Until we scrap the idea that an IP address is any more than a temporary “care-of” address for routing, we can’t use networks fully, we can’t share our networks, we can’t cross-connect them, and we can’t give access to this new air freely. I should be able to share access to my networks without fear of a 2AM jack-booting. Instead we have so much capacity going unused out of perfectly rational fears of being the target of irrational liability. It doesn’t help that we jump to blame each other and feel superior (“he should have known better than to leave his wireless open”…). People think they are being savvy by locking everything down. What we’re actually doing is painting everyone into a one-to-one addressing system that only benefits systems and industries that require one-to-one compliance, but that is not an Internet.
We have enough idle wireless coverage to make the cellular industry irrelevant. (We must like to pay twice.)
Judges need to articulate this non-equivalence much more strongly, outside of just the domain of copyright, if we want the Internet (and not just cable companies) to proliferate, and for us to realize it’s largely-latent benefits.
