Together, we can and will fix the Internet.
When we turn our attention to the multitude of problems that afflict the world's information infrastructure, we tend to overlook how remarkably quickly the Internet came into our world and changed our lives. As recently as the early 1990's the Web didn't exist, commercial activity was not allowed, and the Net's users were a collegial group of academics and researchers who tended to know each other. It was in that cozy environment that the Internet's structure and protocols were created. No wonder we have problems.
The
Internet Is Broken. 
In its December/January 2006 cover story, The
Internet Is Broken, by MIT's David D. Clark, MIT
Technology Review warns: "The Net's basic flaws cost firms
billions, impede innovation, and threaten national security. It's time
for a clean-slate approach."
Efforts such as Stanford University's Clean
Slate Initiative
have set out to reinvent the Internet, re-engineering the Information
Highway so that it behaves like something other than an outdoor public
transport facility.
We agree that a clean-slate approach is needed. Further, we
believe that the new approach needs to be differentiated from the old
by the use of duly constituted public authority to add authenticity to
the Internet environment in precisely the same way that city hall's
birth certificates and building permits add authenticity to the
physical world, enabling bounded spaces that are
set apart from the highway.
