Connectedness
Wired has an interesting article today about Habitat, a project of the MIT Human Connectedness lab.
The system seems pretty limited. In essence, it provides verrrry slooow presence detection in a larger sense — does your coffee table have a cup on it? or a book? or a cigarette? or a pen? If all of this means something to someone who is close to you, if these objects have deeper, familiar meaning, then you can have an always-on sense of how things are going with the other person. The Wired article contrasts this peaceful asynchronous awareness with the interruption of a phone call.
Now, I'm sympathetic to the time zone/interruption aspects of phone calls. And I'm constantly running up against the limitations of text as a presence detection medium. The Yahoo! Messenger and AIM services convey very little beyond a happy face (”I'm Available”) and perhaps a line of text (”On Cell Phone”). That's not very reassuring to someone who is really interested in knowing how you are.
But the presence of a coffee cup — I'm just not sure. It doesn't tell you very much. It has so much indirection in it as a symbol. It could mean that you just woke up, or that you're having trouble getting through the day, or that you like the design of the cup. It could mean that you were hoping to have someone over for coffee but the person hasn't shown up yet. It's lovely, but so limited. One can imagine the two in-touch people calling up — interrupting — just to say “Just what did you mean by having that coffee cup on the table?”
Surely the combined forces of techonologists and social scientists can come up with richer, more interactive, but still asynchronous indications of mood/well-being. We've got the coffee cup, we've got the smiley-face — but maybe we need an avatar who has more meaningful asynchronous action-oriented messages for the rest of the world.
Paying attention
The late lamented media critic Neil Postman urged us not to take in any new information after 8pm. This allows us both to think about what we have heard during waking hours and to go to sleep eventually. And keeps us from amusing ourselves to death.
I was fascinated by this recent New Yorker article. It's about a guy who is slowly and carefully reading every word of every New York Times article. He's given up on the sports section. But he's still far behind:
“Tobin reads the Times every day, struggling to find the two and a half hours necessary to get through it. He keeps stacks of newspapers in the front seat of his car and in spare cupboards, in case he finds himself without a paper in hand.
Tobin is behind in his Times reading. One year, five months, and four days behind, which places him in late June, 2002. In his daily paper, the United States has not yet invaded Iraq, the D.C. sniper hasn¬ít fired a shot, and Gray Davis is secure in Sacramento.”
Mr. Tobin is paying attention. He's doing one thing at a time. It takes two and a half hours for him to read the paper, and if he doesn't have that much time he simply allows himself to fall behind. He's got time. In fact, he doesn't even really want to know the current news; he doesn't want to spoil the suspense of the stories he's following.
But he does read the paper — very carefully. This is reminiscent of the recent Times coverage of the Malvo jury selection, in which a high school civics teacher (and potential juror) said (in essence), “I read the paper 364 days a year.” Why only 364? Because the judge told the jurors not to read the paper that day. “I'm a human being,” the civics teacher said. “I read the newspaper.” The civics teacher had already formed an opinion about Malvo's guilt, so he was excused from serving. And the judge told him he could pick up a paper on the way home.
Take a look at this page. Or this one. How will Mr. Tobin keep up? How will human beings (like the civics teacher) possibly absorb all this? And how can we stop taking in any new information after 8pm?
Perhaps the answer is that the global brain is paying attention for us. We're all reading newspapers and reading blogs, and the line between newspaper and blog keeps getting blurrier. With any luck, we're creating higher levels of useful information (meta information, information about information) and getting better informed.
But some part of me is jealous of Mr. Tobin, and his slow and careful progress through yellowed back issues of the Times.
Spam law
The CAN-SPAM bill has passed the House, and will likely be signed into law by the President soon. I predict that the bill will someday be viewed as something similar to the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act — a piece of nationalistic legislation that provides little real protection against offshore bad actors. But it does not, at least, do very much harm to the interests of would-be commercial email senders — it allows anyone to send a commercial message that isn't misleading, as long as an opt out and physical address (?) is provided for the sender.
Spam is clearly a big problem, but it's highly unlikely that this bill will fix things. A great deal of spam comes from people who aren't subject to US laws. A second prediction: “trusted” email systems will become all the rage, and we'll soon be conversing only with those we choose as conversational partners. Maybe that's a fine solution. Maybe the internet shouldn't favor unsolicited, anonymous communications. And maybe digital certificates will finally be worth something to individuals.
