The Berkman Center now has a page for its podcasts. Yay! (Thank you, Danny Silverman.)

Here’s the podcast of Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi‘s 45 minute discussion at the Center. Dr. E is AT&T’s CTO. Everyone in the discussion believes passionately that the Net needs to be free and open. But the disagreement about what those values mean and how to instantiate them in bits, silicon and policy was stark and deep. (And polite.)

The discussion centered on whether we need to change the Internet’s architecture to solve some of its problems. Do you have to make it intelligent by putting sensors into it to prevent viruses from spreading? Do businesses need the AT&T and Intel reference chip that will shut down a computer rather than run a downloaded malware program that has not been certified? Would this become a tool by which policy makers could decide that, say, a P2P client is malware because it could be used to circumvent DRM or circumvent a totalitarian government’s desire to filter all conversation? Are open wifi hotspots theft? (See John Palfrey’s account of the discussion for a good, fair overview.)

The topic of the discussion is central to the fate of the Internet. There were surprising moments. I think it’s worth a listen. [Tags: HosseinEslambolchi berkman internet]

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