Furture of open internet

[Magda Hassan]

Will non-profit foundations step up to save the internet?

A few corporations and government are strangling democratized technology. We have to fight back, but it takes money

• • Dan Gillmor
    
    
  • theguardian.com, Saturday 25 January 2014 00.45 AEST
    

The internet is increasingly controlled by a few companies that are not acting in the pubic's interests. Photograph: AP

The best foundations and philanthropies exist to address market failure, working to solve problems that business and government ignore or make worse. Andrew Carnegie funded public libraries in America. Bill and Melinda Gates are working to save lives in the developing world. The Ford Foundation puts social justice at the core of its programs.
Now it's time for our major foundations and philanthropists to address an impending new failure. They can help save the kinds of open, decentralized systems that gave us personal computing and the internet.
Like a python that suffocates its prey, the forces of centralization corporate and governmental are inexorably strangling democratized technology and communications. They have power, and they have money, and they're not even slightly interested in allowing tomorrow's technology and communications to be controlled by the users, because that would threaten their power and profits. They don't do this because they necessarily have evil goals. Rather, like the python, it is in their nature.
I'm hardly the first to notice any of this. Far-seeing people have been warning for years about the way users of technology and communications have been herded often willingly into various kinds of walled gardens and centralized services. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft have built dominant positions in key areas of the overall ecosystem by offering genuine value. Governments create or permit oligopolies, even monopolies, in telecommunications service; and politicians fan public fears of violence and terrorism so they can spy on, if not lock down, our communications.
The result: the devices we buy are increasingly controlled by the sellers, not us. What we say and do is increasingly recorded. Innovation moves from the edge of networks to the center, because we need permission from the ones in control.
It's not a lost cause, not yet. A number of efforts, some longstanding and others fledgling, are under way in the US and around the world to alert people to what's at stake. Activist groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among a number of others, work hard to get the public's attention.
The EFF and others are also trying to do something about the situation, beyond talking, by working on technological measures to boost security and this is key keep user control at the edges, by effectively re-decentralizing. These efforts range from the decades-old free software movement (often called "open source") to the more recent "Indie Web" and Open Technology Institute projects. In an upcoming column I'll talk in more detail about some of the newer technological initiatives.
However useful they are, they may well be over-matched on this most tilted of playing fields. Which is where foundations enter the picture. Here's my plea to them:
First, direct some resources toward education. Help the public understand the issues. This is necessary because on issue after issue, major media tend to reflect corporate and governmental values, not the public's. Copyright, for example, has become a major control issue, with Hollywood and its allies working constantly for ever-tougher laws restricting access to and use of copyrighted material, and using existing laws to thwart innovative new services that threaten their business model. The major TV networks' news programs have barely addressed copyright, because they are part of the cartel that wants more control.
An education campaign would work to persuade traditional media, or at least buy some advertising, but that's only a start. It would also use newer forms of media, including social media. It would work with parents and educators, to help children learn how to be critical thinkers and trust liberty over control.
My second wish for the philanthropic folks: Please fund a bunch of research and development of open technologies and services. In other words, help re-create an infrastructure for tech liberty. Don't pick winners. Pick possibilities and help as many as possible, building on current experiments and projects and finding new ones that sound promising. Understand that most will fail, and be fine with that.
Once we see what is likely to work, funders could then reinvest to help make those technologies and services sustainable in large part by encouraging the public to use them. One thing we've seen in the tech and communications world is how self-reinforcing it can be. The only non-negotiable requirements for this R&D should be that projects are a) decentralized in nature, b) designed to increase users' control and personal security, and c) open-source so that others can build on them. The last thing we need to assist is another Facebook or Comcast.
How much would be needed for this? If just 10 major foundations each committed $50m to the initiative, that would be a good start. Keep in mind that even half a billion dollars is pocket change for the Googles, Comcasts and Facebooks of our era, much less the National Security Agency.
I've been told that people from several key philanthropies met recently with open-technology thinkers to ask what the foundation world could do to address the situation. I implore them to meet again more publicly this time and resolve to take action, not just talk. This is an emergency. Please do something, before it's too late.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...oundations