The Internet and Innovation

“The book is an advocate’s dream,” exclaimed Gigi B. Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, in response to the presentation by Associate Professor at Stanford Law School, Dr. Barbara van Schewick on her latest book “Internet Architecture and Innovation.”

On September 15, at a very well-attended and intriguing discussion at New America Foundation, Dr. van Schewick gave a very succinct account on the original architecture of the Internet and how its openness leads to innovations in applications everyday. “The Internet does not create value by its existence. It is the applications that help us create value for the Internet,” said Dr. van Schewick. She steered the presentation, which would have piqued the interest of even one with no technical flair, using the very successful and innovative cases of eBay, Skype and Youtube. Dr van Schewick told the audience that previously all that an innovator needed was a computer, Internet and knowledge of software programming to create new applications at barely any development cost! “Innovators decide, users decide, and the low cost enables a very large and diverse group.”

“However”, she warned, ‘today things are different.” Today, network providers have access to technologies that help alter the open and fair nature of the original Internet architecture and its very essence of innovation. They can block content for various reasons like if the application competes with the network provider’s offering, if the provider does not like the content or just to manage bandwidth. When the network is controlled, innovation stops.

Dr. van Schewick concluded by saying that innovator diversity is very important. Some will succeed while others will fail; but one will have to try to know. Without openness the Internet would not be what we know of it today. Just imagine the days without the World Wide Web, E-Bay, Google, Skype, Flickr, Blogger and Facebook!

Participants

Introductory Remarks
Colin Crowell
Principal, Crowell Strategies

Featured Speaker
Barbara van Schewick
Associate Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Director, Center for Internet and Security, Stanford Law School
Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Panelists
Gigi B. Sohn
President, Public Knowledge

S. Derek Turner
Research Director, Free Press

Sascha Meinrath
Director, Open Technology Initiative
New America Foundation