Carl Malamud

“ We can change the deep flaws in our financial system which focuses on ever-increasing concentration of resources in the hands of a few instead of a common good. We can revolutionize how we provide health care, transportation, food, and shelter. We can revolutionize how we educate our children and ourselves. We can revolutionize how our governments work. We can begin caring for our planet. Democratizing information can change the world. Decolonizing knowledge can change the world. ”

“ Exploring the Internet really is a technical travelogue, a narrative description of the people and networks I encountered during my travels. In my visits, I saw something the ITU and the rest of the standards bureaucracy seem to have missed. The Internet is here and it is not an academic toy. ”

“ Exploring the Internet is the result of this odyssey. This book demonstrates what many of us have long felt: the worldwide network is here. Interoperability is not some imaginary goal at vendor briefings, but a concrete part of networks all over the world.
This book is more than just a series of case studies—it is truly a technical travelogue. As we read about the worldwide spread of the Internet, we get to appreciate its diversity and its usefulness to millions. This is not some experimental research environment, some academic toy, it is a real tool used by real people. ”

“ Transparency is a slippery word; the kind of word that, like reform, sounds good and so ends up getting attached to any random political thing that someone wants to promote. But just as it's silly to talk about whether "reform" is useful (it depends on the reform) , talking about transparency in general won't get us very far. Everything from holding public hearings to requiring police to videotape interrogations can be called "transparency"—there's not much that's useful to say about such a large category. ”

“ A poll tax, which preconditions access to the polls on access to money, is wrong because it denies equal protection under the law. I put it to you that just as a poll tax is wrong, preconditioning access to primary legal materials on having a credit card is just as wrong, and it violates our rights to equal protection under the law. ”

“ As a sanity check, I posted a note on the Internet asking if anybody else thought that the inaccessibility of international standards was hindering technical progress. This hit a nerve. In fact, the resulting firestorm surprised even survivors of historically notable dialogues such as "should pornography be distributed on the net?"
The Internet has a wide community of users, but a convenient taxonomy splits them into flamers and firefighters. Flaming is easy to explain. You send a message and bingo, you've made 1,000 people all hit the delete key in their mail readers. ”

“ If you believe, like Tony and I fervently did, that the ITU does valuable work, then the standards are an essential public good. Standards are laws and laws must be known to be observed.
Failing to make the standards widely available was, in the long run, going to make the work of the ITU irrelevant. Other standards-making bodies were promulgating standards, and despite its official United Nations treaty status, the ITU had to compete with other groups for the attention of implementors and users. ”

“ The principle that access to the law must be unfettered is a basic foundation of our system of justice. The U.S. constitution says that "equal protection under the law" may not be denied. Equal protection means that your basic rights cannot be arbitrarily denied because you are poor, are of a certain religion or race, or because somebody disagrees with your political views. ”

“ The Internet is a miracle that has changed the world, but it has so much more potential, and we see far too many people who are technical like us spending their days working on a new app or the pursuit of more ad clicks.
So much of the world of business focused on gaining private advantages through arbitrage and monopoly as the world becomes ever more unequal. We hope more of our colleagues will take the time to do public work and to be inspired by the ideas of Gandhi to help make our world a better place, a world focused on public good not just on private gain. ”

“ In three trips around the world, I talked to people on the front lines: people who make computers, people who create networks, and people who use them. To explain to the bureaucracies facts that are painfully obvious to the rest of us, I had to leave the confines of meeting rooms and fancy hotels and go into the research laboratories, network operating centers, and bars and restaurants where real work happens. ”

“ While this loose-knit band of anarchists that were defining an Internet based on open standards were free to ignore most of the nonsense coming out of the "standards professionals" and their "Open Systems Interconnection" effort—there was one thing we couldn't ignore and that was the telephone network on which we built our unreliable, best-effort datagram service. ”

