Archive for October, 2007

ICANN Tuesday

By On October 30, 2007 In icann With No Comments Permanent Link to ICANN TuesdayPermalink

Today is Constituency/Supporting Organization day. The board is trying something new — splitting up and going to individual meetings for a long period, rather than trooping around as a group to a series of hour-long meetings. I went to the gTLD Registry Constituency meeting. Later we’ll get back together and compare notes before meeting in a public session with the Governmental Advisory Committee.

The big issues for this meeting include new gTLDs (as I mentioned yesterday), domain tasting, internationalized domain names, whois, and structural reforms (of the GNSO, of the Nominating Committee).

There’s a public comment period going on until the end of today on whois. This discussion has been going on for seven years or so within the ICANN context. The basic issue: should it be a condition of registering a domain name that the registrant’s personal information be made publicly available? Tomorrow, the GNSO Council will vote on three motions that have been suggested with respect to the whois policy development process. This document (p.9) sets forth the three motions.

The first motion would adopt a proposal to allow individual registrants to designate an Operational Point of Contact whose information would appear publicly. Requestors needing the registrant’s personal information would be required to give a good reason (as defined under applicable national law) to get that information, but would be able to reach the registrant through the OPOC.

The second motion would initiate more studies.

The third motion would say “you have until the end of 2008 to come to an agreement on how to both implement whois AND allow for individual privacy (and compliance with applicable laws). Otherwise, because the whois clauses in the contracts aren’t supported by consensus, they will be removed from the contract.”

Many of the participants in this process are simply worn out. The question is whether “we’ve had enough, and we can’t agree” should lead to (1) maintenance of the status quo, or (2) removal of the clause requiring public presentation of individual data.

There are many comments here. Add your own before the day ends.

ICANN Monday

By On October 29, 2007 In icann With No Comments Permanent Link to ICANN MondayPermalink

Today is the first day of the 30th ICANN meeting. I’ve been here since late Friday – I wanted to go to the all-day GNSO Council meeting on Saturday about whois, new TLDs, and other issues. Yesterday, Sunday, the GNSO continued to meet, the board committees met, and the board had an all-afternoon workshop plus a dinner.

This afternoon there’s a key discussion about the policies to govern the selection of new TLDs. I’ve been hoping for a standardized, objective process for new TLDs for a very long time, and my hope is that we’ll move forward on this. The GNSO Council has adopted a set of recommendations, and this workshop was designed to focus on them.

We’ve reached the most contentious area of recommendations — the processes for addressing worries about particular strings being chosen as new TLDs.

Recommendation 3:

Strings must not infringe the existing legal rights of others that are recognized or under generally accepted and internationally recognized principles of law. Examples of these legal rights that are internationally recognized include, but are not limited to, rights defined in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industry Property (in particular trademark rights), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (in particular freedom of expression rights).

Recommendation 6:

Strings must not be contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law.

Examples of such principles of law include, but are not limited to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, intellectual property treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS).

This is definitely tricky. International law doesn’t have anything to say about “morality” when it comes to gTLDs. And, of course, morality varies by country….and city.

Recommendation 20:

An application will be rejected if an expert panel determines that there is substantial opposition to it from a significant portion of the community to which the string may be explicitly or implicitly targeted.

Also very tricky. “Implicitly targeting” is defined as being in the mind of the objector – that objector can assume that there’s targeting “or that the objector believes there may be confusion by users over its intended use.” Whoof.

This is a six-hour workshop, and we’re moving into the fourth hour. Lots of challenges ahead. How will/can these policies be implemented? My top priority is making sure we have a standardized, obvious, objective process.

If you’re interested in this subject, read this for more information. All comments very welcome.

This week in the white spaces

By On October 26, 2007 In communications policy, fcc, white spaces With 3 Comments Permanent Link to This week in the white spacesPermalink

1. Very large Houses of Worship urge the Commission not to allow unlicensed use of the white spaces. They point out that they have sophisticated systems:

Many houses have footprints larger than multiple football fields and hold pew-seating for worshipers in the thousands. Typical facilities may include a large stage for the pastor, and stages to accommodate hundred-person choirs, full orchestras, praise teams, a praise band, and complex sound systems. Our experienced technical staffs devote considerable time and effort in planning to ensure highquality productions including interference-free wireless microphone operation.

