Access for All FAQ
Volker Grassmuck
for Interstanding, Tallinn, Estonia
November 23-25, 1995
- RFC Draft 1.1 -
Q1: Access for All sounds great. What is it all about?
Q2: What are the concrete targets?
Q3: Why is it so important that everybody be on the Net?
Q4: What's the time frame?
Q5: Microsoft, Burda, Time-Warner, German Telekom, and all these
other big companies also want access for all. What's the
difference?
Q6: Are there already examples of Acces for All?
Q7: If all these people come online, won't the lines be
overloaded?
Q8: So the issue is first of all one of pricing and regulation,
i.e. telecommunications policy. What models are there?
Q9: Access to the pipes is great, but what good is it if all the
useful stuff I find there has a price tag attached? How about
Access to Information?
Q10: What other problems are there to be solved?
Q11: Where does the Access for All movement start? What's the
context?
-------------------------------
Q1: Access for All sounds great. What is it all about?
A1: The Matrix has inherent potentials for empowerment of
individuals and small groups. Historically it was invented by its
users, as a huge experiment in ongoing collaboration in an open,
distributed, non-hierarchical environment. It was an economy-free
enclave based on non-proprietary technology where advertisements
were prohibited by the Acceptable Use Policy and despised by its
inhabitants.
Now, these Old Internet cultures are becoming marginal,
while infrastructure-building capital takes over. An economy of
desire meets money economy.
Technically the potentials for open information exchange and
debate, shared creation and decision making, for an equality of
voices are still there, but they will not manifest themselves
automatically. Like anywhere else we will have to fight for our
right to be on the Net, and to be there in a way we choose.
Access for All is a grassroots movement for bottom-up
infrastructure building - technically, politically, artistically,
socially.
Q2: What are the concrete targets?
A2:
1.) an open, distributed, heterogenous, packet-switched, two-way,
many-to-many network in which everybody can write as well as
read.
2.) ubiquitous, 24-hour, flat-rate access to the pipes at the
fastest available speeds and at rates affordable to all.
3.) free access to all public information (analogous to the
public library in the Gutenberg Age), freedom of speech and
assembly, privacy and anonymity.
-- We want it all, and we want it now!
Q3: Why is it so important that everybody be on the Net?
A3: The matrix is turning into an educational, economic,
political, social infrastructure; a communicational place where
jobs are offered, civic and citizens' action is taken, kids do
their class projects, government information on equitable
opportunity programs is published, and public debate is conducted
on just about anything somebody deems relevant. In such a world,
anybody who is not present on the Net will be seriously
disadvantaged.
In his keynote speech at the Telecom 95 in Geneva, Nelson
Mandela argued that if the right to communications is understood
as a basic human right, then the difference between the
information saturated countries and the information have-nots has
to be abolished.
Human rights are not granted, but have to be fought for.
Also at Telecom '95, Peking correspondent Francis Deron pointed
out how access restrictions are turning the Internet in China
into another tool of the power elite. In capitalist countries,
the danger is more one of trivializing the Matrix into a medium
for tele-shopping and video-on-demand.
Understood as a public sphere, the Matrix is not an issue of
industrial policy, but of democracy. Not everybody has to be on
the Net, but everybody, regardless of location, know-how, and
income, has to have the opportunity to be there. We're all
stakeholders.
Q4: What's the time frame?
A4: This new platform for social intercourse is still in the
process of formation. Within the next year or two many decisions
will be taken that set the technical, economic, political, legal
constraints within which the network cultures will grow.
In order not to leave these decisions to experts lobbied by
commercial interests, alternative, critical, artistic circles
have to be made aware of these issues. Precondition for opinion-
forming and participation is access to the Net. Solutions will be
negotiated inside and around the Net. The most urgent issue today
is to get the widest possible manyfold of perspectives to
participate in this process, i.e. Access for All.
Q5: Microsoft, Burda, Time-Warner, German Telekom, and all these
other big companies also want access for all. What's the
difference?
A5: Those enterprises are, by nature, interested in their own and
not in public benefit. The conglomerates of telephone, cable,
publishing, broadcasting, entertainment, merchandising, and
retail companies produce a particular vision of what the Net is,
thereby marginalizing alternative usages. Their idea is one of TV
with a minimal back-channel for polling and ordering.
"For example, executives from Time-Warner, Inc. are proudly
showing a video about the "Full Service Network" currently
being tested in Orlando, Florida. The video shows happy
suburban families using their set-top boxes to play games,
watch movies, browse electronic magazines, and order pizzas
and bedroom sets. This supposed "Full Service Network" does
not provide e-mail, bulletin-boards, or person-to-person
communication of any kind.... without e-mail, discussion
groups, or a means of entering text, the Time-Warner
"Full-Service Network" can't possibly support participatory
democracy.... the dominant component on the Information
Highway will be a highly commercial, top-down, "pay-per"
system for delivering infotainment to consumers, and, of
course, taking their product orders. Most people won't even
*know* about alternative components, e.g., civic networks
operated by non-profit organizations, much less subscribe to
them." [Jeff Johnson (Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility)]
What the Fortune 500 want is a controlable, centrally planned and
operated, unified network. They want set-top boxes as terminals
not computers, closed front-end networks to the Internet (MSN,
Europe Online) not straight Internet access. (not decided yet:
Springer)
In contrast, the Internet as it evolved so far is a
patchwork of heterogenous islands internetworked through the
regional cooperation of the various operators, all with their own
plant structures, clientele, funding, organization, philosophies,
and cultures. Access for All builds on this diversity.
