ties of deep packet inspection, used for everything from security concerns to managing traffic flow. 5

NDN will also change how governments assert regional jurisdiction on the Internet. Today, IP addresses are often used to target law enforcement action. 15 Countermeasures to such targeting in IP include content encryption, encapsulation, and use of third-party resources such as botnets. NDN further disassociates communication from location, as demonstrated by the Io T scenario, which allows communication between devices without any reference to physical geography. This disassociation complicates the identification and geolocation of suspicious activity based on network data. By complicating the use of network data for identification and geolocation, NDN may encourage law enforcement methods that are more effective, such as following financial trails rather than Internet traffic.

Digital rights management. Law en-
forcement personnel are not the only
stakeholders that rely on IP address
geolocation capabilities. Sports fran-
chises use them to restrict subscribers
in local markets from watching games
online. Gambling operations restrict
participation from countries in which
such operations are illegal. Search re-
sults are tailored to locations. Howev-
er, one level of indirection, such as Vir-
tual Private Networks (VPNs), can often
circumvent IP-address-based control.
In NDN, stakeholders might need to
rely on application-layer identity and
location information to enforce such
content restrictions. Although Inter-
ests can come from anywhere, stake-
holders could build systems of encryp-
tion and key distribution based on
location-verified subscribers.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)
typically involves controlling distri-
bution of content, and controlling
whether consumers can redistrib-
ute that content. NDN supports the
first kind of DRM well, but makes
republishing easier than it is with
IP. As in the IP Internet, copyright
holders can distribute verified, en-
crypted media, and consumers can
access the content with the proper
key. However, widespread encryp-
tion challenges the benefits of in-
network caching, reducing economic
incentives to provide such caching. 2
Reliance on encryption for copyright
enforcement also hinders legitimate
reuses of content, such as fair use in
educational contexts, critique, and
parody. Content producers might en-
able fair use by giving copies of keys
to libraries, or providing portions of
the content in the clear for scholar-
ship, critique, parody, or other pro-
tected fair uses. But once consumers
have received and decrypted verified
content, they may distribute unau-
thorized versions in the clear, a task
made easier by NDN.

NDN’s in-network storage and caching means that many segments of both licensed (presumably encrypted) and unlicensed (presumably decrypted) media could reside on routers and repos. A world where countless copies proliferate across the Internet challenges assumptions embedded in copyright law, as well as the current mechanisms of copyright enforcement, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice. 19 On the IP Internet, videos are commonly hosted by major providers such as YouTube or Hulu, which

Social and policy impacts of NDN for content producers, consumers, regulators, and network operators.

Free speech Privacy Control of content Network neutrality
Named, signed data
available from any node
willing to provide it

Improvement for content producers and consumers: can route data around censorship attempts

Improvement for content consumers: surveillance of content more difficult to achieve

Challenge for content producers and regulators: complicates geographic content restrictions

Improvement for content producers & consumers: diversifies interests in tussle over Internet resources Challenge for network operators: diversifies competition

Strong provenance built on data signatures and straightforward key distribution

Improvement for content producers and consumers: increases trust in provenance of speech

Challenge for content producers: may identify content producers

Improvement for content producers and regulators: may help identify infringing content

Challenge for content producers and consumers: may enable discrimination based on data type or origin.

Improvement for network operators: Increases information available for network strategies

Improvement for network operators: Increases information available for network strategies

Data persistence via uniformly accessed, pervasive storage

Improvement for content producers and consumers: data persists even when subject to takedowns

Challenge for content producers and consumers: may increase likelihood of decryption by unauthorized parties

Challenge for content producers and regulators: complicates content control

Improvement for content producers and consumers: diversifies interests in tussle over Internet resources Challenge for network operators: Incentives for hosting caching unclear1

Request/response model of data exchange

Improvement for content consumers: ensures anonymity for content seekers; can route requests around censorship attempts

Improvement for content consumers: ensures anonymity for content seekers

Improvement for content regulators: may suppress requests by name

Improvement for network operators: can control traffic load by controlling the number of pending Interests