The Internet Is Closing

Today the soaring popularity and use of the Internet and PC have changed the equation. We wouldn't want those cars, fridges or TiVos to be altered by unknown outsiders at the touch of a button, and yet this remains the prevailing way that we load new software on our PCs. That software is often rogue, harvesting computing cycles and bandwidth from a PC in order to attack others, stealing personal data or simply frying the PC. Those burned by these worsening phenomena will opt for security over flexibility.

One model for security can be drawn from our familiar appliances, which are sealed when they leave the factory. No one but a true geek could hack a car or a fridge—or would want to. We've seen glimpses of this sealed-in-the-factory nature in platforms such as iPods, most videogame consoles, e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle and cable-company set-top boxes. Steve Jobs at first locked down the iPhone in this way-a product upon which he is betting the future of Apple. In a U-turn from the values of his original Apple II, Jobs intended for Apple to completely program and control the phone: "The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn't work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers."

Of course, the Internet or PC would have to be in truly bad shape for us to abandon them for such totally closed platforms; there are too many pluses to being able to do things that platform manufacturers don't want or haven't thought of. But there's another model for lockdown that's more subtle. This new model exploits the Internet's near ubiquitous connectivity to let vendors change and monitor their technologies after they've left the factory. These technologies do let geeky outsiders build upon them, but in a highly controlled and contingent way. A great example is the iPhone 2.0, which allows a thriving market for software written by outsiders—so long as it is approved by and funneled through Apple.

Another is Web 2.0 software-as-service ventures like the Facebook platform and Google Apps, where software is written to run out in the Internet "cloud," on the vendor's service. There, an application popular one day can be banished the next. A Scrabble-like program called Scrabulous was wildly popular on Facebook—until the makers of Scrabble complained. Facebook was pressured to remove the app, even though the case for rights infringement was uncertain. Among iPhone software developers there are tales of applications that are approved one day and vanish the next, without any explanation. Until recently, Apple told its developers that publicizing the death of an app would be seen as a breach of a non-disclosure agreement-threatening a complaining developer with complete exclusion from the platform.

Technologies like the Internet and the PC are civic in the sense that they depend on support and innovative outsiders to survive and grow. When civic technologies become popular enough to subvert, they need civic defense systems. I'm part of a consortium developing free software that does just that. It helps PC users communicate with each other to defend themselves against rogue programs; before running new software, people can check to see if other members of the herd have run it, and how it worked out. The idea is to draft a critical mass of users to support the common protocols of the Internet, so that we don't yet have to give up and call in the police or the Pinkertons—or Steve Jobs.

Zittrain is a professor at Harvard Law School and a founder of its Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is author of "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It".

© 2008