2. The presidents of News Corp., Disney, CBS, and NBC wrote in, suggesting that the DTV transition is a substantial government/industry investment, and that consumer harm through interference with these TV transmissions should be avoided. Interestingly, they cite the upcoming 700 MHz auction in support of their argument, asserting that the vacated spectrum “will be available for multiple uses, including the same types of broadband services envisioned by those who seek to operate on an unlicensed basis in the digital spectrum allocated for free, over-the-air broadcasting.”

That’s bravura for you. The reason these non-contiguous frequencies are called “white spaces” is that they’re not being actively used by broadcasters. And they got extra spectrum for free for use in the DTV transition – these are the soon-to-be vacated frequencies that are going to be auctioned off in January.

The letter suggests that a “‘fixed’ broadband system, which does not operate on a co-channel or adjacent channel, will help expand broadband opportunities without causing interference to digital television receivers.” The practical translation of requiring only “fixed” devices is that investment in mobile, opportunistic devices for internet access will be limited because the market will be too small to pay off.

3. The cable industry weighed in through its trade association, NCTA:

We discussed the high likelihood that personal, portable TV band devices with high output power will cause direct pickup interference to cable customers’ viewing of cable channels. We explained that for cable operations, there are no “white spaces,” as cable systems utilize every channel in the broadcast spectrum. We expressed the need to significantly lower the output power level of proposed devices…

So cable and broadcast are joining on this issue. This is another way of making portable devices unattractive targets for investment — if they’re so low-power, they won’t be able to do anything useful.

4. Twelve Representatives from Texas and Ohio recently wrote in voicing concern over the use of unlicensed personal-portable devices in the white spaces. Their letter is very similar to the letter from News Corp., Disney, CBS, and NBC above.

5. Broadway theatre producers wrote in in May (but the letter just made it to the ex parte files).

We discussed the importance of maintaining the ability to ensure that Broadway and performing houses around the country may continue to use their wireless microphones without fear of interference. We specifically discussed the need for the Commission to incorporate comprehensive interference protections for these important incumbent services in the upcoming rules for unlicensed devices in these so called “white spaces.” We also reiterated the need to perform on site testing on the proposed mitigation devices in areas such as Broadway where the interference is the greatest.

FCC field trip!

5. The Hill reports today that the broadcasters are delighted to have God, Broadway theater, and sports on their side on this issue.

ENIAC

By On October 25, 2007 In computer history With 3 Comments Permanent Link to ENIACPermalink

Once upon a time, there was a gigantic computer called ENIAC. According to Wikipedia, ENIAC, which stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, “was the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.” Between 1946 and 1955 it worked on the key problem that absorbed a lot of early computer scientists – how to fire guns so that they would hit moving targets – like planes. (There’s a great passage about Norbert Weiner, negative feedback, and artillery trajectories here, from Dark Hero of the Information Age.)

More about ENIAC:

ENIAC was massive. . . . It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet (2.6 m) by 3 feet (0.9 m) by 80 feet (26 m), took up 680 square feet (67.6 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power.

The six people who did most of the programming of ENIAC were women. Their stories are worth knowing, and it’s been a passion of Kathy Kleiman’s for many years to bring these women into public view via a full-length documentary. (I know Kathy as a fellow computer lawyer.)

On Nov. 8, Kathy and one of the original ENIAC programmers (Jean Bartik) and others will be holding a dinner and documentary preview in Mountain View — “Invisible Computers: The Untold Story of the ENIAC Programmers.” Information is here.

People who were adept with mechanical devices that performed calculations were often referred to as “computers” – it took a while for the word to take on its current meaning. So to call the ENIAC programmers “invisible computers” refers to many things – to the machines, to the people, to the lack of understanding of the creativity involved in programming, and to the fact that they were women and thus less visible than they might have been.

