Jonathan Zittrain, in remarks prepared a few weeks ago, framed Internet protocol standards in a novel way. Specifically, he stated:
Second, it’s entirely fitting for a government to actively subsidize public goods like a common defense, a highway system, and, throughout the Internet’s evolution, the public interest development of standards and protocols to interlink otherwise-disparate systems. These subsidies for the development of Internet protocols, often expressed as grants to individual networking researchers at universities by such organizations as the National Science Foundation, were absolutely instrumental in the coalescence of Internet standards and the leasing of wholesale commercial networks on which to test them. (They also inspired some legislators to advertise their own foresight in having facilitated such strategic funding.) Alongside other basic science research support, this was perhaps some of the best bang for the buck that the American taxpayer has received in the history of the country. Government support in the tens of millions over a course of decades resulted in a flourishing of a networked economy measured in trillions.
Zittrain’s framing of this issue builds on some writing I’ve published around standards. In the executive summary of a report I wrote a few months ago, I stated that,
… the Government of Canada could more prominently engage with standards bodies to, at least in part, guarantee that such standards have security principles baked in and enabled by default; such efforts could include allocating tax relief to corporations, as well as funding to non-governmental organizations or charities, so that Canadians and Canadian interests are more deeply embedded in standards development processes.
To date I haven’t heard of this position being adopted by the Government of Canada, or even debated in public. However, framing this as a new kind of roadway could be the kind of rhetorical framing that would help it gain traction.
Excited Pixels 