State Super-Duper Laws
There is a bill sitting on the desk of the Governor of Ohio awaiting signature. It is not very long:
1) “Audiovisual recording function” means the capability of a device to record or transmit a motion picture or any part of a motion picture by means of any technology existing on, or developed after, the effective date
of this section.
(2) “Facility” includes all retail establishments and movie theaters.
(B) No person, without the written consent of the owner or lessee of the facility and of the licensor of the motion picture, shall knowingly operate an audiovisual recording function of a device in a facility in which a motion picture is being shown.
(C) Whoever violates division (B) of this section is guilty of motion picture piracy, a misdemeanor of the first degree on the first offense and a felony of the fifth degree on each subsequent offense.
(D) This section does not prohibit or restrict a lawfully authorized investigative, law enforcement, protective, or intelligence gathering employee or agent of the government of this state or a political subdivision of this state, or of the federal government, when acting in an official capacity, from operating an audiovisual recording function of a device in any facility in which a motion picture is being shown.
…
This means that no one can show anyone in a retail store how a VCR works. No one can use a phone that can stream TV or other video images in a store. No one can take a still picture in a store in which a movie is being shown on a TV screen — without permission. How does this work? Why wouldn't this act be preempted by the Copyright Act? Why is it that we seem to need permission to do everything?
The text must be directed at people pointing cameras towards the screen in movie theaters, but it is drafted so badly and so broadly that it is hard to tell. I suspect that the governor will sign this bill, saying “I'm against piracy.”
It looks as if copyright (or “paracopyright”) is becoming the broadest set of laws we have.
New tack on the broadcast flag
After wandering around for a while today, I think a good approach to the broadcast flag issue is to compare it to the tobacco jurisdiction wars. I think I will suggest that “if FDA cannot regulate cigarettes, FCC cannot regulate consumer electronics devices.” This should be sufficiently incendiary (so to speak).
The argument would be that courts shouldn't defer to agencies' broad/strained construction of their basic statutes where Congress has created a distinct regulatory scheme of its own. In tobacco, the Congressional scheme was called the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Amendments (and several other tobacco-specific pieces of legislation); in the broadcast flag arena, the Congressional scheme is called the Copyright Act. Although (perhaps) Congress may not have rejected proposals to give FCC jurisdiction over copyright protection, that's only because such a request would have been outlandish. But Congress (and the Library of Congress) clearly exercise authority over copyright policy. And I'm sure the FCC has said over the course of the broadcast flag wars that it has no jurisdiction over copyright. The recent Order is an abrupt about-face.
Additionally, the tobacco companies argued that Congress could not have intended to delegate a decision of such economic and political significance to an agency “in so cryptic a fashion.” And the Supreme Court found that the FDA's reading of “safety” throughout the FDCA act was extraordinarily strained. Here, similarly, regulating all consumer electronics devices has enormous economical and political consequences for the US — and the FCC's reading of its statute is contortionist.
The other appealing thing about writing about tobacco and copyright is that both issues have been so heavily and expensively (and elegantly) lawyered. It helps to have the biggest, most influential lobby in town — if you're the Tobacco Institute, you can get the Court to shut down the FDA, and if you're the MPAA you can get the FCC to jump.
Things are getting worse at ICANN
Today, ICANN issued a “Staff Manager's Issue Report on the need for a Predictable Procedure for Changes in the Operation of TLD Registries.” ICANN has been worried about how it justifies Board decisions to amend contracts between ICANN and the registries, and has decided to do what it can to create a process. Here are the problems with the Issue Report:
1. Scope. The report suggests that the process will cover “significant actions by TLD registries that, because of their architecture or operation, could affect the operational stability, reliability, security or global interoperability of the DNS, that registry or the Internet.” This means that anything a registry does — even steps that don't involve Registry Services, such as offering value-added services or changing management structure — could potentially be covered by the GNSO process. The paper notes cryptically that “the unsponsored registry operators have noted the need to account for contractual agreements in the development of the evaluation procedure.” That's right — at the moment, no approval by ICANN is needed or required or appropriate for most actions of a registry that don't amount to the introduction of a new Registry Service. Is ICANN suggesting that it will unilaterally re-do the contracts it has signed with registries? Doesn't it take two sides to amend a contract? How can ICANN establish an “evaluation procedure” for actions that a registry is free to take without evaluation?
