Last month I submitted two proposals to the National Cyber Leap Year call for input from the U.S. Networking Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program. I submitted two ideas, the International Bureau of Internet Statistics, and Cooperative Measurement and Modeling of Open Networked Systems (COMMONS, a two-year old idea). The Bureau of Internet Statistics still strikes some as batty, but over the holidays I caught up on some panicky OECD state-of-malware-landscape papers on how uninformed we are and how little data we have, while the only concrete recommendation in the “ITU’s study on the financial aspects of network security: malware and spam” report was

Although the financial aspects of malware and spam are increasingly documented, serious gaps and inconsistencies exist in the available information. This sketchy information base also complicates finding meaningful and effective responses. For this reason, more systematic efforts to gather more reliable information would be highly desirable.

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(gathered earlier this year upon a student’s request)

1. Abatte, Janet. Inventing the Internet. 2000.
2. Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks. 2006.
3. Benkler, Yochai. Freedom in the COMMONS: Towards a Political Economy of Information., Duke Law Journal. 2003.
4. Brin, David. Transparent Society. 1999.

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[Originally written as a series of blog entries, this document was later converted to a booklet/pamphlet, see  “Top Ten Things Lawyers Should Know About the Internet“]

#10: Moreover, even in the dim light of the underattended interdisciplinary research into the network, the available data implies clear directions for solutions, all of which cross policy-technology boundaries.

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#9: The news is not all bad: there is a reason everyone wants to be connected to all the world’s knowledge — as well as each other — besides its status as the most powerful complex system ever created by man. The Internet’s practical promise for individual freedom, democratic engagement, and economic empowerment, is also unparalleled. This promise is sufficient inspiration for an open, technically literate conversation about how to invest in technologies and policies to support articulated social objectives.

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#8: The opaqueness of the infrastructure to empirical analysis has generated many problematic responses from rigidly circumscribed communities earnestly trying to get their jobs done.

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#7: The traditional mode of getting data from public infrastructures to inform policymaking — regulating its collection — is a quixotic path, since the government regulatory agencies have as much reason to be reluctant as providers regarding disclosure of how the Internet is engineered, used, and financed.

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#6: While the looming problems of the Internet indicate the need for a closer objective look, a growing number of segments of society have network measurement access to, and use, private network information on individuals for purposes we might not approve of if we knew how the data was being used.

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#5: Thus the research community is in the absurd situation of not being able to do the most basic network research even on the networks established explicily to support academic network research.

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#4: The data dearth is not a new problem in the field; many public and private sector efforts have tried and failed to solve it.

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#3: Despite the methodological limitations of Internet science today, the few data points available suggest a dire picture:

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