rfc1259.txt

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   differently, and there is still no intermediary language that can
   accommodate all of them. The National Public Network will need such a
   language to transcend the visual poverty and monotony of today's
   telecommunicated information. It will also need additional standards
   beyond what have been developed for message addresses and headers, a



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   common set of directories (the equivalent of the familiar white pages
   and yellow pages directories), common specifications for coding and
   decoding images, and standards for other major services.

   Congress has provided that the National Institute of Standards and
   Technology

      shall adopt standards and guidelines ... for the interoperability
      of high-performance computers in networks and for common user
      interfaces to systems. (22)

   As the implementation of the NREN moves forward, we must ensure that
   standards development remains both a public and private priority.
   Failure to make a commitment to an environment with robust standards
   would be "the beginning of a Tower of Babel that we can ill afford."
   (23)  Since current standards are so inadequate to the demands of
   users:

      We ... need to endow the NII [National Information Infrastructure]
      with a set of widely understood common communication conventions.
      Moreover, these conventions should be based on concepts that make
      life easier for us humans, rather than for our computer servants.
      (24)  The development of standards is vital, not just because it
      helps ensure an open platform for information providers; it also
      makes the network easier to use.

VI.  Promote First Amendment Free Expression by
     Affirming the Principles of Common Carriage

   In a society which relies more and more on electronic communications
   media as its primary conduit for expression, full support for First
   Amendment values requires extension of the common carrier principle
   to all of these new media.

   Common carriers are companies which provide conduit services for the
   general public.  They include railroads, trucking companies, and
   airlines as well as telecommunications firms.  A communications
   common carrier, such as a telephone company is required to provide
   its services on a non-discriminatory basis.  It has no liability for
   the content of any transmission. A telephone company does not concern
   itself with the content of a phone call.  Neither can it arbitrarily
   deny service to anyone. (25)  The common carrier's duties have
   evolved over hundreds of years in the common law and later statutory
   provisions.  The rules governing their conduct can be roughly
   distilled in a few basic principles. (26)  Common carriers have a
   duty to:

        o provide services in a non-discriminatory manner at a fair



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          price
        o interconnect with other carriers
        o provide adequate services

   The carriers of the NREN and the National Public Network, whether
   telephone companies, cable television companies, or other firms
   should be treated in a similar fashion. (27)

   Unlike many other countries, our communications infrastructure is
   owned by private corporations instead of by the government.  Given
   Congress' plan to build the NREN with services from privately-owned
   carriers, a legislatively-imposed duty of common carriage is
   necessary to protect free expression effectively.  As Professor Eli
   Noam, a former New York State Public Utility Commissioner, explains:

      [C]ommon carriage is the practical analog to [the] First Amendment
      for electronic speech over privately-owned networks, where the
      First Amendment does not necessarily govern directly. (28)

   To foster free expression and move the national communications
   infrastructure toward a full common carrier regime, all NREN carriers
   should be subject to common carriage obligations.  Given that the
   NREN is designed to promote the development of science, ensuring free
   expression is especially important.  As on academic said:

      I share with many researchers strong belief that much of the power
      of science (whether practiced by scientists, engineers, or
      clinical researchers) derives from the steadfast commitment to
      free and unfettered communication of information and knowledge.
      (29)

   A telecommunications providers under a common carrier obligation
   would have to carry any legal message regardless of its content
   whether it is voice, data, images, or sound.  For example, if full
   common carrier protections were in place for all of the conduit
   services offered by the phone company, the terminations of
   "controversial" 900 services such as political fundraising would not
   be allowed, just as the phone company is now prohibited by the
   Communications Act from discriminating in the provision of basic
   telephone services. (30) Neither BOCs not IXCs would be allowed to
   terminate service because of anticipated harm to their "corporate
   image."  Though providers of 900 information services did have their
   freedom of expression abridged by the BOC/IXC action, First Amendment
   protection was not available to them because there was no state
   action underlying the termination.