A secondary scope issue is that sponsored TLDs have had “delegated” to them the right to introduce new Registry Services without any input whatsoever from ICANN. So even less scope of “evaluation” is appropriate with respect to the sTLDs. Is ICANN proposing to renege on the notion of “sponsorship” it labored so mightily (and over such a painfully long period of time) to create?
2. Getting Bogged Down. It cannot be that ICANN wants to have a process towards a procedure towards a protocol towards a premonition of every sneeze that comes from the general direction of a registry. ICANN will need a staff of hundreds — ICANN will need to become the FCC. Is this the goal? Can this possibly be the underlying motivation for this particular PDP?
3. Legitimacy. ICANN is not a regulator. No government body has delegated to it any particular authority. ICANN is asserting, however, an “APA” model of ICANN's legitimacy — that ICANN's Board is a group of wise individuals who can be relied on to listen carefully to comments and make the best central decisions on behalf of the global Internet community.
The problem with the “Administrative Procedure Act” model is that the ability of the Board to listen does not, by itself, give ICANN the right to make decisions or be deferred to by governments, for a very simple reason: No one gave ICANN the power to make rules in the first place. (Indeed, a delegation of regulatory power from DOC to ICANN (which is a private party) would violate the nondelegation doctrine and raise substantial due process concerns.) While it is perfectly true that the Board of Directors of ICANN has the responsibility to act on behalf of ICANN as a corporation, and it is also true that ICANN has established this elaborate “policy development process” in order to gather comments on noticed rules from interested people, the idea of APA-like notice and comment rulemaking depends on a delegation of authority from a responsible body, including clear standards that limit the scope of agency discretion.
Here, there appear to be absolutely no limits on ICANN's discretion to block any particular action desired by a registry. And no one gave ICANN the power to tell any registry what to do — unless that registry has agreed to do what ICANN asks. Finally, it is very likely that ICANN's actions will be effectively unreviewable. This is therefore an illegitimate assertion of power on ICANN's part, and there is no reason for any registry to accede to it.
The source of ICANN's legitimacy is, and can only be, consensus — not ad hoc, anti-competitive reactions to the requests of special interest groups.
The ICANN consensus contract asks each potential participant whether they will agree contractually to implement and abide by a future rule, sight unseen, provided that most people support it and those parties substantially affected by the policy do not vigorously oppose it (or their objection is unreasonable).
This contract supports ICANN's legitimacy (and helps in understanding ICANN) because it provides a demonstration that each participant in the ICANN regime has affirmatively agreed to ICANN's jurisdiction for the limited purpose of making global rules with which most affected participants agree to go along. It is intentionally designed to produce only those rules that most people agree should be global — and very few rules will fall into this category. Everything that is not the subject of a global consensus agreement will be left to local decision-making. Everything that is not prohibited should be permitted.
More on gaming conference
There is a great thread over at terranova.blogs.com about the conference. And I am very proud indeed of this mention from Richard Bartle:
“Fortunately, the lawyers at the conference did seem to have the “right” opinion (from my point of view) even though most were new to the field and few were actual games-players. I began to take heart during a talk by Yochai Benkler of Yale Law School, who gave a very good overview of the issues (if not any actual solutions). The turning point for me, though, was the talk by Susan Crawford of NYLS. In it, she discussed the notion of identity in virtual worlds, and asked whether people need a “law of identity” to protect these second selves from organisations (eg. VW companies) who can obliterate them at will. She came out against, which I would have stood up and cheered at if it weren't for my British reserve.”
ICANN and the rest of the world
Bret Fausett points us to this article about the WSIS plans for a December meeting in Geneva. Attacks on ICANN are coming from several different directions, and the list of concerns includes “cybercrime and protection of intellectual property rights.”
My thoughts on this go in several directions, as usual. First, it's not apparent to me that any government can “control” the internet — and it's even less likely that that control can happen through the DNS. The most that governments will do will be to build walls between nations, requiring their ISPs to point only to approved sites. (China is well on its way to doing this already.) That's not controlling the internet, that's creating different, national internets. Second, control over what it takes to register a domain name won't necessarily provide control over cybercrime or IP — domain name registrations aren't necessary to run a p2p system, and there are lots of other ways to use networks for copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and fraud that don't involve the DNS at all.
