Black helicopters and VOIP
Now that CFP taught me all about FCC regulatory policy, I feel empowered to be paranoid.
ATT wants to offer VOIP. Because their service touches the telephone system at some point, the FCC has said that ATT's VOIP will be a regulated service — meaning CALEA, E911, and other obligations have to be met, and access charges have to be paid. This seems entirely consistent with the notion that, someday, email, IM, and P2P generally will be regulated services too.
Here's the reasoning. To the extent the following are true of ATT's VOIP, they're true of email and IM: the service (1) uses ordinary customer premises equipment, (2) originates and terminates on the telephone system, and (3) undergoes no net protocol conversion and provides no enhanced functionality to end users due to the provider's use of IP technology. As I understand it, if a service isn't “processed” somehow by its transport across the net, it's a telecommunications service (that's what the “enhanced functionality” reference means).
Chairman Michael Powell says that ATT “argues that its service should be exempt from the access charge regime because it may use IP in its transport system. . . [but] customers are in no discernable way receiving the transforming benefits of an IP-enabled service. In fact, the consumer receives the same plain old telephone service.” He goes on to say that if the FCC listens to ATT, that would be merely “sanction[ing] regulatory arbitrage and would collapse the universal service system virtually overnight.”
The argument about email and IM (as I dimly understand it) is that consumers are receiving the same services they used to get from Western Union. No difference. Sure, the old telegraph operators aren't there, and the consumer is doing the typing, but once the message has been put together it's sent along the same plain old telephone lines. In this view, the email or IM is just like a telegraph that gets routed along by the telephone network. So email and IM should be on a level playing field with (now not thought about much) Western Union.
The justification for putting email and IM on a regulated footing as “just another” IP-enabled service is that if we don't do this the whole regulatory system will collapse. The telephone system as we know it will be destroyed.
This rationale is very similar to the broadcast flag reasoning: if we don't make rules for the devices that receive, store, and manipulate television broadcasts (and the devices that connect to those devices), the broadcast system as we know it will be destroyed.
The arguments for protecting telephones are stronger than for protecting broadcasts, but they're undeniably similar. We have to do this, or the American way of life will be destroyed. If you argue against this, you're un-American. In fact, if you argue against this, you're in league with terrorists.
Where is this going? One key IP-enabled service that's quite popular these days is P2P. “Operation Fastlink” went after warez sites and hackers the other day, using language that sounds just like the war on terrorism: “These groups are sophisticated and able to communicate instantly via the Internet, and have the ability, with the stroke of a button, to destroy evidence located across the globe. The synchronized efforts of law enforcement worldwide prevented the thieves from destroying the evidence or disappearing into cyberspace without detection.”
Where would these warez files end up? On P2P systems: “Once a product is stolen and made available on a “warez” group's secure server, it is only a matter of hours before the stolen works are distributed throughout the world, ending up, for example, on public peer-to-peer file-sharing networks accessible to anyone with Internet access.”
What does the content industry want more than anything? To shut down P2P systems. How can they get there? I'm not sure they can. But having the FCC regulate P2P has got to be a start.