A Bill of Writes

It will take us years to build digital libraries and longer to retool copyright law … In a digital world, the bits are endlessly copyable, infinitely malleable, and they never go out of print … Pass a Bill of Writes – a digital deposit act – requiring that each item submitted to the Library of Congress be accompanied by its digital source. Make it illegal to obtain copyright otherwise … Instead of being the “library of last resort,” it might become the first place to look … A Library of Progress could be in the pockets of tomorrow’s kids. Having a Bill of Writes now means that we can spend the next 20 to 50 years hammering out new digital-property laws and international agreements without stunting our future.

Can Pyromaniacs Fight Fires? The President Has Convened an Interagency ‘Privacy Working Group.’ Are Your Rights More – or Less – Secure When it’s in Session?

Given the market’s answers to privacy on the public networks – onetime password schemes, encryption – what could be the motivation for packing the Privacy Working Group with characters whose stock-in-trade is privacy invasion? The administration’s history indicates that these soldiers of twilight information wars are on the panel to defend their agendas.

2020: The Fiber-Coax Legacy – What We See in the Current Fiber-Coax Strategies is Fiscal Timidity, Justified by the Usage Patterns of an Old-Line Broadcast and Publishing Model, Not the Net

As soon as kids find the Net alternative, they spend less time watching TV. The number of Web sites is doubling every 53 days. These will increase, not decrease, and provide the basis for a huge nano-economy when we crack the nut of e-cash … More and more people will want to be their own head ends. Our wiring and our consumption of new media are deeply interwoven. What we see in the current fiber-coax strategies is fiscal timidity, justified by the usage patterns of an old-line broadcast model, not the Net. There is a way to do it right, and that is to provide fiber all the way to the home.

2020: The Fiber-Coax Legacy – What We See in the Current Fiber-Coax Strategies is Fiscal Timidity, Justified by the Usage Patterns of an Old-Line Broadcast and Publishing Model, Not the Net

It won’t take too long for a few simultaneous users to gobble up a gigabit per second of bandwidth, especially as audio and video become commonplace on the Net. The second and bigger problem is symmetry. This topic is hotly contested by cable and telephone companies, who don’t believe consumers want to send out as many bits as they take in … As more and more people start entrepreneurial services from their home PCs, we will need symmetrical systems, designed without a “head-end prejudice.” The assumption that the average American is a couch potato involved in nothing but consuming advertiser-supported bits is wrong and, frankly, insulting.

2020: The Fiber-Coax Legacy – What We See in the Current Fiber-Coax Strategies is Fiscal Timidity, Justified by the Usage Patterns of an Old-Line Broadcast and Publishing Model, Not the Net

The cost difference today between hybrid and pure fiber is $400 per household. That estimate was $1,000 two years ago and will probably be $200 in a year or two. If we base our decision not to run fiber on a number that is dropping so rapidly, have we really made the right choice? If what stands between me and fiber to my home is $400, I’ll raise my hand and pay my share. I bet others would too. Maybe, in staring so hard at the bottom line, we are failing to remember what’s really going on here.

2020: The Fiber-Coax Legacy – What We See in the Current Fiber-Coax Strategies is Fiscal Timidity, Justified by the Usage Patterns of an Old-Line Broadcast and Publishing Model, Not the Net

In 2020, people will look back and be mighty annoyed by our profligate insistence on wiring a fiber-coax hybrid to the home rather than swallowing the cost of an all-fiber solution … This is one of the few benefits of a government-owned monopoly: Italy will have a far better multimedia telecommunications system than the United States by 2000.

‘Anonymous Speech’: Imagine Combining Free Speech with Your Right to Privacy

Police have already learned to cope with untraceable calls, disguises, and aliases. They can likewise learn to cope with digital anonymity. But authorities must not wound our fundamental liberties in targeting illegal speech. The availability of less intrusive means of enforcing information regulations, combined with anonymity’s vital role in protecting free speech and privacy, would make it difficult for the Supreme Court to excuse an outright ban on public key systems.

‘Anonymous Speech’: Imagine Combining Free Speech with Your Right to Privacy

You deserve at least as much anonymity on the Net as you have when you cast a vote, post an anonymous tract, or buy a newspaper from a coin-operated rack. In fact, you should demand a stronger right on the Net. Otherwise, authorities will find it easy to track, sort, and record your digital behavior. You should thus demand the right to use the most powerful encryption available. Uploading a robust right to anonymity calls for public key cryptography.

‘Anonymous Speech’: Imagine Combining Free Speech with Your Right to Privacy

Tomorrow, public key cryptography could finally upload onto the Net a real right to anonymous speech. We could then enjoy digital anonymous speech at least as secure as the anonymous speech that we already enjoy in hard copy … A robust right to anonymity covers more than unsigned notes; it covers your right to send and receive anonymous messages, to use a pseudonym, and, arguably, to engage in cash transactions. You probably already do these things in realspace. You’ll definitely want to do them on the Net.

Lost World of the Future: Looking Back at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, David Gelernter’s ‘Novel with an Index’ Exposes the Irrevocable Link Between Technology and Nostalgia

The explosion of energy coming from digital designers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, and even advertisers is altering our basic notions of creativity. A new dream of the future is being born. Of course, in a half-century or so, these same digital revolutionaries will form the nostalgic material of somebody else’s “history.” Imagine the writer of that book – or CD-ROM or digital bedside laptop tablet – longing for the time when clunky computers sprouted wires, modems hissed, and chips held finite memory. Think how much wonder our time might hold.