[Upd-discuss] Dana Blankenhorn: Dump the Silo Model / Free the Bits

[Seth Johnson]

(There Is No Spoon.  -- Seth)


> http://www.danablankenhorn.com/2006/07/dump_the_silo_m.html


Dump the Silo Model: Free the Bits


There’s a cable silo. There’s a telephone silo. There’s a
broadcast silo. There’s a wireless silo. There’s an Internet
silo.

Each silo has its own rules. Most have their own taxes. Each has
its own monopolists.

The time has come to break up the silos.

Bits are bits. Cable sends digital bits that are turned into TV
pictures. Broadcasters are going digital to send HDTV. Telephony
switched to bits long ago. Wireless bits are all around us, on
both licensed and unlicensed frequencies.

So the time has come for the government, and the market, to treat
bits as bits. Since everyone is selling bits, all they really
need are incentives to sell more. And since there’s no shortage
of bits, there is no longer an excuse for content regulation. Put
the power to censor at the edge, alongside the power to explore.

Europe is already moving in this direction, at least in relation
to telecomm.  The U.S. Senate, on the other hand, is moving in
the opposite direction, toward entrenching the monopolies and
forbidding even the people, through their local government, from
competing with them.

This is a recipe for national economic disaster. It’s regulation
in the Mexican style, and I don’t think Canada will take all of
us in.

Bob Frankston says we should all own our own infrastructure. Bob
Cringely calls for people to own their own last mile.

I agree, but I’m into simplicity. I say, free the bits.

Sugar_free_toffee_bits These are sugar free toffee bits, sold by
Girl Scouts every fall. Not free, but reasonable, and for a good
cause.

Getting from here to there means blowing up a century of laws
designed both to control content and to collect taxes, laws based
on an assumption of scarcity. Regulators don’t want to free the
telecomm bits because they’re on the take, in the form of
“stealth” taxes (look at your own bill sometime). The same is
true for cable.

But the companies that sell these bits are also in on the scam.
They make more money by defining bits as “services” and by
controlling what those bits do, than they would otherwise. That’s
because, by selling services, they’re able to act as monopolists,
as gatekeepers, controlling both the customers and the content.
If they were selling bits they would have to compete, and all
their power would be gone.

This dance of definition, taxation and regulation made sense 40
years ago, when technology was analog, spectrum was scarce, and
networking was complex. But today anyone can be a network manager
for the price of a $100 router.

So you should have the power over bits, no one else. You, the
consumer, and you, the producer of content defined by bits,
should have the power to choose how you send them and choose how
you get them, without constraint. When you want to send bits or
receive bits, you have the right to a competitive market. And you
have the right to define what those bits mean.

The market, and the government, exist to serve you, not
monopolists. You have the power to make this happen, but only if
you seize that power, only if you demand that power, only if you
organize with a single, simple demand:

Free the Bits.