Recently The Economist's Tech Blog Babbage wondered about my use of the term Internet Ecosystem in a post.
In fact Babbage’s headline states flatly: “The Internet is not an Ecosystem.”
I guess we can have different opinions of what “Internet Ecosystem” means, and it goes without saying that author B.G. is entitled to their opinion about the matter.
But what you can’t do is ascribe a motivation to this useful rhetorical construct that does not exist.
B.G. weaves into the post’s narrative a clever game where he/she wonders to his/her Economist audience, “oh, what do they mean by this?,” feigning intellectual curiosity and keeping us wondering if our narrator will ever find his answer.
Soon we see the path he has carved for us, aligning A.) PolicyBlog’s use of the term, B.) quotes from our CEO to the Council on Foreign Relations, and C.), the establishment of (gasp!) a tag for “Internet Ecosystem” at PolicyBlog.
And lo and behold, Dear Reader, our intrepid Babbage Blogger adds A + B + C and exposes our secret plot:
We don’t want any regulation! (Cue mustache twirl.)
Or in the Babbage construct:
How do you do you regulate, together, all of the companies involved in all of the functions of the internet? You can't.
Now I get it.
The End. Only…
That’s exactly the opposite of the truth. We’ve called for an approach that doesn’t pick winners and losers and sets clear rules and means of redress.
We’ve even called for Congress to draft new laws that govern this space, answer the muddy jurisdictional issues, and provide guidance written in the Internet era instead of relying on laws written in radio’s golden age.
As a lawful and law abiding company, we’ve nothing to fear from fair regulation that applies to everyone equally. Or as Tom Tauke said in recent remarks calling for the consideration of such action:
Harm to consumers and competition should not be permitted, from any source. So the level-playing field needs to be big enough to include all of the players. If you’re on the field, then the referee can blow the whistle. That’s a simple principle – and a good one. Good public policy is always good for companies that want to play by the rules.
In the same speech, Tom proposed four principles to consider in the writing of the new law. It’s not a coincidence that all four say lawmakers should be guided by the consumer’s needs and interests, first and foremost.
B.G. says we need to be guided by how engineers first built ARPANET in the 1960’s. With all due respect, that is a discredited way of viewing this space (as internet and network pioneer Richard Bennett points out in comments.)
The old “layers” argument is one that deserves some attention, and we’ll have a follow up post to discuss why it no longer stands up. So, stand by for more on this. UPDATE 5/10: Follow-up is here.
In the mean time, while I appreciate the viewpoint of a respected publication like the Economist and its writers, to imply we are advocating something that isn’t true needed to be corrected.