End to End

[Kristian Köhntopp <kk@netuse.de>]

http://www.law.stanford.edu/e2e/

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/06/1613233
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/07/1646200

Towards the end, one member of the audience (and I do apologize 
for not catching who it was), pulled everything together by 
noting the convergence between end-to-end as a technological 
issue, open access as an economic issue, and democracy and 
public debate as a political issue. The idea of eliminating
"gatekeepers" on the internet is important for a great many
reasons, whether you look at it as a technological issue of 
promoting progress and innovation, or as an economic issue 
of fostering competition and preventing monopolies from abusing 
their power, or as an issue of promoting free and unrestrained 
speech on the communications media of the 21st century. This 
is certainly one of the most important issues facing the country
today, but relatively few people know anything -- even a smidgeon 
-- about it, or at most they've read a few news reports about 
the AOL/Time Warner merger. I'm glad to see such a diverse 
and intelligent group working on the issues, and if they don't 
yet have all the answers, it's only because they want to get 
it right.


-- 
Kristian Köhntopp, NetUSE AG Siemenswall, D-24107 Kiel
Tel: +49 431 386 436 00, Fax: +49 431 386 435 99
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