Fall/Winter 1994 The Netizens and the Internet Volume 6 No 2-3

“For the society the impact will be good or bad depending mainly on the question: Will ‘to be on line’ be a privilege or a right?”

J. C. R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor

What is a Netizen?

In conducting research online to determine peo-

ple’s uses for the global computer communications

network (i.e., the Net

1

) I became aware that there was

a new social institution developing and I grew excited

formed into Net Citizen, which in shortened form is

Netizen.

Netizens are Net Citizens who utilize the Net from

their home, workplace, school, library, or other loca-

tions. These people are among those who populate the

Net and make it a human resource. These Netizens

participate to help make the Net both an intellectual

and a social resource.

The Netizens’ community highlights the impor-

Table of Contents

The Internet: Maintaining Diversity.. . . . . . Page 15

Do You Want to Lose Your Voice?.. . . . . . Page 18

The Net: A Scientific Perspective .. . . . . . . Page 19

Book Proposal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 20

Netizens: The Impact of the Net. . . . . . . . . Page 22

Rights of Netizens. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 35

tance of using the current state (circa 1994) of the

Internet/NSFnet /Usenet/etc. as a model for the up-

coming NII.

2

contribute to the care and nurture of the Net.

been a valuable regulation which helped to define the

NSFnet (the backbone of the U.S. portion of the global

Internet) as a resource based on sharing via an educa-

tional orientation. This orientation exists on the Net

rather than the more tradition commercial profit-orient-

ed model. This regulation has helped the Net to grow.

Department of Commerce to advise it on the future of

the U.S. segment of the Internet. This work was done

under what was called the NII (the National Infor-

mation Infrastructure). As part of classwork in a

college course several students were asked to propose

the policy concerning the NII that would represent the

interests of different strata of U.S. society. What

follows is one student’s proposal for principles rep-

resenting the Netizens’ interests for the future devel-

opment of the Net. For the class the following areas of

thoughts.]

A Netizen Position on Privacy

The Net is a tool to help people communicate

openly. As such, concerns about privacy and security

should be secondary to keeping the principle of open-

ness active and feasible. So the Clipper Chip should

be opposed, but emphasis should be given to the

governmental protection of freedom of speech and

equal opportunity to connect to open areas, and toward

the guidance of Net citizens to contribute to the whole.

phone numbers should be available for home users to

connect to the network using modems.

A Netizen Position on Intellectual Property

Netizens should be encouraged to submit creative

works and ideas into the public domain, rather than

attempt to gain profit from these ideas. Protection

should be enforced so that others don’t make a profit

off of these ideas. As a whole, ideas are most often

built upon ideas of others. As such, it is hard to pro-

perly credit the origin of works or ideas to a single

Equal ability to access is more important than high

bandwidth for high intensity applications (such as

graphics). It is much more important to connect the

people of the world via text (and ftp/http for limited

graphics, etc.) than to have a few connected with high

graphics content.

Standards should be set so almost any personal

computer type can connect in for basic text exchange.

A Netizen Position on Implementation

Strategy

connecting lines. People should be able to log into a

terminal from a public library or community center or

be able to call a local phone number from their home

to connect to the community network. The community

networks should enable people to use global network

resources such as Usenet News, e-mail, telnet, ftp,

www, gopher.

points from which to connect to the world, and com-

munity use form around them.

munity and with the world. In addition, community

networks often facilitate communications and distribu-

tion of information between citizens about their local

and national governments. In democratic countries, this

might facilitate a greater role for citizens in the gover-

nmental process. Global community network access

should be only available for those who are acting as

representatives of themselves and their ideas toward

a cooperative goal such as education or research that

will serve the whole network. Those in the private

on punch cards to the local computer center. Often a

programmer had to wait over a day in order to see the

results from his or her input. In addition if there were

any mistakes in the creation of the punched cards, the

stack or individual card had to be punched again and

resubmitted, which would take another day. This does

not account for bugs in the code, which someone only

computer from the viewpoint of a human, in addition

to discouraging those unfamiliar with computers. This

led to people thinking of ways to alter the interface be-

having the computer divvy out slices of CPU time to

all the users in a sequential manner.

Research in time-sharing was being done around

the country at different research centers in early 1960s.

Some examples were CTSS (Computer Time-sharing

System) at MIT, DTSS (Dartmouth Time-sharing Sys-

tem) at Dartmouth, a system at BBN, and so on. J. C.

R. Licklider, the founding director of ARPA’s Informa-

tion Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), thought of

time-sharing as interactive computing. Interactive com-

priorities and goals and basically drove ARPA to help

develop the concept and practice of networking com-

puters.

