The Great Quadrangle
Back in March 2004, the FCC issued a remarkable piece of paper — an “IP-Enabled Services” notice of proposed rulemaking. Someone sidled up to me and said, “it's all over! This is Computer Four! The FCC is in charge!”
In a nutshell, the March 2004 notice suggested that the FCC believed it had jurisdiction over “IP-enabled services” (that is, anything using the Internet Protocol) under its “ancillary” powers in Title I of the 1996 Act. (Translation: even though the statute giving the FCC its power doesn't say anything about the internet, the FCC believes that it has authority to make rules about “services” that use IP. It gets this authority, it believes, from a little line in the first, general Title of the Act that gives it “necessary and proper” internal housekeeping rulemaking authority. So we're into a standardless, undefined area — all the other Titles are quite specific. So far no one is stopping the FCC and the Supreme Court BrandX opinion defers to the FCC's interpretation of its authority. But I digress).
This was a dramatic statement. The Domain Name System depends on IP. All web sites depend on IP. Email. You name it. The FCC said it was thinking about what “social policies” to apply to these “services.”
Since then, we've seen several moves to apply particular “social policies” to, in particular, “interconnected VoIP” services and highspeed internet access providers. The FCC has said that it can broaden what “interconnected VoIP” means, but for the moment it means voice applications that are capable of connecting to the traditional phone system (even if they don't actually connect). It's a sort of “fruit of the poisoned tree” move — as soon as some part of an application or suite of applications is capable of connecting, the whole thing/company has to be compliant.
The first three “social policies” have been E911, CALEA, and Universal Service funding. Each is a story of its own. (The CALEA story had a another milestone moment a couple of weeks ago when law enforcement filed a petition for an expedited rulemaking essentially saying that the wireless packet data they get is inadequate under CALEA — they want more precise data. This has potential design implications for any nascent service.)
I've heard that today the Commission adopted a fourth “social policy” for “interconnected VoIP”: accessibility compliance under Sec. 255. We'll see what the requirements are — right now there's nothing on the FCC site.
Dopplr
So Twitter is too much and LinkedIn seems increasingly
impersonal. But Dopplr — just right, at least for
now. I like the little thumbnails of people, I like that I
can see who's in the town I'm in, and I like the simplicity.
Not a lot of bells, whistles, and meta-bettah-information - at least
for now. It's like…a calling card system for people who
move around a lot.
Perhaps you are
unfamiliar with the practice of calling and leaving cards. I
know about it only from my (now late) grandmother and from a 1920s
etiquette book that I bought at a garage sale once. Basically, the idea was that people established At Home afternoons when they were available for calls. But you would only call on people you already knew. And the first time around, you would do no more than leave your card - then the recipient would decide whether to return or acknowledge your call. Complicated - sometimes the cards would have corners turned up to signal particular messages.
So you start in Dopplr by being invited (just ask, lots of invitations floating around). Then you ask other people if they want to be fellow travellers of yours. Then they can see your trips, but they can decide in turn if they want to allow you to see theirs. Just like the card system — polite, signals sent and received, levels of acquaintance decided on — but faster and spanning the globe.
The visit that follows the signal - that's the interesting part across which a discreet veil will be drawn.
700
Many many comments filed here. And the Commission is asking for comments in response to Google's question: “Do the Commission’s existing rules governing commercial spectrum in the 700 MHz Band already allow licensees to utilize 'dynamic auction mechanisms,' such as real-time auctions and per-device registration fees”?
It's a big story, and I'll be blogging about it - lots of drama.
But my favorite story today (still catching up with email and news) was about lunch delivery in Mumbai:
The precision and efficiency of the dabbawallas have been likened to
the Internet, where packets identified by unique markers are ferried to
their destination by means of a complex network.
“There is a service called FedEx that is similar to ours — but they don’t deliver lunch,” said one dabbawalla, Dhondu Kondaji Chowdhury.
Blog break
I've been in yet another meeting for the last couple of days, and that's IT. Back on the blog on May 29.
Net neutrality reflections
So this afternoon my charge is to lay out all the NN issues to a bar association that doesn't have a telecom subcommittee. Writing it all down took a while this morning. It's a hard story to make simple.
Cringely says that “In the end the ISPs [network providers] are going to win this [network neutrality] battle, you know. The only
thing that will keep them from doing that is competition, something it is
difficult to see coming along anytime soon, rather like [a] lemonade-powered
sports car.” He points out that cable systems can easily prioritize things if they see congestion, and that traffic shaping has the same effect as discrimination. (Not that we have any real data about shaping inside these private networks.)
So will we see competition? I'm going to say that the spectrum auction later this year is raising hopes of that. (Good Wired story here.)
Meanwhile, the 9th Circuit casts asparagus on sites that encourage people to fill out forms — Section 230 immunity is at stake. (Eric Goldman roundup.) It's an odd case. I wonder whether the big online companies will appeal. I hope they will. This is potentially a bipartisan issue that the current Court might treat fairly.
