Together We Will Fix the Internet

When we turn our attention to the multitude of problems that afflict the world's information infrastructure, we tend to overlook how quickly the Internet came into our world and changed our lives. As recently as the early 1990's the Web didn't exist, commercial activity was not allowed, and the Net's users were a collegial group of academics and researchers. Identity was not a priority. It was in that cozy environment that the Internet's structure and protocols were created. No wonder we have problems.

The Internet is Broken

The cover of MIT Technology Review Dec '05/Jan '06 read bleakly, "The Internet Is Broken". In it MIT's David D. Clark observed: "The Net's basic flaws cost firms billions, impede innovation, and threaten national security." He went on, "It's time for a clean-slate approach."

Efforts such as Stanford University's Clean Slate Initiative have set out to reinvent the Internet, re-engineering the Information Highway so that it behaves like something other than an outdoor public transport facility.

We agree that a clean-slate approach is needed. Further, we believe that the new approach needs to be differentiated from the old by the use of duly constituted public authority to add authenticity to the Internet environment in precisely the same way that city hall's birth certificates and building permits add authenticity to the physical world, enabling bounded spaces that are set apart from the highway.