In an Interview conducted by the Charles Babbage

Institute (CBI), Roberts said: “what I concluded was

that we had to do something about communications,

and that really, the idea of the galactic network that

Lick talked about, probably more than anybody, was

something that we had to start seriously thinking about.

So in a way networking grew out of Lick’s talking

lider’s vision to future network development in a CBI

conducted interview: “I don’t think…anyone who’s

been in that DARPA position since [Licklider] has had

the vision that Licklider had. His being at that place at

that time is a testament to the tenuousness of it all. It

was really a fortunate circumstance. I think most of the

significant advances in computer technology, espe-

cially in the systems part of computer science… were

simply extrapolations of Licklider’s vision. They were

not really new visions of their own. So he’s really the

such topic was the formation of communities of the

people who used the time-sharing systems. Fernando

Corbato and Robert Fano wrote, “The time-sharing

computer system can unite a group of investigators in

a cooperative search for the solution to a common

problem, or it can serve as a community pool of know-

ledge and skill on which anyone can draw according

to his needs. Projecting the concept on a large scale,

one can conceive of such a facility as an extraordinarily

powerful library serving an entire community — in

do some load sharing, and some program sharing, data

sharing — that sort of thing. Whereas, the thing that

struck me about the time-sharing experience was that

before there was a time-sharing system, let’s say at

MIT, then there were a lot of individual people who

didn’t know each other who were interested in com-

puting in one way or another, and who were doing

whatever they could, however they could. As soon as

the time-sharing system became usable, these people

began to know one another, share a lot of information,

other one. I saw a phrase in the Licklider memo. The

phrase was in a totally different context — something

that he referred to as an ‘intergalactic network.’ I asked

him about this later…recently, in fact I said, ‘Did you

have a networking of the ARPAnet sort in mind when

Page 4

galactic….’” (Charles Babbage Institute, Oral Inter-

view with Robert Taylor, p. 24)

As Taylor recounts, the users of the time-sharing

systems would, usually unexpectedly, form a new com-

munity. People now were connected to others who

were also interested in these new computing systems.

Licklider was one of the first users of the new

Many of the interviewees in the CBI interviews said

that ARPA’s money was given in those days to help

seed research which would be helpful to society in

general and only secondarily helpful to the military.

The vision driving ARPA inspired bright research-

ers working on computer related topics. Roberts

explains that Licklider’s work (and that of the IPTO’s

directors after him) educated people who were to be-

come the leaders in the computer industry in general.

Roberts describes the impact that Licklider and his

tion of people in the computer field that are trained,

and knowledgeable, and capable, and that form the

basis for the progress the United States has made in the

a base for them to expand their whole department, and

produced excitement in the university” (Charles

Babbage Institute, Oral Interview with Lawrence

Roberts, p. 29)

The important effect on academia led to an even

was a big impact on the universities and therefore, in

the industry. You can almost track all those people and

see what effect that has had. The people from those

projects are in large part the leaders throughout the

industry” (ibid., p. 30)

to share data, programs, research, and later other ideas

and anything that could be typed out. Licklider and

Taylor collaborated on an article titled “The Computer

as a Communications Device” which foresaw today’s

Net. They wrote: “We have seen the beginnings of

communication through a computer — communication

among people at consoles located in the same room or

on the same university campus or even at distantly

separated laboratories of the same research and devel-

opment organization. This kind of communication —

online individual because the people with whom one

interacts most strongly will be selected more by com-

monality of interests and goals than by accidents of

capable of representing progressively more complex

ideas without necessarily displaying all the levels of

Licklider and Taylor conclude their article with

in concrete detailed plan, and if all minds should prove

Licklider and Taylor raise an important point that

access should be made available to all who want to use

the computer networks. The relevance to today is that

it is important to ask if the National Information Infra-

structure is being designed with the principle of mak-

tant in the initial development of networking technolo-

gies and techniques. However, very little emphasis has

been placed on either the study of Licklider’s vision

or the role and advantages the Nets have played up to

this point. In addition, the public has not been allowed

to play a role in the planning process for the new

initiatives which the federal government is currently

undertaking. This is a plea to you to demand more of

a part in the development of the future of the Net.

Page 6

methods of assuring that the communication would not

breakdown when someone wanted to start a new topic.

Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis and Steve Bellovin, with

assistance from lots of folks at Duke and UNC, con-

vened an informal conference and hashed the basic

facilities and needs out in about three hours. Then in

about two weeks, they wrote it and got it working on

the “original three” sites, duke (computer science), unc

(computer science) and phs (dept of physiology, in the

duke medical center). At that time, the “A version” of

wife’s supervisors were at the Toronto USENIX

Conference. She was a programmer at the phs site. :-)]

Under the conditions of the academic UNIX li-

censes in those days, the software was placed in the

“public domain” and it was the most popular program

from that Conference Tape. I do not recall that anyone

was quite expecting the explosion that followed.

comment was that they expected maybe a 100 ma-

chines and ONE net.group. An updated version of

of dealing with very active lists and was quickly placed

into service.

providing e-mail service between the ARPAnet ma-

chines and the UUCP based network. The confusion

between bangpath notation and the domain-name sys-

tem was well established, with lots of rancor and con-

fusion already evident.

there would be “local” groups of machines sharing

them to share information in a timely manner.

that the people wanted to communicate, and would

cooperate in effecting that communication.

local/regional areas, and the details of who would pay

for the phone calls, and the legal mumbo-jumbo of “re-

sponsibility” was to be handled with the usual aca-

demic hand waving and under color of academic

freedom. [Well, there were some arrangements, but

shock to realize what had happened.

ronment (well, decvax was commercial, but it was a

very special case — Bell Labs was academic really, but

it was another special case) and involved in computer

science, there was never any kind of special concern

in doing so. (Some folk at Bell Labs were watching the

legal stuff, not in terms of individual posters’ rights,

but in terms of protecting AT&T’s rights in and to

<name> developed as being netwide, gated mailing

lists, and local topic groups. And the hierarchical sub-

categories soon appeared. Moderated groups appeared

and were placed in the mod.* hierarchy.

made room for the continuing expansion.

news over a set of “backbone” links, and then fan out

distributions to the mid-level and leaf sites. The admin-

istrators of these backbone sites knew each other, and

respected each other in terms of cooperating and man-

aging the growth of a Net that had *no formal exis-

established some general procedures for adding groups,

and for dealing with problems that threatened the

voluntary cooperative nature of the net.

The debate over copyright of postings became, for

the first time, truly acrimonious. As more sites joined,

more and more of them being non-academic in nature,

the missing or hidden assumptions that guided the folk

attempting to manage the net, began to exert pressure.

It *was* stated, plainly and clearly, in several places,

[NOTE Well: At the time the Net was formed, the

U.S. of A. was *not* a signatory to the Berne Conven-

tion on International Copyrights! The U.S. had its own

peculiar set of laws about copyrights, and something

without a notice was not copyrighted.]

Meanwhile, AT&T was “liberated” by the MFJ

ruling by Judge Green, in the U.S. Justice Depart-

ment’s Anti-Trust suit against AT&T, to compete in

the computer industry (with certain limitations). All at

once, the whole nature of things changed, the uni-

versities were no longer bound by the license restric-

under the assumption that the sites wanted to commun-

icate, and would cooperate in doing so. It was noted

that postings were voluntary, and that the backbone

considered all postings to be essentially placed in the

public domain.

would see it, and all were, in fact, encouraged to read

and comment. And most net.readers were simply no

group of folks established the alt.* hierarchy because

the backbone folk had decided that there would *not*

be a rec.sex group — several of the backbone adminis-

ters threw up their hands and recognized that the

anarchy was no longer under control) the “Guidelines”

were worked out that provided for a popularity poll (a

“vote”) for the establishment of new newsgroups.

coming into the Net were no longer really reminded of

the basic assumptions before coming on line, that they

were joining a voluntary association, and that people

posting were assumed to be communicating in public

because they wanted to, and that it was a “public do-

main” situation. There was no backbone cabal to

contact the new site admin. and assure the Net that the

new site understood the voluntary nature of the asso-

signed the Berne Convention, and practically over-

night, the Net went from a default of no copyrights, to

a situation where copyright was automatic. The results

of this are still resounding throughout the net.

This change still did not really undo the underlying

assumption — people using the Net WANT to com-

municate. Those who worry about the law and being

risk free tend to loose sight of this. The poster of an

item is seeking to communicate their ideas, and they

(posters) *don’t* worry about the copyrights and other

doing so.

The Net is acknowledged as a working anarchy.

There is no authority beyond the administrator of a

single machine, and links between machines are still

(by and large) informal arrangements. The adding of

commercial providers merely makes the model very

murky, since the feeding of a group TO the commercial

providers are still generally informal arrangements.

[No comments have been made otherwise to me.]

So what is the point of this overly long history

sense, the moral rights were *not* at issue then, before

the U.S. joined the Berne Copyright Convention.)

Postings with a copyright did not make it very far

before someone noticed and corrected the misappre-

hensions of the poster.

Today, this assumption is forgotten, folk forget

that they are in a voluntary situation (if they were ever

informed of it) and that this was started as a public

domain forum.

In My Opinion, folks posting an item to the Net