Re: [arch-d] New Version Notification for draft-nottingham-avoiding-internet-centralization-01.txt

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

Hi Watson,

> On 11 Jan 2022, at 4:38 pm, Watson Ladd <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 1:18 AM Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello everyone,
>> 
>> Happy New Year!
>> 
>> This is a bit more polished, thanks to some holiday time, some quarantine time, and feedback received.
>> 
>> Responses and suggestions still most welcome.
> 
> I think this is a very useful document, I do have a few small quibbles.
> "Similarly, the need for coordination in the Web's trust model brings
> centralization risk, because a Certificate Authority (CA) can control
> communication between the Web sites that they sign certificates for
> and users whose browsers trust the CA's root certificates."
> 
> This isn't quite the case; a CA can sign for any website (ignoring
> CAA, etc.) and then intercept. However techniques like CT make it much
> more visible.

Yes - I'll attempt to add some nuance here. Tracked at:
  https://github.com/mnot/avoiding-internet-centralization/issues/20


> ISP choice varies heavily by region: it's a classic natural monopoly
> as the costs of building out a network exceed the service provision
> massively. For applications I think it's worth saying something about
> the way capturing value and improvements are related. It is because a
> centralized protocol can have value capture that the central
> participant is motivated to invest in it. For a decentralized protocol
> new application improvements can depend on other participants, making
> it harder to realize the value.

For me, this gets back to Moxie's observations. Beyond noting the tradeoff here, is there something we can say about how to address it, beyond "build standards that actually meet people's needs" (which 6.4 brushes against)?


> The other point I would make is
> network effects are related to switching costs: if it is easy to
> switch to another network or use both, then the value of having
> everyone on the network is less than if it is inherently difficult to
> switch. In that regards the Internet can create a situation  where
> "the competition is a click away" and a seemingly unassailable
> advantage vanishes overnight.

Yes - see <https://github.com/mnot/avoiding-internet-centralization/issues/14>. 


Thanks for the feedback!

--
Mark Nottingham   https://www.mnot.net/