We don’t have enough stories about women in technology, and the ENIAC documentary is a very good idea. If you’re curious, and if you’re somewhere near Mountain View CA on Nov. 8th, consider dropping by.

Economic growth and internet access

By On October 24, 2007 In communications policy, fcc, network neutrality With 1 Comment Permanent Link to Economic growth and internet accessPermalink

I’m on my usual hunt for economic growth citations. Two recent useful ones:

1. UK Competitiveness Minister Stephen Timms says that the UK needs a fiber plan:

“Effective use of technology enables economic growth,” . . . . “We have hardly any fibre-to-home connections. As far as I’m aware, we have none. There are 900,000 in the US and eight million in Japan. We’re not suffering yet, but communications applications with higher [bandwidth] needs are not far behind. We need timely take-up.”

[Thanks to Dirk van der Woude for the link.] This strikes a different note than I heard from Ofcom earlier this year. In April, Ofcom head Ed Richards made it clear that he wasn’t thinking of internet access or telecommunications policy being part of broader economic/industrial policy. Mr. Timms is a welcome addition to the scene, and I understand that he’s well-connected to PM Gordon Brown.

2. Morgan Stanley recently weighed in, saying that the economic growth rate for the U.S. isn’t very strong – down to 2% from 3%. In general, Mary Meeker opines, the “US [is] less relevant to global economy – US share of global GDP has declined steadily since 1999 to 19% of GDP.”

3. Mark Lloyd of the Center for American Progress presented testimony earlier this week. My favorite part:

The telecommunications and cable industries have strong incentives to limit local investment in broadband. It is perfectly understandable for the industry to squeeze as much out of their old infrastructure or to delay investment in high-cost areas until they can be certain of an adequate return. This is smart, efficient business. And if we were considering the distribution of hula hoops or video games we would applaud this approach. But we are not concerned about a market in trifles. We are concerned about the health, education, economic viability, and public safety of our nation. We need national leadership to establish a national broadband policy.

We need some new ideas over here in the U.S. that will help spur economic growth – and a key place for idea-generation is online. We’re not talking about hula hoops or tunafish sandwiches, both of which are also sold by private companies. Online communication is different.

Tomorrow – back to the white spaces. Did you see this terrific NYT piece?

Three updates

By On October 23, 2007 In fcc With 4 Comments Permanent Link to Three updatesPermalink

Three stories moved forward today:

1. Verizon dropped its legal challenge to the 700 MHz auction rules. I have a feeling they’ve decided that there are ways to work around [link to post giving work-around clues] the no-locking, no-blocking conditions that the FCC established. Plus VZ doesn’t want to be the bad guy, charged by Congress with delaying the auction. They’ve got bigger problems on their hands given the NARAL flap and the fact that…

2. Comcast admitted “delaying” traffic on its network. I learned today that EFF had been figuring this out recently, only to be scooped by AP. We all hope that EFF keeps up the good work. I understand that the preliminary thought is that the Comcast “delaying” is not at all tied to bandwidth use per se – it’s the establishment of a BitTorrent conversation, or a Gnutella session, that triggers the spoofing. So you could be getting ready to trade a 4MB file (very small! won’t hurt anyone’s use of the network!) and if the assessment is that you’re about to use BitTorrent or Gnutella, the RST fraud will be perpetrated. (This post, from last Friday, explains the RST fraud.)

There are lots of ISPs around the world that throttle BitTorrent and other P2P applications. Here’s a list. As some of the commentators here have said, this is done as part of “network management” – because the belief is that “BitTorrent use” is an appropriate proxy for “bandwidth use.” Even if that’s not true. And the ISPs will say in their prolix Terms of Service that P2P is banned. (Everything’s banned in those documents – Data Foundry made this clear in comments filed this summer here and here.) ISPs will also say that you’re not allowed to run a server, and (again) will use BitTorrent and Gnutella use as a proxy for “running a server.” VPN connections – that’s okay, even though it’s technically the same “running a server” idea.