“ Tony was a senior lawyer for a powerful United Nations group that made lots of money selling these documents. While Tony certainly sympathized with my goals, I wasn't quite sure how he was going to react to this form of standards terrorism. Putting a lawyer on notice that you plan to relabel his corporate assets with a $0 price tag is kind of like putting Honda stickers on the motorcycles parked outside a Harley bar. ”

“ When we say "Code" we mean more than the source code that our computers run on or the protocols that define the Internet. By Code we mean any rulebook, be it the governing protocols for the Internet or the laws and regulations that are the operating systems of our democracies. Likewise, swaraj is the principle of self-rule, that a government is owned by the people and ruled by our common will. ”

“ My only hope was that I might be able to use this data to justify an increase in my consulting rates.
As I was going to sleep, I tried to figure out how bad a case of bureausclerosis one would have to have to in order to turn a 20 day (40 to make it perfect) conversion effort into 10 years of agony. Over the next few months, as I visited Geneva again and saw the experiment run into the famed international bureaucracy, I was to learn how it could easily take 10 years, or, more likely, never get done at all. ”

“ The deal was that the ITU would give me a copy of the standards in the antiquated online format they used for text processing and that I would convert the standards into something the rest of us could deal with and publish the standards on the global Internet. Instead of charging obscene amounts of money for this information, the standards would be available to anybody at no charge. Organizations, rhetoric notwithstanding, don't work for such lofty goals as the dissemination of knowledge. ”

“ Imagine a team of people coming together to tackle some issue they care about—food safety, say. You can have technologists poring through safety records, investigative reporters making phone calls and sneaking into buildings, lawyers subpoenaing documents and filing lawsuits, political organizers building support for the project and coordinating volunteers, members of Congress pushing for hearings on your issues and passing laws to address the problems you uncover, and, of course, bloggers and writers to tell your stories as they unfold. ”

“ Turning primary legal materials from public property into private parcels violates more than equal protection, it makes due process under the law impossible, when rich lawyers can do more research than poor lawyers. ”

“ You can't publish a newspaper and then unpublish it. Once you give something away, it stays given away.
The lack of valid copyright protection is one argument for making standards more widely available, but there is a much more important one. ”

“ Transparency can be a powerful thing, but not in isolation. So, let's stop passing the buck by saying our job is just to get the data out there and it's other people's job to figure out how to use it. Let's decide that our job is to fight for good in the world. ”

“ Build up a user base, and you have much more leverage than if you're just blowing smoke.
Perhaps we should have used our "first-mover advantage" to—as they said in the .com days—"monetize the eyeballs." But, I didn't want to be the face of the SEC, I wanted the SEC to do their job, which was to make the EDGAR database available to the public, on the Internet, for free, and in an at least moderately clueful manner. ”

“ One of the original marketing managers for the French Minitel system, he is active in efforts to spread this underrated technology into the U.S.
When you get a telephone, France Telecom gives you the choice of a phonebook or a computer terminal. As a result, over 3 million people have, free of charge, one of the squat brown Minitel terminals in their home. Of these 3 million terminals, France Telecom estimates 80 percent are actually used. Even if the number is inflated, this was still, until very recently, the largest single network in the world. ”

“ The pipeline of leak to investigation to revelation to report to reform has broken down. Technologists can't depend on journalists to use their stuff; journalists can't depend on political activists to fix the problems they uncover. Change doesn't come from thousands of people, all going their separate ways. Change requires bringing people together to work on a common goal. That's hard for technologists to do by themselves. ”

“ Here is my seventh rule for radicals, which is to get standing. One can criticize government all one wants, and they'll often ignore you. But, if there is something clearly wrong and against the law and you can document that malfeasance and wrongdoing, they have to talk to you. If you have standing, you can insist.
—Bureaucracy No 6—
There is a related rule, and that is rule 8, which is to try to get the bureaucrats to threaten you. Remember how the law has a special place when it comes to copyright? ”

