He's done it before, and at the Freedom to Connect conference, EFF Chairman Brad Templeton championed internet freedom by channeling the dark side.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 13, 2006]

We first noticed Brad Templeton's essays while building our Anti-Spam Directory for ISPs. His essay (now updated) on how autoresponders and challenge-response systems should work is the clearest and best we know of.

So who is he? Brad Templeton founded Clari.net in 1989. He is current Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is on the board of Bit Torrent, Inc., and is starting a project to revolutionize internet telephony and presence.

In summary, he is intelligent, articulate, and knowledgeable.

The EFF wants you
He attended Freedom to Connect to talk about the work of the EFF and to advocate for the principles of internet freedom and innovation that the EFF stands for.

Templeton believes that the great invention of the internet was the peering and interconnections agreements. It wasn't technology; it was the creation of a network that everyone could build a piece of that changed the world. In his essay on the subject, he writes that the real innovation was the idea that I can pay for my part of the net, and you can pay for yours.

The result was a network not designed to do anything, capable of everything. The first webcam, after all, was set up to keep track of a pot of coffee, a use that has little commercial application.

Templeton warned that the internet will change radically if every application has to pay its way. Innovation will suffer. "The bean-counter-free network allowed a thousand flowers to bloom. That's what's under attack today," he said.

The evil twin
Templeton followed his earnest speech with humor. In an intermission conversation with Martin Geddes of Telepocalypse, he told Geddes that he finds humor can be more effective than an earnest plea.

In the humorous portion of his presentation, Templeton channeled his "evil twin," an advocate for monopolies, as he did recently at an O'Reilly conference.

He started by praising the FCC. "The great thing about government is that it can be bought," he said. "It's even cheaper than standards committees. If you have the most regulators, you win. You have a choice of cable provider—all you have to do is move your house!"

He described CALEA as a great victory for the monopolies. "We got the FCC to set an 18 month deadline for compliance without saying what the requirements would be."

He added that the USF is great for monopolies because the tax money goes from the business in one state to the business in another state. "Big taxes are necessay," Templeton said. "Ignore people who are using hobby equipment to build rural telecoms like that Dave Hughes guy."

Getting big government to spend money is a key monopoly priority, and the current administration is complying. "We need these voice regulations because there could be two or three criminals using VoIP. Of course, the smart ones will be using encrypted Skype but we'll catch the stupid ones, and the creation of barriers to entry will be worth it."

The conference operates a Wi-Fi chat room that is projected onto a movie screen behind a speaker. One of the attendees agreed with Templeton and posted a story showing just how easy it is to get around the CALEA requirements: A Pretty Good Way to Foil the NSA.

ISP-Planet's evil twin adds: "we should try to enjoy these market restrictions. After all, we're paying for them."

— End