Another essential criterion for an open network that
connects us rather than targeting us is that of "reciprocity of
voices": in whichever format you can read information, you should
also be able to create and provide your own. Therefore, tendecies
that increase the division between professional information
providers and a receive-only general audience have to be
counteracted.
One way to do this is to put as much effort into advancing
tools for social intercourse (newsgroups, mailinglists, IRC,
MUDs) as we see being put into tools for information navigation
(ftp, Gopher, WAIS, WWW). [Sproull & Faraj]
Access for All wants to do two things: First develop
grassroots efforts for access that demonstrate that we do not
depend on corporate offerings. And second, it wants to start a
public debate about the significance of the Matrix as a public
sphere, and about counteracting, e.g. by regulation, the
additional empowerment of the corporations.
Q6: Are there already examples of Acces for All?
A6: Yes, during the time when access to the Internet proper was
still largely reserved for the academic world, BBSs provided
community networking. Places like The WELL in San Francisco, the
Cleveland Freenet, or Coara in a small town on Japan's southern
main island of Kyushu grew into geographically and thematically
focused digital public spheres. They spawned similar networks in
other cities, and were finally gatewayed to the Internet at
large.
Today, even in the tightly regulated telecom landscape of
Germany, alternative access models are coming up. The rooms in
some student dormatories are connected to the university LAN
directly. An apartment block in the federal state of Turinga uses
the existing CATV system to run IP. The city council of M|nster
decided to bring the town online, offering free dial-in points
and terminals at cafes and libraries. A final example is
Prenzelnet. The name is derived from Prenzlauer Berg, the
squatters', students', and artists' ward in Berlin. Here a house
will be wired with an Ethernet from the cafe on the ground floor
up to the last bathroom where people might want to read online
magazines. It will be a model house with a cheap and dirty, but
scalable network that can be expanded to the whole neigborhood.
The main cost advantage of these models lies in
circumventing the monopoly-priced Telekom lines, in doing local
access not over phone lines but own lines. The other main point
of local initiatives taking networking in their own hands is that
the systems grow out of the needs of a community, not out of
commercial considerations.
Local online communities provide a sense of affiliation, a
shared history. They turn information into meaning by placing it
into a social context. They allow for face-to-face checks, local
sharing of resources (scanners, printers, CD-ROM burners), and
encourage self-help. Local islands serve as ideal community
front-ends to the Matrix at large, following the WELL's motto
"Think global, act local."
Q7: If all these people come online, won't the lines be
overloaded?
A7: New technologies are becoming available for digital
transmission on any channel and any part of the electromagnetic
spectrum. Even good old copper wire, the most extensive existing
network on the planet, can now be turned in a broadband
infrastructure. Recently, there was a report that 52 Mbps
communications will be possible using copper wire. [GLOCOM] ATM
over copper wires provides hundreds of leased-line quality
virtual channels.
Also current CATV, with minimal capital investment for
changing broadcast architectures into two-way systems, can be
turned into a cheap, high-speed local loop. Continental
Cablevision and PSI offer 24-hour high-speed Internet access at
$125/m. In Tokyo, three CATV companies announced telephony inside
their cable islands at a flat rate of $20/m.
Once deregulation makes it possible, extensive optical fiber
lines installed for internal use by local administrations, by
railway and electricity companies and the like will become
generally available.
A wide range of wireless technologies from packet radio to
microwave links, from infrared to laser are becoming technically
feasable. These are especially attractive where there is no wire
plant in place.
A more exotic technology is the modulation of electricity
lines (Baby Phone).
One does not have to be a utopian to envision a time when
bandwidth is abundant, and connectivity is ubiquitous and cheap,
just like electricity and water today.
Technically, there are no problems, only a wealth of
solutions.
Q8: So the issue is first of all one of pricing and regulation,
i.e. telecommunications policy. What models are there?
A8: There is a range of models from grassroots cooperatives
(Prenzelnet), via funding by sponsorship and donations (dds), to
government subsidies (M|nster), and regular for-profit companies
(The WELL).
Networks afford immense economies of scale. For example, in
1993 the NSF financed its backbone at 1$ per user per year
[MacKie-Mason & Varian, 273]. On the local level, Harvard
University with 12,000 users pays $4 per user per year for its
connectivity. [Kahin, 12] The same advantage of large
institutions can also be achieved by buyers cooperatives of
individual users that purchase bulk connectivity at favorable
conditions (like Individual Networks).