“ I gently tried to make the point that there were positive aspects to this project that should not be overlooked, such as increasing the public awareness of the vital work that groups like ISO were undertaking by making primary resource documents available to a wider audience.
Once again, my diplomatic efforts seemed less than successful. "People don't need to read the standards," Dr. Zakharov snapped. Indeed, he felt that ISO standards were basically unreadable and that normal people shouldn't even bother to try. ”

“ For agencies in the information business, such as the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and many others, the dual challenges of dealing with legacy formats and how to face a digital future have been overwhelming. In many cases, the agencies have turned to what they call public-private partnerships, so-called "no cost to the government" deals that have proven to be especially troublesome. ”

“ First, computers and networks are what we do. In our world, we all do what we can. But our real answer is that access to knowledge is a building block, democratizing information is a means to an end, a foundation on which all can build. ”

“ A service like Minitel does no good if there is no access path to it. Likewise, an X.25 network is a road to nowhere without useful services on it.
Minitel was a case study in providing useful information services. By the beginning of 1990, Minitel had over 12,000 service providers. Even intra-company transactions, incuding banking, insurance, and order processing, occurred on the network. The directory service alone received well over 10 million calls per day and train reservations received over 1.5 million calls per day. ”

“ Having presented to you my credentials as a pundit, I would like to talk to you today about some bureaucracies I've had occasion to encounter, and some lessons I have learned about how citizens—citizens with no official portfolio or status—"mere" citizens if you will—how citizens can change the way government works.
I hope these tales are more than mere war stories, I hope to leave you today with some rules for radicals, 10 rules to apply to governing institutions as we attempt to change their behavior. ”

“ So far we've seen baby steps—people copying what they see elsewhere and trying to apply it to politics. Wikis seem to work well, so you build a political wiki. Everyone loves social networks, so you build a political social network. But these tools worked in their original setting because they were trying to solve particular problems, not because they're magic. To make progress in politics, we need to think best about how to solve its problems, not simply copy technologies that have worked in other fields.
Data analysis can be part of it, but it's part of a bigger picture. ”

“ So, we hired a lawyer and put together a draft declaratory relief request and posted it on the net.
The thing about a state sending you a takedown notice for putting the law on the Internet is that this is not one of the subtle legal issues that you have to carefully explain to people. Everybody gets this—you can walk into any bar and explain what's going on and everybody will instantly get the issue and say "that's really stupid."
And that's my rule 9 for radicals—look for over-reaching, something that is clearly nuts. ”

“ I'm all in favor of promoting book sales, but there is still no substitute for the original documents. A programmer working on an implementation should be required to RTFM ("Read the F***ing Manual" or, in the staid company of standards potatoes, "Read the FTAM Manual") . There is no excuse for second-hand knowledge of something as vital as international standards. ”

“ Universal access to knowledge is a human right, but we must do more than just consume knowledge, we must all contribute to the common pool. We are both technical people. We have worked in telecommunications and computers all our life. ”

“ Video is really just a hobby for me, something I do in my spare time. I run a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit and we get our money in the form of grants from foundations such as the Omidyar Network and corporations such as Google and Justia. We also get contributions from private foundations such as the Elbaz, Kapor, and O'Reilly foundations.
Foundations aren't going to give you much money if your mission statement is "we upload government videotapes to YouTube." ”

“ We own our governments in a democracy, and unless we engage in public work, unless we educate ourselves and our rulers, we will cede our position as trustees of our world.
We have included a large number of photographs in this book. This book is a mashup. This is because we are inspired by the photographs, we love looking at the old photos contained in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi and in the archives of the Ministry of Information. All knowledge builds on what is already there, and we have built this book on material that is on the net for free access by all. ”

“ You see, the Courts, under strong congressional pressure to do something about public access, had just launched a trial program, putting one terminal in each of 17 libraries around the country. In the FAQ for the PACER recycling site, I encouraged volunteers to join the so-called Thumb Drive Corps and download docs from the public access libraries and upload them to the PACER recycling site.
Aaron Swartz, whom many of you may know as the editor of the RSS spec and a prolific contributor to the Internet, called up and said he'd like to join the Thumb Drive Corps. ”