The truth: Comcast and their cronies around the world are discriminating against particular applications. Cable will argue that network neutrality should never apply to it – it’s never been treated as a common carrier. But the deception here, the aggressive treatment of consumers promised “unlimited bandwidth,” and the presumption that Comcast (and others) should get to choose winners and losers among online applications – that’s adding up to claims that look like lawsuits. Those lawsuits, in turn, may lead, finally, to legislation. Network neutrality is central to our shared economic future here in the U.S., and the carriers are showing they cannot be trusted.

3. Remember that post about putting the FCC in charge of email? You thought that sounded unlikely, right? Wrong. USAToday is reporting that there’s Congressional interest in pursuing the question. Comments are due 10/25, Thursday, the day after tomorrow. If there was ever a limitless regulatory swamp, it’s the Commission’s interpretation of Title I. There’s been no Congressional delegation of power over email, there are ample ways to deal with consumer protection questions here – lots of choices of email providers – and there is no need for government intervention requiring email forwarding. Just my two cents. (Thanks to Chuck Jackson for the pointer to the USAToday article.)

I wonder what will happen tomorrow. Will a candidate emerge who understands these issues? We need regime change, and fast.

Two great loves

By On October 22, 2007 In music With 2 Comments Permanent Link to Two great lovesPermalink

The Internet may be killing the pop CD, but it’s helping classical music.

I’ll be forever grateful to oboist and impresario James Roe for cluing me in – Alex Ross has a wonderful blog. He’s the music critic of the New Yorker, and to be linked to on his blog is like getting a nod from BoingBoing. Bigger than big. Huge.

I think I discovered pianist Jeremy Denk‘s blog, Think Denk, on my own, but maybe James should get credit for that, too. It’s splendid. Here’s an excerpt from this summer:

Classical music is so often the victim of a haughty love. Or a nerdy one. The other night, after a concert, I was talking with a young man whose enthusiasm was tremendous but whose every expression of this enthusiasm disheartened me in the extreme. He explained to me, smiling, all the reasons why he refers to the various Beethoven Sonatas in various ways … for instance, never “Les Adieux,” but always “Lebewohl,” since “THE goodbye,” he claimed, doesn’t make sense; “Waldstein” is permissible because it is a dedication; he confessed to using “Appassionata,” somewhat guiltily, but it’s OK because it’s Italian (?); but never, EVER, would he use the term “Moonlight” Sonata. I thought to myself, looking in his sincere, sweet eyes, aglow with these distinctions, that this person loves the same music I do, he’s my target audience, I can give something over to him, possibly, pass on some of my love … but at the same time this conversation about titles made me feel like jumping out the window. Probably I was reacting this way because I saw my teen self in his face … I sincerely hope he is not reading this blog entry, but if he is, what apology can I offer: I’m sorry you made me feel like jumping out the window???

Haughty love is worse than nerdy love, though, and it spreads through the apparatus of the classical world, sometimes through maestros pontificating and glorifying on PBS specials, sometimes through critics who adore to condescend, etc. etc. Everyone is guilty; I am terribly guilty; there are so many lurking clichés. All so well-intentioned, like a benevolent squadron of embalmers. So hard to speak of our music in the present tense!

[From a post called Grocery Stores Of the Mind.]

Now I feel all happy and insider-engaged to report Alex Ross has written about Jeremy Denk’s blog, and many other online classical music landscapes, in a superb article in the New Yorker. Lots of people are writing beautifully about classical music in the present tense on the web — Ross says that “Classical-music culture on the Internet is expanding at a sometimes alarming pace.” Bloggers chime in on all possible classical subjects, concerts are immediately uploaded, performers tell us what it’s like to perform – endless.

It’s wonderful. All the haughty love that Denk talks about, all the mysterioso hiding-away-in-amber qualities of this culture (the things that make people call it “classified” music), all that distance melts away online. Classical music is engaging, human, immediate, and often charming, just like the online world as a whole.

Try some of the sources in Ross’s article. See Michael Tilson Thomas educating people about how this music is put together. See all the artists showing you their work, and the groupies blogging wildly about what happened at the opera tonight. This is a lucky, fruitful time for classical music.

