invented the world wide web, but the "internet" predates that by a good few decades.

ganjoa

Originally posted by ganjoa
Sorry alldaylong - Heff is correct. Without TCP/IP there would be no internet, thus no world wide web.
I was on the "internet" in 1978 - we called it Aloha-net back then and later ARPANet.
HTTP and HTML are merely access and display protocols that sit on top of the TCP/IP layer which allows the actual communication to take place. If you'd like to address non-IP related communication protocols used in proprietary networks I can go there too.

I'll give you that your man invented the world wide web, but the "internet" predates that by a good few decades.

ganjoa

The point i was trying to make (And Maybe Badly) was that the OP was quoting an article about the "Freedom Of The Internet" Yes i agree with what you state regarding the internet / World Wide Web. However the way that people communicate with each other from around the world is via the World Wide Web. Take a look at the site address above www.abovetopsecret.com. We can only ever communicate through the World Wide Web (www) As i stated Tim Berners Lee developed the protocols for the www, thus allowing communication possible.
If the internet had just been left as it was without the world wide web hooked on top of it, we would not be sitting here communicating right now.

reply to post by Hefficide
It looks like folk are looking at the trivia and semantics whilst overlooking the message.

The web has been on the edge of disaster for several years and it's always 'tomorrow' or 'coming soon.' In a way, the endless warnings have taken the edge off the urgency and left a lot of us feeling complacent and full of 'meh.'

That doesn't make it any less serious and the possible realities that face us all can be offensive to notions of free speech and the basic rights of communication with others.

Berners-Lee has been mentioned so maybe his support for a neutral web could help people to focus on the message?

The idea that we should routinely record information about people is obviously very dangerous. It means that there will be information around which could be stolen, which can be acquired through corrupt officials or corrupt operators, and [could be] used, for example, to blackmail people in the government or people in the military. We open ourselves out, if we store this information, to it being abused.

Berners-Lee objects to a snooping bill...April 2012

Back in 2010 he was calling for 'Open Standards and Net Neutrality' in SciAM.

I'm jaded by being a student of history and recognise that we're in the midst of a censorship battle that the general public have never won. Pamphleteers were subdued by similar crackdowns, but no nations have had to deal with the sheer wonder of something as language-barrier-defying and outright RAW as the web.

Ultimately, it's beyond the control of any business or political powers to control human nature so we have laws and law enforcement to mediate what we do. I can live with that. I believe that the internet should remain as it is and the actions of people should be held accountable within transparent legal frameworks.

We shouldn't be side-tracked by issues of piracy, intellectual property rights or 'think of the children' arguments. At stake is the freedom of communication and dissemination of ideas.

As i stated Tim Berners Lee developed the protocols for the www, thus allowing communication possible.

If the internet had just been left as it was without the world wide web hooked on top of it, we would not be sitting here communicating right now.

You should learn a bit more about the internet. There are other protocols and they are all basically communications.

reply to post by alldaylong


Funny, we used to do so long before the web through Telnet. My private email isn't http based - even today. Bulletin boards nearly exactly like this one existed even in the days before there was a widely available internet - through dial up BBS's.

Even now, when you download files, it's done by FTP - independent of the web browser you are using.

But this discussion distracts us from the very real and very troubling implications of the ITU summit in Dubai, upon which Mr Cerf so passionately implores us to do.

We are days away from handing over the keys to the entire Internet to a very small cadre of very powerful and agenda driven folks.

Ironically this may lead us straight back to the world we lived in before Mr Lee developed HTML.

~Heff

reply to post by Hefficide


I agree with you,but all forms of communications are regulated and controlled by their respected countrys and governments. In America we have the FCC.
Most communications go through your local phone companys even Cable T.V signals, cellular, sattelite and wifi.
Access to the internet is not free, you pay your phone company, cable company or sattelite company for access and you pay for your bandwidth speed. (internet speed is an illusion)
Governments have and always will control what their people say, see , hear and read and will enact laws, rules and regulations to control and restrict free speech anyway they can. How else can they maintain control ?

reply to post by OLD HIPPY DUDE


If this were the absolute case, then why the mad dash, as of late, to change the game?

I have my own theory. Basically stated I think that the Governments want the ability to censor, and even stop the Internet if needed. In return, the telecoms will be allowed to go back to a "pay to play" model of charging for bandwidth or access time.

Think cell phone contracts or, if you're old enough, the days of AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy - where you paid a flat rate for a fixed number of minutes ( not many - less than a few hours ) and then a "per minute" rate after that.

Not only will these control content, potential access during emergencies, but it might also make just logging in a financially biased decision. If I had to pay per minute? I wouldn't be here fighting the good fight right now. My budget wouldn't allow it.

~Heff

Surfing through the nonsense and lunacy that fills these boards you sometimes find a thread that reminds you why you joined, why you come back and why your glad to be in company with others that do.

This thread is one of those. Important stuff presented with clarity. S+F.

Originally posted by Nucleardiver
Al Gore invented the internet. He says so all the time.

