November 15, 2006
Who Runs the Internet?
Ownership of Ideas and Expressions in the Internet Age
Edward Felton
Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University
Professor Andrew Appel
Professor of Computer Science and Associate Chair in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University
Minutes of the Tenth Meeting of the 65th Year
The tenth meeting in the 65th year of the Old Guard of Princeton was called to order at 10:15 AM by the President Joseph Giordmaine. The invocation was led by George Folkers. There were 117 members in attendance.
John Frederick read the minutes of the last meeting. There were no guests or visitors.
The President called upon Charles Stenard, the Membership Chairman, who announced the ascendancy of Joe Penick to Emeritus Status and in keeping with the Old Guard’s forward thinking and creative philosophy, presented him with a wearable badge indicating his new status, instead of a large framed insignia.
George Hansen was called upon to introduce the speakers, of whom there were two, because the professors involved had to dovetail their lectures to the University students with the necessity to keep the Old guard informed on matters technical and intellectual.
The first Speaker was Professor Edward Felton who has a B Sc(Hons) from CIT and master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Washington. He is the founder and director of the Center for Information Policy at the University of Princeton. The title of his lecture was “Who Owns the Internet? I Can.” When I heard this title I thought that he was going to tell us that I could own a piece of the Internet and you all could own a piece etc and that it was a very democratic institution. Not so! The internet is owned, at least as far as the domain numbering system is concerned by a non profit corporation called The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, abbreviated to ICANN. As far as being democratic, in 1989 when the government tried to set up an election of the Board of Directors only 100 people voted in the USA so the Department of Commerce assigned ICANN to run the operation on a leash which it reins in every three years. Professor Felton discussed the question of why we need a governing body for the internet. He compared it to the English language where Dr Johnson wrote a dictionary, Webster created a dictionary and the Philological Society produced the Oxford English Dictionary and English words are generated by popular usage. There are no rules. However in the case of internet domain names it was determined that some rules were required to control what numbers were to be considered acceptable. Whereas initially the domain addresses were assigned by one John Postsel at UCLA using his little note book and the telephone, it was decided in the 1990’s that more control was needed and ICANN came into being.
Other than assigning and keeping track of numbers ICANN found that it had to get involved in arbitration, trademark policy and cultural policy. What names are allowed ethically? How do you prevent people from piggybacking onto famous well known names and trademarks? Country domains such as .us, .uk and .cn were assigned but how do you define a country? Criticisms have been made of the US national ownership of ICANN and attempts have been made to have the organization be part of the United Nations. America turned this suggestion down.
During the short question period it was determined that ICANN does not do much to control SPAM or hacking. Another question related to the physical structure of the internet and the speaker indicated that there are many large companies and corporations who have connected their so-called servers to the internet. As a matter of interest, I googled Google Inc. and read the Wikipedia entry to determine that Google has an estimated 450,000 servers, or computers, connected to the internet. What did we say earlier about lack of control over the English language – “google’ is a verb, Wikipedia is a proper noun, servers are computers.
This part of the meeting was closed at 11 pm because Professor Felten was scheduled to lecture to his students on Information Security.
George Hansen then introduced the next speaker, Professor Andrew Appel, who graduated with an AB in Physics from Princeton University in 1981 and obtained his PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon in 1985. He is presently a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Chair in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University. The title of his lecture was “Ownership of Ideas and Expressions in the Internet Age.”
Professor Appel stated, and to some extent demonstrated, that we have all been used to making copies of photographs and using them to form a report or a collage. The general concept is use other people’s ideas to promote progress. In the academic world writers give credit to the inventor of the original idea by citations and in the commercial world one pays royalties to use a patent.
Jefferson who was Secretary of State in 1790 and responsible for patents was not a great lover of things British and did not like the idea of an inventor owning an idea although he came to accept the patent method when he saw how it encouraged invention. The US Constitution enacted a patent act in 1790 the purpose of which was “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” It established the limited period as 14 years later extended to 20 years.
One is allowed under the term “fair use” to copy a page or work and use it for a limited distribution, for instance to make a copy of a piece of music for use in your car. But “fair use is not covered by the constitution and requires interpretation by the courts when a dispute arises.
With the advent of copying machines and computers connected to the internet new problems developed. A famous case was Napster which allowed music to be shared indiscriminately across the internet until it was shut down in 2001. But it took lawsuits to effect this.
Another technique used by the industry to protect copyrights was to develop special software players to be used for free on the internet to play music or show a video. These players did not allow copying and pasting. The protection was built into the player and not into the law. Of course clever programmers were able to get around this technique by modifying the decryption code. In the late 1990’s a law was passed making it illegal to extract decryption code.
So what does the future hold? The entertainment industry wants to protect copyright but does not want to alienate the customers. I tunes and iPods have been one solution where customers pay a small fee for individual tunes and are allowed to make a limited number of copies. The procedures are continually evolving.
What about free information or software on the web? Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopedia, larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica. The latter has been worked on continuously since 1768, and yet Wikipedia has been produced by volunteers in about four years. Anyone may write articles for it or even edit the articles it presently contains.
What about Linux which is a computer operating system similar to the well known Windows, which is installed on perhaps 10% of the worlds computers? Linux is free and may be downloaded and modified and redistributed.
Professor Appel asked the question, how could it be possible for these free systems and information sources to exist. The explanation lies in the way people all over the world can co-operate on the internet without leaving their home computers. But it raises the question of how should the patent or copyright law handle this.
