huridocs-tech "The Internet is for Everyone"

Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network
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## author     : uppercaise@iname.com
## date       : 08.06.99
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Internet Draft by Vincent Cert, chairman of the Internet Society.

The Internet is for everyone!

How easy to say -  how hard to achieve!

Where are we in achieving this noble objective?

The Internet is in its 11th year of annual doubling since
1988. There are over 44 million hosts on the Internet and an
estimated 150 million users, worldwide. By 2006, the
Internet is likely to exceed the size of the global
telephone network, if it has not by that time become the
telephone network by virtue of IP telephony. Moreover, tens
of millions of Internet-enabled appliances will have joined
traditional servers, desktops and laptops as part of the
Internet family.

Pagers, cell telephones and personal digital assistants may
well have merged to become the new telecommunications tool
of the next decade. However, even at the scale of the
telephone system is it sobering to realize that only half
the population of Earth has ever made a telephone call.

It is estimated that commerce on the network will reach
somewhere between $1.8T and $3.2T by 2003. That is only four
years from now (but a long career in Internet years).

The number of users of Internet will likely reach over 300
million by the end of the year 2000, but that is only about
5% of the world's population. By 2047 the world's population
may reach about 11 billion. If only 25% of the then-world's
population is on the Internet, that is nearly 3 billion
users or ten times the population estimated at the end of
the next year.

As high bandwidth access becomes the norm, through digital
subscriber loops, cable modems and digital terrestrial and
satellite radio links, the convergence of media available on
the Internet will become obvious. Television, radio,
telephony and the traditional print media will find
counterparts on the Internet - and will be changed in
profound ways by the presence of software that transforms
the one-way media into interactive resources, shareable by
many.

The Internet is proving to be one of the most powerful
amplifiers of speech every invented. It offers a global
megaphone for voices that might otherwise be heard only
feebly, if at all. It invites and facilitates multiple
points of view and dialog in ways unimplementable by the
traditional, one-way, mass media.

The Internet can facilitate democratic practices in
unexpected ways. Did you know that proxy voting for stock
shareholders is now commonly supported on the Internet?
Perhaps we can find additional ways in which to simplify and
expand the voting franchise in other domains, including the
political, as access to Internet increases.

The Internet is becoming the repository of all we have
accomplished as a society. It is becoming a kind of
disorganized Boswell of the human spirit. Be thoughtful in
what you commit to email, news groups, and other media - it
may well turn up in a web search some day. Shared databases
on the Internet are acting to accelerate the pace of
research progress, thanks to online access to commonly
accessible repositories.

The Internet is moving off the planet! Already,
interplanetary Internet is part of the NASA Mars mission
program now underway at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By
2008 we should have a well- functioning Earth-Mars network
that serves as a nascent backbone of an interplanetary
system of Internets - InterPlaNet is a network of Internets!
Ultimately, we will have interplanetary Internet relays in
polar solar orbit so that they can see most of the planets
and their interplanetary gateways for most if not all of the
time.

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it isn't
affordable by all that wish to partake of its services, so
we must dedicate ourselves to making Internet as affordable
as other infrastructure so critical to our well being. While
we follow Moore's Law to reduce the cost of
Internet-enabling equipment, let us also seek to stimulate
regulatory policies that take advantage of the power of
competition to reduce costs.

The Internet is for everyone, - but it won't be if
Governments restrict access to it, so we must dedicate
ourselves to keeping the network unrestricted, unfettered
and unregulated. We must have the freedom to speak and the
freedom to hear.

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it cannot
keep up with the explosive demand for its services, so we
must dedicate ourselves to continuing its technological
evolution and development of the technical standards the lie
at the heart of the Internet revolution. Let us dedicate
ourselves to the support of the Internet Architecture Board,
the Internet Engineering Steering Group, the Internet
Research Task Force and the Internet Engineering Task Force
as they drive us forward into an unbounded future.

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be until in
every home, in every business, in every school, in every
town and every country on the Globe, Internet can be
accessed without limitation, at any time and in every
language.

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if it is too
complex to be used easily by everyone. Let us dedicate
ourselves to the task of simplifying Internet's interfaces
and to educating all that are interested in its use.

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if
legislation around the world creates a thicket of
incompatible laws that hinder the growth of electronic
commerce, stymie the protection of intellectual property,
and stifle freedom of expression and the development of
market economies. Let us dedicate ourselves to the creation
of a global legal framework in which laws work across
national boundaries to reinforce the upward spiral of value
that Internet is capable of creating.

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if its users
cannot protect their privacy and the confidentiality of
transactions conducted on the network. Let us dedicate
ourselves to the proposition that cryptographic technology
sufficient to protect privacy from unauthorized disclosure
should be freely available, applicable and exportable.

Moreover, as authenticity lies at the heart of trust in
networked environments, let us dedicate ourselves to work
towards the development of authentication methods and
systems capable of supporting electronic commerce through
the Internet.

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if parents
and teachers cannot voluntarily create protected spaces for
our young people for whom the full range of Internet content
may be inappropriate. Let us dedicate ourselves to the
development of technologies and practices that offer this
protective flexibility to those who accept responsibility to
provide it.

The Internet is for everyone - but it won't be if we are not
responsible in its use and mindful of the rights of others
who share its wealth. Let us dedicate ourselves to the
responsible use of this new medium and to the proposition
that with the freedoms Internet enables comes a commensurate
responsibility to use these powerful enablers with care and
consideration. For those who choose to abuse these
privileges, let us dedicate ourselves to developing the
necessary tools to combat the abuse and punish the abuser.

I hope Internauts everywhere will join with the Internet
Society and like-minded organizations to achieve this easily
stated but hard to achieve goal. As we near the milestone of
the third millennium, what better theme could we possibly
ask for than making the Internet the medium of the new
millennium?

Internet IS for everyone - but it won't be unless WE make it
so.

3. Author's Addresses

Vint Cerf Chairman, Internet Society April 1999 Email:
vcerf@MCI.NET





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