Comcast Is Pretending to be You

By On October 19, 2007 In cable, communications policy With 51 Comments Permanent Link to Comcast Is Pretending to be YouPermalink

This AP story makes clear that Comcast is pretending to be part of online conversations in order to frustrate users who want to use particular online applications. This happens all the time in the name of “traffic shaping” — it’s the kind of thing that China does to interfere with internet use. What’s different and important about today’s story is that people have carefully experimented. We can now understand exactly what Comcast is doing.

When you go online and click a link, what you’re doing is sending packets (think individual pages taken from a long, handwritten letter) to a machine connected to the internet. What we call “the internet” is a very simple agreement: machines agree to chunk things into packets and label those packets with unique numbers (think return address and sender’s address). Then those packets travel the best available route to the machine they’re addressed to, and that machine reassembles them.

This agreement to chunk things into packets that self-describe their destination (at a unique global address) is known as TCP/IP. IP, or Internet Protocol, is the addressing scheme — the numbers.

IP doesn’t do anything about accuracy – it doesn’t provide any way to check that all the packets have gotten where they’re supposed to go or that they’re in the right order. That job (roughly speaking) is carried out by the TCP part of this — the Transmission Control Protocol. TCP receives a stream of information from an application (say, your web browser) and divides it into packets. It gives each packet a sequence number. TCP then hands packets to the Internet Protocol for delivery through the network. TCP also opens a “window” for the number of packets that will be sent out – you wouldn’t want to send a zillion packets without acknowledgement that they had been received.

The TCP module at the receiving end of the communication does this acknowledgement job, noting that a particular number of packets have been successfully received. All of this is done very politely, quickly, and electronically — the conversation between the home TCP and the remote TCP is established, an acknowledgement is received, the conversation begins, and sequences of packets are sent. If packets are lost along the way, they’re retransmitted. When an endpoint wants to stop, it lets the other endpoint know that it’s done.

Each header in a TCP-labeled packet (think front of an envelope) has a number of fields. One of these fields includes “flags” that are applied to the packet. One of these flags is called RST, for “reset the connection.”

The Comcast system (probably provided by Sandvine, according to the Times) was setting the RST flag for both sides of any communication that it believed (probably through traffic analysis) was using Bittorrent.

So when “you” the Comcast subscriber were clicking links that were part of a Bittorrent transaction, Comcast was slapping an RST flag on your packets. And any packets crossing the Comcast network that were coming from the “outside” but were part of this conversation were also having the RST flag slapped on them as they crossed into Comcast territory. Neither user had any idea this was happening. They could just tell that things were moving really slowly and then stopping, as both machines politely agreed to reset themselves – thus cutting the conversation off.

It’s as if as soon as you entered a room an enormous “Loser” tag was stuck on your forehead unbeknownst to you. Sure, you could continue to circulate, but no one would talk to you. Or, if that’s too awkward, try this: it’s as if someone else that sounded like you got on the phone as you were talking to your mother and said “We need to hang up right now.”

Like the Verizon/NARAL flap and the Pearl Jam escapade, here’s another story about currently-legal action, permitted under someone’s elaborately-walled Terms of Service, that interferes with basic communications. Comcast will say “we’re not blocking.” But they’re degrading, prioritizing, and filtering, without telling users. And they’re planning to do much more of this.

What’s the solution? Structural separation. You’re either a plain-vanilla transport company serving all comers, or you’re something else competing for our attention. But this mixture, this hybrid of apparent-communication plus editorial control, is unacceptable.

Amateur radio

By On October 18, 2007 In communications policy, radio With 6 Comments Permanent Link to Amateur radioPermalink

I’m slowly but steadily making progress on my amateur radio license project. From the ARRL FCC Rule Book:

Q. Can we sing “Happy Birthday” to our friend on the local 2-meter repeater?

A. No. Singing is music, and is prohibited, no matter how badly you sing.

The reason for this rule (and lots of others) is that the content of the amateur’s communication “must be such that no party would be compelled to use the public telecommunications system to communicate the same information” — in order to protect various revenue flows. Amateur bands aren’t supposed to replace the phone system or the broadcasting network. In the words of the ARRL, “[t]hese rules protect the amateur service from encroachment by commercial news media [and other media] that would use Amateur Radio as an inexpensive alternative to its more expensive systems.”