Public ownership, subsidies, and tax incentives should be
part of the access structure, at the very least to assist
disadvantaged sectors of the population, providing access through
institutions such as libraries, schools, and town halls. In the
US, the National Telecommunications and Information
Infrastructure Assistance Program offered $64 million in FY 95 in
matching funds for projects in education, community networking,
health care, and public libraries. [Kahin, 15] Some US states
linked the deregulation of telecommunications to the
establishment of a universal service fund into which the
commercial service providers have to pay contributions. [Civille,
196]
Finally we could imagine a radical departure from the
American market model. Today, former telecommunications
monopolies are faced with two incongruous demands. On the one
hand, they have to compete in certain areas like any other
profit-making corporation. On the other, they are still legally
obliged to provide universal service. The struggles between the
New Common Carriers and NTT in Japan, and the German Telekom's
decision to raise local call rates are resulting from this
contradictory situation. The latter is, in fact, a way to have
German Telekom's competitiveness subsidized by customers who were
no asked and do not have a choice.
An obvious solution would be to split the telco into a
truely competitive company and a nonprofit organization. The
latter could be based on a common pool of resources and funds.
The former public telco brings in its physical plant, the NCCs
their backbones. Operating and investment funds would come from
contributions of the value-added carriers, the commercial content
providers and network marketeers, and the public hand. Mainly
those who profit from the Net financially would bear the cost.
This could also be achieved by a tax on monetary transactions
over the Net. The pipes would be considered common good and
provided for free.
Economically, one could argue that as a precondition of any
online market, connectivity itself should be excluded from market
forces.
Politcally, one could draw an analogy to other common goods.
In order to vote, to go to school or a library, to go window
shopping, or meet friends at a public square I do not have to
pay.
Socially, a truly universal, equal and equitable access for
all requires a national and international metastructure that
addresses the disparity between metropolitan centers and rural
areas, and between rich and poor countries.
In an interpretation of Nelson Mandela's right to
communications, societies could proclaim a basic human right to
be online.
Q9: Access to the pipes is great, but what good is it if all the
useful stuff I find there has a price tag attached? How about
Access to Information?
A9: This is the crucial question to be addressed after access to
the pipes. An obvious model here is the public library. In the
spirit of the Enlightenment, nations have taken the decision that
all published information should be accessible to everybody at no
cost - a very radical decision indeed. A debate should be started
on how this value of access to information translates into the
Matrix.
Q10: What other problems are there to be solved?
A10: Lots. As a continuum from private sphere to public sphere,
the Matrix has a range of requirements from privacy, security,
and anonymity, to freedom of speech and - since the Matrix is a
Third Place where people can actually meet - also freedom of
assembly. Related issues concern censorship, access by minors,
intellectual property rights, fair use, and non-representational
models of democratic decision making.
A current problem that we heard about yesterday from Marleen
Sticker is the attempt to hold access providers liable for the
content of their customers. The concept of "common carriage,"
wherein transporters have no control over - and no stake in -
what is transmitted to whom is endangered.
Answers to these questions will emerge from debates in the
old media, and through established societal channels like NGO's
lobbying activities (EFF). But the discussions can only be
substantial if they are based on first-hand experience, i.e. if
they are also led on the Net. Therefore the primary meta-goal is
Access for All.
Q11: Where does the Access for All movement start? What's the
context?
A11: Access for All starts from existing crystallization points
(dds, is, Prenzelnet, Zamir Network and Electronic Witches in
former Yugoslawia). By simply pooling these models, presenting
them together, and forgrounding Access for All, the issue will
become visible for the first time.
The result could be a collection of pointers to Access for
All projects, of fact-sheets about the different approaches and
technical implementations, diary-style scenes from the local
online cultures, policy statements of these communities.
Furthermore, forces can be joined to help bootstrap other
projects by sharing experiences, software, know-how, and money
(like the International City Federation). Operating projects
could adopt sister communities in other countries.
As a movement Access for All could be a contribution to the
Internet World Expo 1996, initated by Carl Malamud after the
example of 19th century industrial world fairs. Among many fancy,
advanced projects showcased there, Access for All could be a
bottom-up, trans-European counterpoint.
.................
Sources
GLOCOM: Information Technology and Communications Policy Forum of
Japan, Proposal on the Reform of the Information and
Communications Industry,
http://ifrm.glocom.ac.jp/ipf/pr1/index.html
Jeff Johnson (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility),
The Information Hypeway: A Worst-Case Scenario,
http://www.1010.org/Dynamo1010.cgi/LiveFrom1010/team1/johnson.html
Prenzelnet, http://fub46.zedat.fu-berlin.de/~huette/prenzelnet
Sproull & Faraj, in: Brian Kahin & James Keller (eds), Public Access to
the Internet, MIT Press 1995
MacKie-Mason & Varian, in Kahin, op.cit.
Kahin, in Kahin, op.cit.
Civille, in Kahin, op.cit.
Expo
Thanks to Sabine Helmers, Koji Ando, Ilona Marenbach, Frank
Holzkamp, Joachim Blank, Barbara Aselmeier.
vgrass@zedat.fu-berlin.de ,
http://www.race.u-tokyo.ac.jp/RACE/TGM/tgm.html