Inconvenient Fallacy

Now this is an interesting perspective Heff

S & F

reply to post by Hefficide


As with any subject one needs to have more than the basic laymans knowledge.
To clearly understand communications today lets use water as data ie. files, movies, games, internet.
And pipes as the lines and a bathtub is your computer.
Your water lines and your drain line is the size of a straw, the speed and volume will be slow filling and draining the tub.
So you replace your lines with lines the size of your hose. More water faster ! The illusion of faster.
But you have 5 bathrooms in your house, and everybody takes a shower at the same time, low pressure = less water. More water draining means slower draining
Now you replace your main water line and sewer line from your house to the water meter and the main sewer line with bigger pipes. No problems !
Now everyone in the neighborhood wants bigger pipes.
Do you think the water company and city are going to replace the lines in your neighborhood for free and not charging more, for more water going in and draining out of the neighborhood ?
The public wants more games,movies, books,and internet with faster download time, the network needs to replace miles of cables and upgrade equipment to meet the demand and that will take time and millions of dollars and the public will pay more or be llimited to access time and/or data amount.It has nothing to do with access but the AMOUNT or VOLUME of information.

reply to post by OLD HIPPY DUDE


Sounds like problems of basic capitalism to me. So why are the UN and the US government passing resolutions and Executive Orders that directly involve them again?

Oh, and why are the discussions in both the proposed Resolution and EO focused on the words "Cyber Security?" - why would Mr Cerf be so concerned? And why would these words ring so true?

Censorship is a real concern

Not only do they decide on what changes to make, but the governments of ITU member states could also end up with far greater power to control the Internet – both outgoing traffic and incoming traffic – in their respective borders. Critics of the ITU proposals, like Google and others, say that proposed changes to the ITRs could allow repressive regimes, like China, Iran, or Russia, to censor Web content, and otherwise make the global Internet less open.

The whole thing is really just about money

In addition to concerns from U.S.-based Internet companies, like Google, that changes to the ITRs could result in more rules and burdensome regulation, the real worry is money. Some African and Asian nations, as well as the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) want to impose something called “sender party pays,” which would require Web companies to pay local Internet operators around the world for the data-heavy traffic they send through their system. As former U.S. Ambassador David Gross told me earlier this year, the ETNO proposal would impose “a radical change” on “the economics of the Internet.”

According to Amb. Gross and others, the establishment of “sender party pays” could, at the very least, result in companies like Google deciding that it is not worth it financially to operate in developing nations that generate little in the way of advertising revenue. This in turn could result in these countries being kicked further behind due to a lack of access to the open Web we enjoy here in the U.S.

Columnist Michael Geist concurs that “sender party pays” would “create enormous new costs for major content providers such as Google or Netflix.”

“The long-term impact would be to either shift significant new costs to consumers or lead to a global digital divide in which the large content companies stop sending traffic to uneconomic countries where the financial return from sending traffic is outweighed by the new transmission costs,” Geist wrote.

Source

FTR: The ITU is the entity tasked with handling communications infrastructure:

The International Telecommunication Union, previously the International Telegraph Union, is the specialized agency of the United Nations which is responsible for information and communication technologies. ITU coordinates the shared global use of the radio spectrum, promotes international cooperation in assigning satellite orbits, works to improve telecommunication infrastructure in the developing world and establishes worldwide standards.

ITU also organizes worldwide and regional exhibitions and forums, such as ITU TELECOM WORLD, bringing together representatives of government and the telecommunications and ICT industry to exchange ideas, knowledge and technology.

The ITU is active in areas including broadband Internet, latest-generation wireless technologies, aeronautical and maritime navigation, radio astronomy, satellite-based meteorology, convergence in fixed-mobile phone, Internet access, data, voice, TV broadcasting, and next-generation networks.

Source

If you've followed by threads, then you'll know that all of the pending Cyber initiatives use language including terms like "partnerships between Governments and industry". On the surface this may sound like a good idea. But, in reality, it's like hiring a fox to guard the hen house and then, when you suspect him of wrongdoing, you hire a weasel to watch them both.

Despite your best measures, your chickens and the eggs will soon be gone and your guards will be left, yolk lipped and shrugging.

The water analogy is too simplistic to apply. It's an apples and oranges argument. If my local water company wishes to upgrade their systems, then the onus is on them to figure out how to finance it. If I wish to upgrade the plumbing in my home, then that onus falls upon me. They might raise my bill if they must upgrade, but their upgrades will not cause my water access to change.

These measures DO threaten change.

If my local water authority were to send me a note saying "You have to pay more at night for your water". Or "You can only have water pressure between the hours of..." then it would not be shrugged off as business as usual. It would be called rationing. A synonym for a system of control.

~Heff

Originally posted by Hefficide

Tell me ATS. Am I like a fly buzzing in your ear about this yet? Have I sang this one note long, and loudly enough that you just want to stand up and scream? I truly hope I have because between the Cybersecurity EO, the ITU meeting in Dubai, and several other factors that are all converging at once, and in a very rapid manner threaten to silence my one note song forever. It threatens to silence all of our voices and we must make others aware.

Spread the word ATS - as far and as loudly as you can. OUR INTERNET IS IN PERIL!

~Heff

Can we put aside the arguments about who has more right to lay claim to the title 'the father of the internet'.

I'm not remotely qualified to comment on that anyway and it's a distraction from the purpose of this thread which is about the threat to the freedom of the internet,possible one of the last relatively free forms of communication open to the ordinary individual.

It can be a powerful tool which if we allow to be taken from us now will be THE major step to insuring our isolation,our weakness !!!

Keep buzzing Heff,it's too important to stop.