The Blog

where I was lucky to visit the Science Gallery. Perhaps, if you are lucky, a new member of the Science Gallery network will locate itself near you.

I’m determined to get back to blogging – I know I keep saying this – but projects keep intervening.

Today I’m focused (thanks to Simply Noise) on these topics, all of which (naturally) relate:

1. ICANN’s new gTLD program, and particularly Larry Strickling’s speech about it.

2. The OECD’s principles.

and

3. Lightsquared.

Here’s how all of these things interrelate. They start with process:  ICANN has taken years and years and years to develop its gTLD program. Now, for all kinds of adventurous reasons, there are parties that want to derail it by relitigating fights they fought within the ICANN process. The OECD is embracing ICANN’s multistakeholder approach to Internet policymaking – as well as embracing openness generally.  Lightsquared is also the subject of a giant derailment effort, as the GPS community creates a mountain of political interference to Lightsquared’s attempts to modify its proposals and get underway.

They’re also all about disturbed major industries that don’t want to see change. New gTLDs?  Too confusing. Wholesale LTE? Too dangerous.  The OECD’s response is refreshing: let’s let platforms for speech flourish; let’s have less filtering of uncomfortable content; most of all, let’s not have governments acting unilaterally or collectively to constrain the content of online speech.

[The Lightsquared debate is particularly interesting. Lightsquared proposes to operate outside the GPS bands, and at low power; their operations in their "lower band" would likely not interfere with consumer devices, and any interference with precision devices could mostly be mitigated. But I understand that there's a supplemental timing signal that makes the high-precision stuff work - and that Lightsquared sends out that signal for the GPS industry over its own frequency!  So Lightsquared could migrate that supplemental signal at its own expense. And if GPS receivers were smarter, they'd be fine.  But who pays for them to be smarter? That's the age-old problem. Let's hope the facts come out, calmly, eventually, so that the political mudslinging can cease.]