   As important as common carriage is to the NPN, it is equally
   important that it be implemented in such a way as to avoid sinking



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   the carriers of these new networks into the same regulatory gridlock
   that characterizes much of telecommunications regulation. (31)  This
   would have a crippling effect of the pace of innovation and is to be
   avoided.  The controlled environment of the NREN should be taken
   advantage of to experiment with various open access, common carriage
   rules and enforcement mechanisms to seek regulatory alternatives
   other than what has evolved in the public telephone system

   Along with promoting free expression, common carriage rules are
   important for ensuring a competitive market in information services
   on the National Public Network.  Our society supports the publication
   of many thousands of periodicals and fifty thousand of new books a
   year as well as countless brochures, mailings, and other printed
   communications.  Historically, the expense of producing
   professional-quality video programming has been a barrier to the
   creation of similar diversity in video.  Now the same advances in
   computing which created desktop publishing are delivering "desktop
   video" which will make it affordable for the smallest business,
   agency, or group to create video consumables.  The NPN must
   incorporate a distribution system of individual choice for the video
   explosion.

   If the cable company wants to offer a package of program channels, it
   should be free to do so.  But so should anyone else.  There will
   continue to be major demand for mass market video entertainment, but
   the vision of the NPN should not be limited to this form of content.
   Anyone who wishes to offer services to the public should be
   guaranteed access over the same fiber optic cable under the principle
   of common carriage.  From this access will come the entrepreneurial
   innovation, and this innovation will create the new forms of media
   that exploit the interactive, multimedia capabilities of the NPN.

VII.  Protect Personal Privacy

   The infrastructure of the NPN should include mechanisms that support
   the privacy of information and communication.  Building the NREN is
   an opportunity to test various data encryption schemes and study
   their effectiveness for a variety of communications needs.

   Technologies have been developed over the past 20 years which allow
   people to safeguard their own privacy. One tool is public-key
   encryption, in which an "encoding" key is published freely, while the
   "decoder" is kept secret.  People who wish to receive encrypted
   information give out their public key, which senders use to encrypt
   messages.  Only the possessor of the private key has the ability to
   decipher the meaning.

   The privacy of telephone conversations and electronic mail is already



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   protected by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. (32)  Without
   a valid court order, for example, wiretaps of phone conversations are
   illegal and private messages are inadmissible in court.  Legal
   guarantees are not enough, however.  Although it is technically
   illegal to listen in on cellular telephone conversations, as a
   practical matter the law is unenforceable.  Imported scanners capable
   of receiving all 850 cellular channels are widely available through
   the gray market.

   Cellular telephone transmissions are carried on radio waves which
   travel through the open air.  The ECPA provision which makes it
   illegal to eavesdrop on a cellular call is the wrong means to the
   right end. It sets a dangerous precedent in which, for the first
   time, citizens are denied the right to listen to open air
   transmissions.  In this case, technology provides a better solution.
   Privacy protection would be greatly enhanced if public-key encryption
   technology were built into the entire range of digital devices, from
   telephones to computers. (33)  The best way to secure the privacy and
   confidentiality Americans say they want is through a combination of
   legal and technical methods.

   As a system over which not only information but also money will be
   transferred, the National Public Network will have enormous potential
   for privacy abuse.  Some of the dangers could be forestalled now by
   building in provisions for security from the beginning.

Conclusion

   The chance to influence the shape of a new medium usually arrives
   when it is too late: when the medium is frozen in place.  Today,
   because of the gradual evolution of the National Public Network, and
   the unusual awareness people have of its possibilities, there is a
   rare opportunity to shape this new medium in the public interest,
   without sacrificing diversity or financial return. As with personal
   computers, the public interest is also the route to maximum
   profitability for nearly all participants in the long run.

   The major obstacle is obscurity: technical telecommunications issues
   are so complex that people don't realize their importance to human
   and political relationships. But be this as it may, these issues are
   of paramount importance to the future of this society.  Decisions and
   plans for the NPN are too crucial to be left to special interests.
   If we act now to be inclusive rather than exclusive in the design of
   the NPN we can create an open and free electronic community in
   America.  To fail to do so, and to lose this opportunity, would be
   tragic.





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RFC 1259                 Building The Open Road           September 1991


End Notes

   1.  High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, H.R
   656, S.272 section 2(6).

   2.  High-Performance Computing And Communications Act of 1991:
   Hearing before the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of
   the Senate Comm. on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 102nd
   Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1991)(Opening Statement by Senator
   Gore)(hereinafter 1991 Senate NREN Hearing).

   3.  1991 Senate NREN Hearing 101, 103 (Statement of the Association
   of Research Libraries).

   4.  1991 Senate NREN Hearing 99 (Statement of Dr. Kenneth M. King,
   President, EDUCOM).

   5.  S.272 (Commerce-Energy compromise) section 102(e)

   6.  Michael M. Roberts, Positioning the National Research and
   Education Network. EDUCOM Magazine 13 (Summer 1991).