So I'm not sure what the WSIS is getting at, or what it would mean for the ITU to “take over the Internet.” Taking it over would mean conditioning access to it, I suppose, which would only push still more communications into black markets (or “darknets”). And I really don't understand how there could be a common vision that will serve everyone's control needs AND provide internet access to developing countries. Finally, what does all of this have to do with ICANN?
ICANN's functions have nothing to do with control needs or internet access, in my view. ICANN is (or ought to be) no more than a web of contracts and a forum for discussion for issues that have to do with the stability of registries and registrars. If ICANN is trying to be more than that, it shouldn't, and it risks angering the ITU. For example, if ICANN tries to come up with some conditioning of access to domain name registrations predicated on “use of the name in connection with noninfringing content only,” it will never achieve consensus on such a rule — and, indeed, the current contracts prohibit ICANN from imposing consensus policies that have to do with the content of sites. If ICANN tries to require ccTLDs to adopt particular whois or registrar schemes, they'll rebel.
We seem to be lurching towards the worst end-state: an ICANN that wants to compete in popularity and in influence with the UN, and an ICANN that wants to have something to say about content on web sites and the publication of identity data. This ICANN will draw attention to itself and make the UN want to “take it over” — and will make the UN believe that there's something meaningful to take over. Instead, we should have an ICANN of modest goals and achievements, that provides a forum for discussion and a non-governmental arena for standardization of registry technical practices — and routinely opens up new TLDs of all kinds, as long as they meet minimum standards. Then individual governments can say what they want to to their ISPs and their registry operators.
Why I cannot play games
So 8am on Sunday morning after the games conference found me at the doors of Cardozo, arguing with the security guard about letting me in. It is not easy to get into this building, but I managed it somehow. I went to my office and opened up the CD jewel box for SecondLife. All very exciting, right? And I was delighted to see that SecondLife was giving me a free year's worth of playing.
But it won't work. It keeps crashing. The IBM ThinkPad I bought less than six months ago doesn't have an adequate graphics card for this game (or, probably, any other top-line game). I called IBM and they said there was nothing I could do short of buying a new machine. Sigh.
If this is really the new frontier (and I'm prepared to believe it is), I'll have to break down and get yet another notebook. Research has revealed that the gaming notebooks weigh as much as a bowling ball.
Here's a collection of interviews/quotes about the future of online gaming. It's fascinating stuff. I talked to a couple of my Cardozo colleagues about the conference and they just couldn't take it in. The bit about McDonald's franchises being picketed by avatars particularly got them.
The draft paper I wrote about online identity for the conference is here. All comments welcome.
Suggestions for laptops also welcome.
Games
I have been at the New York Law School/Yale Law School conference on online games and the law. A very experienced British game development guru is quizzing a US Army guy about America's Army — a free recruiting tool/game. This is a somewhat out-of-body experience for me. “Granted, we're using taxpayer dollars to fund this effort. But because this game is so successful it's saved us money. We've managed to package this game with computer gaming magazines. Cost to the government: nothing. We save a lot through downloads. Our savings is around $14 million dollars.” Question: who owns IP rights in this game? We do, sir.
Has the army been looking into games that would teach skills? No, sir. We're not using this as a teaching tool, America's Army. Your first mission is to complete four maps, for example. We're not teaching you how to fire a rifle. You'd have to go to boot camp for that, sir. We're informing, not training.
Later in the morning, I talked privately for ten minutes on camera with the very gifted David R. Johnson (not David C. Johnson, who was also at the conference). NYLS is preparing a time capsule of views about the future of online gaming. David's questions were cogent, but I was completely exhausted and wasn't able to speak very clearly. (This conference is endless, but fascinating much of the time.) If I'd been able to talk, I would have said: more worlds will be walled; people will tend to play themselves. I did manage to say that we manage to ruin every paradise and are incapable of sustaining utopias. So it's very unlikely that we'll do better in online worlds. I also said that it's strange how few of the theory people here actually play games. Fourteen year olds are playing these games. Theory people say “interactive gaming is the most important development since the printing press,” but then go on to say that they don't play games online. Someone here whose business is selling virtual game artifacts says “this industry is small enough that everyone is here.” So that's nice. A great conference, and bravo to Beth Noveck.