“ They would do what it takes to accomplish their goals, not be hamstrung by arbitrary divisions between "technology" and "journalism" and "politics."
Right now, technologists insist that they're building neutral platforms for anyone to find data on any issue. Journalists insist that they're objective observers of the facts. And political types assume they already know the answers and don't need to investigate further questions. They're each in their own silo, unable to see the bigger picture.
I certainly was. I care passionately about these issues—I don't want politicians to be corrupt ”

“ Rule 4 is that when you achieve your objective, don't be afraid to turn on a dime and be nice. You can bang the table and be a total pain in the ass, but there comes a time to be helpful, courteous, and friendly.
—Bureaucracy No 3—
For the next bureaucracy, let's fast-forward this Wayback Machine to late 2006 and early 2007—when Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, when C-SPAN started allowing you to use their video of congress on your blog, the year Netflix started streaming videos—the year "you" were named Time Man of the Year. This is when video came to the Internet. ”

“ They're given the power to investigate who's breaking the law and the authority to punish them. Transparency, on the other hand, simply shifts the work from the government to the average citizen, who has neither the time nor the ability to investigate these questions in any detail, let alone do anything about it. It's a farce: a way for Congress to look like it has done something on some pressing issue without actually endangering its corporate sponsors.
Interpreting Databases for the Public
Here's where the technologists step in. "Something is too hard for people?" they hear. ”

“ In 1993, I had graduated from print to the wonderful world of multimedia, which meant mostly 8-bit GIF files. The blinky tag had not even been invented yet.
Most of us running network ops were using FTP, email, and perhaps gopher and Archie. With those tools, I was running an Internet radio station called Internet Talk Radio. The flagship program was Geek of the Week, which most people retrieved by launching an overnight FTP job and then—assuming the sound card was properly installed—listened to the sound file on their workstations. ”

“ In general, you should be skeptical whenever someone tries to sell you on something like "reform" or "transparency." In general, you should be skeptical. But in particular, reactionary political movements have long had a history of cloaking themselves in nice words. Take the Good Government (goo-goo) movement early in the twentieth century. ”

“ That money doesn't come from the sky. The question isn't whether some transparency is better than none; it's whether transparency is really the best way to spend these resources, whether they would have a bigger impact if spent someplace else.
I tend to think they would. All this money has been spent with the goal of getting a straight answer, not of doing anything about it. Without enforcement power, the most readable database in the world won't accomplish much—even if it's perfectly accurate. So people go online and see that all cars are dangerous and that all politicians are corrupt. ”

“ Without an open rulebook, the Internet we have today would have been very different. We believe all our infrastructures should be based on open and transparent rules, ones that allow anybody to understand how the system works and how to make it better. ”

“ You've done nothing to solve the real problem; you've only made it seem more hopeless: all politicians are corrupt, all cars are dangerous. What can you do?
An Alternative
What's ironic is that the Internet does provide something you can do. It has made it vastly easier, easier than ever before, to form groups with people and work together on common tasks. And it's through people coming together—not websites analyzing data—that real political progress can be made. ”

“ Such a principle is a core principle of democracy, it is what we mean by democratizing information, removing barriers to entry.
We believe that in a society with true code swaraj, there is room to strive even further, to achieve aspirational goals such as universal access to all human knowledge. The Internet has taught us that an open system can grow beyond our wildest dreams. ”

“ Now inquiring citizens can find out who's funding their politicians and how dangerous their cars are just by going online.
The wonks love this. Still stinging from recent bouts of deregulation and antigovernment zealotry, many are now skeptical about government. "We can't trust the regulators," they say. "We need to be able to investigate the data for ourselves." Technology seems to provide the perfect solution. Just put it all online—people can go through the data while trusting no one. ”