Keith you have put your finger squarely on the nub of what is wrong with this RFC . I recommend to you and other list members the essay of Yochai Benkler. Grab the whole essay with the following URL. Benkler asks that we consider what we are doing. Building the perfect shopping mall or the great agora. His question is the same as yours. i quote my own summary from COOK Report volume 11, nos. 3-4, pp. 5-6 Consider Benkler's challenge in his two year old essay: "From Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation Toward Sustainable Commons and User Access." The complete paper is found at: http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v52/no3/benkler1.pdf In April of 2000 he closed this article with the following eloquent plea. "Once legislatures conceive of those whose welfare they serve as users, rather than as consumers, the relevant focus of regulation should shift to enabling the widest possible range of users to use the resource for active communication, not simply for passive reception." This we contend is the critical question never asked. Why are we building these communications systems? To provide services and make money of course. But what is it that we expect the system to do? Enable a new generation of couch potatoes like the television of the last major communications revolution? Or, since we now know and understand that this technology makes possible, will we ask that the legal power of the state be invoked to ensure that those who pay for it will be able to run their own web sites, host their own discussion forums, publish their own research and opinions or run their own electronic store fronts? Who Will Own the Printing Press? Benkler's analysis shows that these are the most fundamental and basic questions. Ones that must be answered before a legal and regulatory approach is applied to the technology. If we answer that we are going to build a legal and regulatory framework that enables users rather than consumers, our entire approach must change in radical ways to be in keeping with the goals that we wish to use the law and regulation to achieve. Two years ago Benkler pointed out that the approach being undertaken was to enable consumers. He suggested that, perhaps, it was being done perhaps out of ignorance. After two more years of life on the fast track aimed at the creation of Internet-couch-potatoe-consumers, we can no longer claim ignorance of what we are allowing our politicians and the FCC to do. Consider again Benkler's call to arms: "Today, as the Internet and the digitally networked environment present us with a new set of regulatory choices, it is important to set our eyes on the right prize. That prize is not the Great Shopping Mall in Cyberspace. That prize is the Great Agora-the unmediated conversation of the many with the many. [snip] An open, free, flat, peer-to-peer network best serves the ability of anyone-individual, small group, or large group-to come together to build our information environment. It is through such open and equal participation that we will best secure both robust democratic discourse and individual expressive freedom." > > well, keith since we cannot amend RFCs maybe you should prepare >one of your own? > >maybe. > >> I am not sure that the idea of killing intellectual property is >>the right one either. >> We all know there is something wrong with the current set up but I >>am no sure that >> the wholesale dispatch of Intellectual Property concepts is the >>right answer either! > >nor did I quite suggest doing that. > >however, there seems to be a strong and alarming tendency for global >legal frameworks on >IPR to discourage, rather than encourage, the notion that the >Internet is for everyone. >or perhaps they encourage the notion that the Internet is for >everyone to be a consumer >of works that are produced and controlled by a few large companies, >rather than a vehicle >which enables everyone to share their ideas, expressions, and >experiences with others. > >Keith -- ======================================================== The COOK Report on Internet, 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) cook@cookreport.com Subscription info & prices at http://cookreport.com/subscriptions.shtml Summary of content for 10 years at http://cookreport.com/past_issues.shtml Whither License Exempt Wireless? 112 page - June July issue available at http://cookreport.com/11.03-4.shtml ========================================================