> I too would like to see more of the internet as public infrastructure, but your second paragraph implies you'd be against regulation?
Yes, I believe we lost the public nature of the internet by adopting regulation like the DMCA.
> How would any third-party client win the inevitable arms race this would initiate and what would stop your system from re-centralizing?
Attrition. Facebook would have to realize at some point that they can't stop their client from being reversed and can't prevent clones from popping up. Right now, they can stop that, but they stop it with laws not with technology. Without that protection, Facebook could never keep up with the whole internet collectively reverse engineering their apps out in the open. Also FB engineers would know that being on the DRM team is a waste of time and nobody would want to do the work.
> Also how would any infrastructure become 'public' when it can't marshall the public interest or allocate resources via legislation?
As another commenter pointed out, I shouldn't have used the term "public infrastructure" when referring to the internet, because it's largely privately owned and not regulated as a public utility, which is true.
What I mean is that if you're going to open up a public web server and publish a free app in an app store, I should be able to interact with your servers however that app does it without committing a crime. And I should be able to publish my own app that interacts with your servers too, without your claim to intellectual property standing in the way.
I think this would cause companies like Twitter and Facebook to lose their entire market, but the core of the service would be maintained by the community of people interested in the service.
So for example, if there were 10 Twitter clients allowed to exist and be above-board companies, and they captured 80% of the Twitter client market share, then there could be a serious push to invent or adopt a new protocol to serve their users and de-federate Twitter themselves if they don't want to go along with the protocol.
I think that's a really solvable technical problem and all the privacy activists would have great reason to pick up an editor and join the fight. But as it is now, regulation has made that type of activity illegal, because it would infringe on Twitter's rights.
Yes, I believe we lost the public nature of the internet by adopting regulation like the DMCA.
> How would any third-party client win the inevitable arms race this would initiate and what would stop your system from re-centralizing?
Attrition. Facebook would have to realize at some point that they can't stop their client from being reversed and can't prevent clones from popping up. Right now, they can stop that, but they stop it with laws not with technology. Without that protection, Facebook could never keep up with the whole internet collectively reverse engineering their apps out in the open. Also FB engineers would know that being on the DRM team is a waste of time and nobody would want to do the work.
> Also how would any infrastructure become 'public' when it can't marshall the public interest or allocate resources via legislation?
As another commenter pointed out, I shouldn't have used the term "public infrastructure" when referring to the internet, because it's largely privately owned and not regulated as a public utility, which is true.
What I mean is that if you're going to open up a public web server and publish a free app in an app store, I should be able to interact with your servers however that app does it without committing a crime. And I should be able to publish my own app that interacts with your servers too, without your claim to intellectual property standing in the way.
I think this would cause companies like Twitter and Facebook to lose their entire market, but the core of the service would be maintained by the community of people interested in the service.
So for example, if there were 10 Twitter clients allowed to exist and be above-board companies, and they captured 80% of the Twitter client market share, then there could be a serious push to invent or adopt a new protocol to serve their users and de-federate Twitter themselves if they don't want to go along with the protocol.
I think that's a really solvable technical problem and all the privacy activists would have great reason to pick up an editor and join the fight. But as it is now, regulation has made that type of activity illegal, because it would infringe on Twitter's rights.