to the Web to the public. At first he wanted to release the protocol under the
GPL, or General Public License (the "GNU General Public License,"
which we will see much more of in Chapter 4). But when negotiations over
that bogged down, he convinced CERN simply to release the rights into the
public domain. Anyone had the right to take and use the protocols of the
WWW and build anything upon them that they wanted.[3-57]

The birth of the Web is an example of the innovation that the end-to-end
architecture of the original Internet enabled. Though no one quite got it --
this the most dramatic aspect of the Internet's power -- a few people were
able to develop and deploy the protocols of the World Wide Web. They
could deploy it because they didn't need to convince the owners of the net-
work that this was a good idea or the owners of computer operating systems
that this was a good idea. As Berners-Lee put it, "I had designed the Web so
there should be no centralized place where someone would have to 'regis-
ter' a new server, or get approval of its contents."[3-58] It would be a "good idea"
if people used it, and people were free to use it because the Internet's design
made it free.

///\\\

Thus two networks -- the network built by AT&T and the network we call
the Internet -- create two different environments for innovation. One net-
work centralizes creativity; the other decentralizes it. One network is built
to keep control of innovation; the other constitutionally renounces the right
to control. One network closes itself except where permission is granted; the
other dedicates itself to a commons.

How did we get from the one to the other? What moved the world gov-
erning our telecommunications system from the centralized to the decen-
tralized?

This is one of the great forgotten stories of the Internet's birth. Everyone
knows that the government funded the research that led to the protocols
that govern the Internet.[3-59] It is part of the Internet's lore that it was the gov-
ernment that pushed network designers to design machines that could talk
to each other.[3-60] The government in general, and the Defense Department
in particular, had grown tired of spending millions for "autistic computing
machines."[3-61] It therefore wanted some system for linking the systems.

Yet we are practically trained to ignore another form of governmental in-
tervention that also made the Internet possible. This is the regulation that
assured that the platform upon which the Internet was built would not turn
against it.

[[44]]

p043 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p044w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p045

v?