Hence – no music, and no business communications (or at least no daily business communications). There are certainly exceptions. You can communicate encoded music. “As long as no musical notes can be detected on the air, you’re okay.” You can mention prices for apparatus you want to sell — “but the ‘haggling’ should be handled on the telephone.”

In the early days of radio, there was essentially no limit to the content of amateur messages. That all changed in the 1930s, according to the ARRL, “at the insistence of European governments for whom the telecommunications monopoly was a source of considerable revenue.” It took a while for the FCC to start regulating the content of what amateurs were doing, but starting in 1972 the Commission began prohibiting business communications.

Amateurs are supposed to be dedicated to “advancing of communication and technical skills,” according to the ARRL. The tradeoff: As long as they’re not paid for it, amateurs have a great deal of flexibility in transmitting and receiving.

I found this inspiring: “Dr Hamadoun Toure, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), received his Amateur Radio license October 8. Toure, who holds the call sign HB9EHT, is from Mali. He has a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering from the Technical Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications of Leningrad and a PhD from the University of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics of Moscow.”

(I can hear the Michigan marching band playing ‘Hail to the Victors‘ through my office window. I guess there’s always a need to rehearse. They just better not try doing that on the amateur bands.)

Exciting, huge project: unlearning passivity

By On October 17, 2007 In 10questions, election, internet policy With No Comments Permanent Link to Exciting, huge project: unlearning passivityPermalink

Take a look at 10Questions. This is a huge project to inject interactivity into the Presidential election here in the U.S.

The problem 10Questions is trying to solve: Presidential debates are frustrating. The candidates are busy trying to put across soundbites. The questions are either too narrow or too broad. Voters are stuck praying for a moment of clarity that will guide them. The time simultaneously crawls by and flies by – too much time spent debating too little/too random.

How 10Questions will (attempt to) solve the problem: Anyone can upload a video with a proposed question for the candidates tagged “10questions” to blip.tv or YouTube or any other platform. For the month after that, the rest of us can vote up or down on the question. (Yes, there’s a possibility of ballot-box stuffing, but 10Q will try to deal with that by allowing only one vote per IP address. Yes, that isn’t a perfect answer.) Then the candidates will have a month to answer the question – in video form. Viewers/voters will rate the candidates’ responses.

Why this is a good idea: The web makes it possible for candidates and voters to relate in new, visible ways. It should be lowering barriers of time, distance, inertia, and crowd psychology. None of the candidates, however, is using the web to share power. Their web sites often don’t make clear what their positions are. Sen. Edwards is somewhat schizophrenic in his approach to the web, but generally isn’t doing much that’s innovative. Sen. Clinton started off on a strong note with her video-parody of The Sopranos, but otherwise hasn’t embraced the internet. In March 2007, she proudly announced that she’d be doing some form of frequent online interactive webcast, saying “So let the conversation begin.” The conversation never began, and the webcast page hasn’t been updated since the announcement.

More generally, the candidates aren’t using online collaboration or self-organizing in new ways. They’re not giving any power (or even responding very directly) to those listening to their messages. Instead, they’re using the web as a bulletin board for their traditional campaign ploys: “Volunteer here, and we’ll tell you exactly what to do and what to say.” It’s as if they didn’t learn the lesson of the 2004 Dean campaign, which was the high-water mark for involvement of the public online by a candidate so far. Or maybe they learned too well the lesson that Dean lost.

The 10Questions experiment forces each candidate to do an online “fireside chat” in response to well-tailored, popular questions — a very slow, deliberate online chat session with all of us. This takes advantage of the potential of online video. It could be very interesting.

Open questions. How ingrained is American political passivity? Do people really want to talk to the candidates? Do candidates really want to be talked to? Will people actually upload questions? Will the candidates actually respond?

It’s a start. It’s led by Micah Sifry and Andrew Raseij, and backed by the NYT Editorial Board and MSNBC. (All sponsors listed here.) It’s huge, even if it doesn’t look like it today.

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