(Re-)Democratising the Internet

The Challenges of Building Digital Network Infrastructure as Commons

People (like me) sometimes respond to the corporatisation of the internet with arguments for rebuilding it as a democratic commons. But to quote Ben Tarnoff from an interview on the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast;

"We do have to apply different strategies of deprivatisation to different layers of the internet... it's not a monolithic project, just as the privatisation of the internet was not a monolithic project."

A fully free network would be a commons only in a very abstract sense, in the same way that the planet is a commons. In the sense that Elinor Ostrom uses the word “commons” (a shared resource with an inclusive governance structure), a free network would actually be a multitude of commons, each operating at one or more network layers.

To illustrate, here are some commons (existing and potential) operating at different layers, taken from a comment I posted back in 2017 to the Commons Transition group on Loomio.

Device: the hardware and software of the computers used to access networks

• free digital (or “open source”) hardware design projects,where the design patterns for computer hardware are released under a license allowing it to be freely used, modified, and re-distributed

• customer-owned and/or worker-owned hardware manufacture and distribution cooperatives

• projects developing and maintaining Free Code software that runs on end user devices, eg most of the software in GNU/Linux and Android distributions, but also much of Apple’s OS too, including MacOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS

Standards: defining how computers will interact productively across networks

• formal, general purpose standards bodies, eg IETF, W3C, IEEE, ISO, OASIS

• formal bodies for specific standards, eg XMPP Foundation, Matrix Foundation

• informal standards incubators, eg W3C Community Groups, ValueFlows, Indie.Web, Fediverse Enhancement Proposals, Nostr Implementation Possibilities

Connections: cables, wireless access points, and routers, allowing data to flow from computer to computer across the networks

• community mesh network; P2P wireless between PCs or mobiles

• community access wireless networks; collectively-owned wireless tower

• open wireless; voluntary sharing of private wireless networks by customers with uncapped upstream internet connections

• customer-owned and/or worker-owned ISP cooperatives; collectively-owned cable and router infrastructure, at any scale from neighbourhood to country to world

Hosting: servers providing access to databases over the networks

• projects developing and distributing Free Code software that runs services, whether on end user computers or dedicated server hardware, eg the software used on fediverse servers

• P2P networks, eg BitTorrent clients, trackers, and search engines, ScuttleButt, Holochain, Nostr, or blockchains.

• home or office servers; consumer grade PCs running Free Code server packages, or combinations of them, eg FreedoxBox, LibreServer, YunoHost

• customer-owned and/or worker-owned hosting cooperatives, and not-for-profit community-hosting; hosting Free Code server packages as a service to the people using them

• server colocation (or “colos”), data hubs run collectively by a group of server operators who provide and maintain their own hardware, eg RiseUp run Seattle Community Colocation Project to host other not-for-profit groups alongside their own servers, and MayFirst/ PeopleLink have their servers in a colo

• customer-owned and/or worker-owned ISP cooperatives; collectively-owned datacentres leasing the use of “bare metal” servers, virtual servers, or use of shared servers

My point in laying all this out is that we don’t need to start from scratch to democratise the net, and certainly not from the top down. Many projects are already underway, and can already be used, joined, supported, cross-promoted, and partnered with.

Federating these existing projects into more ambitious new meta-projects adds a ’social coordination’ layer to the stack. Various organisations have attempted to work at this layer, but there are no guarantees of success at this either. The ground behind is littered with the corpses of ambitious pioneers like the Free Network Foundation and the Federated Networks Association, and the various failed attempts at an open hardware organisation . But there are also many successful social layer projects, from early pioneers like the Free Software Foundation/ GNU Project and Open Source Initiative, to more recent organisations like the P2P Foundation, Open Source Hardware Association, Collaborative Technology Alliance, Social Web Foundation and CoTech (UK).

It’s hard to tell what a fully democratised internet might look like, but there’s only one way to find out. First, flesh out our visions of how it could work, as Ben Tarnoff does in his 2022 book Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future, for example. Then set up as many projects as possible to test ways of running each layer of the net democratically, and join up the sucessful ones at every opportunity.

Images:

"Rolling Rebellion Sparks in Seattle to Defend Internet & Stop the TPP" by Backbone Campaign, licensed CC BY 2.0.

"Day 17 Occupy Wall Street October 3 2011 Shankbone 12" by david_shankbone, licensed CC BY 2.0.