Wampum

The end-to-end list is experiencing a sudden discussion, one brought about by the lack of discussion. What is preventing innovation? Restarted, where does wicked abuse of incumbent monopoly power lie? In the network, where those evil ISPs make HuffPo load slower, if at all, than CNN and Fox? In the middle-boxen, where track-the-employee and every-last-eyeball value-add "deep inspection" measures every mouse nibble? Or in the end host systems, where a benign "Major Company" wisely controls a network stack (and the memory protection model we all know and love as the home of virii, spam, n'bots)?

Now all the people who answered (a), its the wicked ISPs and would the FCC or Congress please pass a rule or a bill or something, can't read the following without also knowing the outcome of the research suggested is "no impact".

In the US and Europe at least, one Major Company that controls a network stack has been judged thoroughly and beyond appeal by the courts to have a legal monopoly, with the strong assertion that makes by definition about consequent market power. That *legal* position cannot be disputed.

It would take a stronger argument than a mere vague handwave by a computer scientist toward the word "competing interests" to convince most economists and lawyers that when such a company keeps its network drivers protected, proprietary, and engages in agreements with hardware vendors to "certify" their drivers and hardware, the playing field for competition enables easy implementation of anything in that dominant network stack.

Of course, computer scientists are welcome to their political opinions and dissent. But in science, dissent requires testable proof.

Thus, I propose that the next PlanetLab scale experiment on new system architectures be carried out, not with Linux, but with Windows Vista. And without any prior agreement with Microsoft that gives the researchers licenses and access to code and internal interface privileges that students in, say, Ecuador don't have.

Based on that test, we can ascertain whether the monopoly in legal fact has an impact on research freedom.