A time for choosing

As the Internet becomes more important, the claims on it increase. Those claims cannot all be met. Now is the time for choosing. The Internet was built by academics, researchers, and hackers-meaning that it embodies the liberal cum libertarian cultural interpretation of "American values," namely that it is open, nonhierarchial, self-organizing, and leaves essentially no opportunities for governance beyond protocol definition. Anywhere the Internet appears, it brings those values with it (treating censorship as a routing failure, say). Other cultures, other governments, know that these are America\´s strengths and that we are dependent upon them, hence as they adopt the Internet they become dependent on those strengths and thus on our values. A greater challenge to sovereignty does not exist.End-to-end is the digital manifestation of the right of association and, in any case, is what enabled the Internet to become relevant in the first place.