Cincinnati Tuesday-Wednesday
I'm not planning to turn this blog into a travelogue, and the truth is that my journeys aren't as exciting as, say, Joi's or Nina's.
But the people I've met in Cincinnati have been very kind, and I'm staying at a great old steamship of a hotel:
Tomorrow we astonish the Ohio State Bar Association with a passionate yet well-informed debate about net neutrality. We're up against “How To Use Casemaker,” so the competition is tough. (”Your Source for Online Legal Research.”)
I'll try to give the briefest, most persuasive answer I can to the question “Why is Net Neutrality Important?” Plus I've been called on to give the neutral professorial background segment. It's a two hour debate. By the end of it both teams should be able easily to switch sides. I'm pretty sure it will be available online eventually.
Spectrum Sunday/Monday
Long days of reading about spectrum policy, and, in particular, the big auction of “beachfront” spectrum coming up later this year.
Why can't some of this spectrum be left unlicensed? Yes, we've seen great growth and ingenuity spurred on by having unlicensed spectrum being made available. But Congress has said that the “commercial use” part of this spectrum has to be assigned through competitive bidding, and that means auctions and licenses. The Commission believes that competitive bidding and auctions will “ensure[] that spectrum licenses are assigned to
those who place the highest value on the resource and will be suited to put the
licenses to their most efficient use.” Even though we have no idea, really, whether licensing is more efficient or more valuable to society than letting this spectrum be used by unlicensed devices.
How will this auction affect whether DSL/cable providers are subject to competition from wireless broadband providers? Unclear. The Frontline proposal is remarkably audacious. Create a new nationwide block license. Extend the license for 15 years, not just ten. Require whoever bids for it to pay cash up front (billions) in order to win. Require whoever bids for it to have a business plan that will involve building (at no cost to the public) a free public safety highspeed network. Use of the new nationwide license will be preemptible by public safety emergency needs. It's a pretty elaborate plan that might result in making available a new wholesale source of highspeed access with some watery neutrality. But is it a giveaway to a former government employee — will the rules be written so that only Frontline can win? Does it make sense? I have a lot to learn about this.
In the meantime, I've had two days of San Francisco light and fog, all for spectrum reading.
Googleplex Friday
I'm locked away in a conference room at the Googleplex. There was a tour before we started — it was essentially mostly about food. Free food. Bagels, blood oranges, organic snacks, endless food. A great deal of playfulness - perhaps Google has hired playfulness consultants.
So this week will end on a brief blogging note. Rest assured that I am getting plenty to eat.
Field trip: Internet Archive
Have you visited the Internet Archive lately? It's officially (as of this month) a library. Coming soon: a tool that will make it really easy to upload videos and mark them with tags. Now, you've heard of this already — there are several commercial applications that do this. But the Internet Archive is dedicated to archiving and preserving web content:
The
Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet
- a new medium with major historical significance
- and other “born-digital” materials
from disappearing into the past. Collaborating with
institutions including the Library
of Congress and the Smithsonian,
we are working to preserve a record for generations
to come.
I visited the Internet Archive building in San Francisco today. It looks as if the Internet Archive and OneWebDay will be collaborating, and I couldn't be happier about that.
One project that needs doing, and needs leadership and prodding: interviews with people about their early web involvement and memories. The Archive has a nice Computers and Technology video area, but a much more substantial project would be to have citizen journalists out there recording interviews and making the raw footage available to everyone via the Archive. This may be a OneWebDay project in the making — if you'd like to volunteer to work on this, the barriers to entry are vanishingly low.
For
The last in the series. “What is broadband good for?”
For
“For” can be understood as both a utilitarian word (“for what purpose is X used?”) and a pointer to a beneficiary (“for whom the bell tolls”). Here is a moment at which I think “for” could bravely choose one of these purposes.
“For” in its utilitarian sense is tied to “what,” providing a kind of bookend service-oriented function within our little phrase. What’s it good for? What content-delivery supply-chain usefulness is broadband providing? We are devoted to coming full circle, as human beings. Repetition is the way we know things are reaching an end, and we long for resolution of difficult moments. If we take this approach, “for” is just another instance of choosing online services and billing for them, rounding out “what” and “broadband” with a comfortably related “for.” I think this use of “for” is selling “for” short.
Of course, “for” is short. But let us press on.
“For” could instead be used here in a higher-minded, more optimistic, more socially-responsible way. Why wouldn’t we want to push “for” higher up the great chain of meaning? Who are we to hold “for” back?
So here is my brief conclusion. Internet access is “for” our collective economic and social future. We are the beneficiaries, as are the generations who will follow us. We can’t predict it, we can’t control it, but we can try to make it as interesting and complex as possible. It’s “for” us.
==
Comcast CEO Shows Off Super Quick Modem.
DOCSIS 3.0, from Wikipedia.
“I wonder if Comcast will still have their blistering fast 376kbps upload speed when they increase the download speed.” Comment on Engadget entry.