Carl Malamud, defender of civil liberties, wants more - not less government on the Internet.
While many Internet pioneers have turned their attention toward getting rich, Carl Malamud has remained focused on the public interest. A passionate proponent of the public's right to access government documents, the pugnacious Malamud goaded the Securities and Exchange Commission to make its data available online. He founded the Internet Multicasting Service, a nonprofit research group that was in effect the first Net radio station, transmitting live coverage from the floor of Congress. Malamud also was the force behind the Internet 1996 World Exposition, wresting cooperation from governments and big businesses worldwide to lay down a new international pipeline and set up a "Central Park" megaserver - in line with his vision of making free public spaces available on the Web. His book on the exposition, A World's Fair for the Global Village, will be published in September. Wired spoke with Malamud, who is now a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab, about government's role on the Net.
Wired: You've been in the unusual position of advocating more freedom of speech - as well as more government involvement - on the Internet. Is that a paradox?
Malamud:
It's really fashionable now to say that government belongs in the "real" world and that cyberspace is a new and different world, and therefore government really has no role to play in cyberspace. But if that's the way we look at it, we'll eventually end up with actual anarchy, as opposed to what the Internet is today, which is just kind of chaotic. I don't really understand where that antigovernment belief system comes from. Technology in itself is no guarantee of freedom of speech.
What could government do to guarantee our freedoms?
Our personal freedoms can be protected by cryptography like PGP. But patents have turned the fundamental technology behind cryptography, which we all need to use every day, into private property. The government needs to get involved and reclaim those technologies for all people. But the government is doing the opposite, trying to prevent the spread of strong crypto - unless law enforcement has a key to eavesdrop.
That's just a naïve few in the government looking for some kind of magic bullet. The FBI's saying, "Well, gee, it would be great if we had the key to every conversation. We could just turn on our magic little machine and - boom - we'd have them." But that's not real police work, and that's not forensic science. Not having the magic key to the front door isn't going to make much of a difference to any investigation.
That's exactly why I think people have to be involved with government. Around the world, governments are defining the rules for the Internet now. If we don't speak up and make our views known, then we end up with misguided legislation like the key escrow and digital telephony bills and Exon amendments.
Are there any regulations you'd like to see introduced?
Yes, spamming and mailbombing definitely ought to be crimes. If you knowingly transmit 10,000 mail messages in a one-hour period to a particular host, I ought to be able to call the police and have you arrested.
Won't more government and more regulation choke development of the Internet?
There's all sorts of different degrees of government, and if all you think about is a US federal government that's doing regulation, that's a really naïve view of government. Obviously, government does many other things - especially at the local level. Working with the government at the local level builds community, and the Internet is about building community. I think we need some true public-works projects, and they might be funded by a local government group or a nonprofit funded by corporate donations. But we need to build large-scale Internet presences in the places they haven't been before.
So government has a role in building the Internet?
If you look at how other infrastructures were deployed, everything from electricity to radio, you'll see that what we're going through now with the Internet isn't really that much different than what we've been going through for the last 100 years. Sometimes the public loses the fight. In some places we end up with the city infrastructure planning going dreadfully awry, with strip malls and huge freeways, and no public transit and no parks. Now the Internet is another infrastructure that has to be put into that mix.
Can government help solve Internet brownouts?
There will always be traffic jams. You fools, it's under construction! And it always will be under construction, and you always will get those problems. But if it gets bad enough - if service providers are providing really bad service and there isn't an alternative - then maybe the government's going to have to step in and figure it out.
Where else should we apply public money?
We must continue encouraging Net-oriented R&D - some government, some corporate. It's critical that we keep pushing the R&D envelope, because the standards that end up coming out of that work - the World Wide Web being the best example - are the result of a long-term strategy. There was a very long beta development period for Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web.
We've talked about government. Does the Internet foster more participatory democracy?
I don't think the Internet has ever been the kind of happy global collective where everyone did the best thing for everyone else. This is not the Rainbow Tribe. But it is an interdependent life - if I screw up my mail system, then I screw up your computer, because all my mail bounces to you and fills up your temp drive. That may be the key aspect of the Internet - that what I do can really affect you, and because we're neighbors we damn well better learn how to work together. We may not like each other, but I'll certainly say hi when I see you on the road, because otherwise you might get pissed off and let your dog loose in my yard.