So we return to the original premise: Who owns the internet? Perhaps I can own a piece of it. You can and in fact the Old Guard of Princeton owns a piece – it is called princetonoldguard.org
Respectfully submitted,
Bruno J Walmsley
John Frederick read the minutes of the last meeting. There were no guests or visitors.
The President called upon Charles Stenard, the Membership Chairman, who announced the ascendancy of Joe Penick to Emeritus Status and in keeping with the Old Guard’s forward thinking and creative philosophy, presented him with a wearable badge indicating his new status, instead of a large framed insignia.
George Hansen was called upon to introduce the speakers, of whom there were two, because the professors involved had to dovetail their lectures to the University students with the necessity to keep the Old guard informed on matters technical and intellectual.
The first Speaker was Professor Edward Felton who has a B Sc(Hons) from CIT and master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Washington. He is the founder and director of the Center for Information Policy at the University of Princeton. The title of his lecture was “Who Owns the Internet? I Can.” When I heard this title I thought that he was going to tell us that I could own a piece of the Internet and you all could own a piece etc and that it was a very democratic institution. Not so! The internet is owned, at least as far as the domain numbering system is concerned by a non profit corporation called The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, abbreviated to ICANN. As far as being democratic, in 1989 when the government tried to set up an election of the Board of Directors only 100 people voted in the USA so the Department of Commerce assigned ICANN to run the operation on a leash which it reins in every three years. Professor Felton discussed the question of why we need a governing body for the internet. He compared it to the English language where Dr Johnson wrote a dictionary, Webster created a dictionary and the Philological Society produced the Oxford English Dictionary and English words are generated by popular usage. There are no rules. However in the case of internet domain names it was determined that some rules were required to control what numbers were to be considered acceptable. Whereas initially the domain addresses were assigned by one John Postsel at UCLA using his little note book and the telephone, it was decided in the 1990’s that more control was needed and ICANN came into being.
Other than assigning and keeping track of numbers ICANN found that it had to get involved in arbitration, trademark policy and cultural policy. What names are allowed ethically? How do you prevent people from piggybacking onto famous well known names and trademarks? Country domains such as .us, .uk and .cn were assigned but how do you define a country? Criticisms have been made of the US national ownership of ICANN and attempts have been made to have the organization be part of the United Nations. America turned this suggestion down.
During the short question period it was determined that ICANN does not do much to control SPAM or hacking. Another question related to the physical structure of the internet and the speaker indicated that there are many large companies and corporations who have connected their so-called servers to the internet. As a matter of interest, I googled Google Inc. and read the Wikipedia entry to determine that Google has an estimated 450,000 servers, or computers, connected to the internet. What did we say earlier about lack of control over the English language – “google’ is a verb, Wikipedia is a proper noun, servers are computers.
This part of the meeting was closed at 11 pm because Professor Felten was scheduled to lecture to his students on Information Security.
George Hansen then introduced the next speaker, Professor Andrew Appel, who graduated with an AB in Physics from Princeton University in 1981 and obtained his PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon in 1985. He is presently a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Chair in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University. The title of his lecture was “Ownership of Ideas and Expressions in the Internet Age.”
Professor Appel stated, and to some extent demonstrated, that we have all been used to making copies of photographs and using them to form a report or a collage. The general concept is use other people’s ideas to promote progress. In the academic world writers give credit to the inventor of the original idea by citations and in the commercial world one pays royalties to use a patent.
Jefferson who was Secretary of State in 1790 and responsible for patents was not a great lover of things British and did not like the idea of an inventor owning an idea although he came to accept the patent method when he saw how it encouraged invention. The US Constitution enacted a patent act in 1790 the purpose of which was “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” It established the limited period as 14 years later extended to 20 years.
One is allowed under the term “fair use” to copy a page or work and use it for a limited distribution, for instance to make a copy of a piece of music for use in your car. But “fair use is not covered by the constitution and requires interpretation by the courts when a dispute arises.
With the advent of copying machines and computers connected to the internet new problems developed. A famous case was Napster which allowed music to be shared indiscriminately across the internet until it was shut down in 2001. But it took lawsuits to effect this.
Another technique used by the industry to protect copyrights was to develop special software players to be used for free on the internet to play music or show a video. These players did not allow copying and pasting. The protection was built into the player and not into the law. Of course clever programmers were able to get around this technique by modifying the decryption code. In the late 1990’s a law was passed making it illegal to extract decryption code.
So what does the future hold? The entertainment industry wants to protect copyright but does not want to alienate the customers. I tunes and iPods have been one solution where customers pay a small fee for individual tunes and are allowed to make a limited number of copies. The procedures are continually evolving.
What about free information or software on the web? Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopedia, larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica. The latter has been worked on continuously since 1768, and yet Wikipedia has been produced by volunteers in about four years. Anyone may write articles for it or even edit the articles it presently contains.
What about Linux which is a computer operating system similar to the well known Windows, which is installed on perhaps 10% of the worlds computers? Linux is free and may be downloaded and modified and redistributed.
Professor Appel asked the question, how could it be possible for these free systems and information sources to exist. The explanation lies in the way people all over the world can co-operate on the internet without leaving their home computers. But it raises the question of how should the patent or copyright law handle this.
So we return to the original premise: Who owns the internet? Perhaps I can own a piece of it. You can and in fact the Old Guard of Princeton owns a piece – it is called princetonoldguard.org
Respectfully submitted,
Bruno J Walmsley