http://twitter.com/supernova2008
Yahoo Pipe:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=055fe30a2c9cbcfc197e494d6db2885a
ICANN Wednesday
The Board is being heavily lobbied to enhance Business/ISP/IP votes on the new GNSO Council. I was a member of the working group that has suggested parity between noncommercial and business users as members of that body. It seems to me that equality is a strong and appropriate reason to take this step. There will be a lengthy transition period to strengthen the noncommercial presence in the GNSO, which I think is needed.
Meanwhile, the lobbying continues.
Wednesday was all about committee meetings for the Board in the morning, more discussion of GNSO improvement, more conversations, then the public forum.
ICANN Tuesday
This is Constituency Day. The members of the ICANN Board roam around going to meetings. Right now I’m in the meeting between the Governmental Advisory Committee and the ICANN Board. It’s a big, echoing room with a huge horseshoe seating arrangement and many many microphones. Government representatives speak slowly and calmly - they have lots of time.
Earlier today I spent a long time with the generic top-level-domain registries group (after breakfast with the cross-constituency group, made up of ISPs, IP interests, and business interests).
It’s a long day, and it’s only about half done.
The big issues are really thorny this time - approving “recommendations” for new gTLDs, when there are still lots of details to be understood about how they will be implemented; approving a “fast track” for new internationalized domain names associated with ISO-3166, when there are still even more details to be thought through; and approving improvements to the GNSO in the midst of furious lobbying efforts. The question presented to the Board is, in all three cases, whether to approve “recommendations” that then will be “implemented” later. But, particularly when it comes to the “fast track” and new gTLDs, the details of implementation matter a great deal, and those details won’t be final when the Board is asked to say yes or no. What’s “policy” and what’s “implementation” seems to be a pretty grey area.
And the lobbying - it’s fierce. Lots of threats of various kinds. (Not personal, so far at least.)
ICANN Monday
The public participation page is here: http://par.icann.org
It’s clear to me that Kieren McCarthy and Paul Levins are doing all they can to make it easy for people to follow what’s going on - including, on Wednesday, making the scribes’ feed (the scrolling text of what’s being said) available.
This morning Eric Besson, a French Minister responsible for Forward Planning, Assessment of Public Policies, and Development of the Digital Economy, spoke to a large crowd. He’s particularly focused on the IPv4-v6 transition, the development of multilingual top-level-domains, the initiation of new generic TLDs, and ICANN’s institutional future. Viviane Reding made a short speech via video, noting the importance of neutral internet access as well as the importance of government involvement in policymaking for TLDs.
For me, the big issues this week are the structural questions surrounding new IDNs associated with the ISO-3166 list, the planned improvements to the GNSO, and the GNSO’s recommendations about how to select new gTLDs. We have a substantial agenda. Today’s workshop about the new IDN TLDs suggested a number of technical and policy questions - the policy development is moving quite quickly (this draft is under review), and we’ll see if all of this can be resolved this week. It’s useful that the names being chosen have to meaningfully represent the name of the territory. It looks as if UNESCO or a similar body will decide whether the name is in fact meaningful in this respect. What obligations will the manager have? That’s still a subject to be discussed.
On the new gTLD front, the Recommendation that has me stumped is famous in ICANN circles:
Strings must not be contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law.
All comments welcome. More tomorrow.
FISA
At four euros/half hour for internet access, I won’t be writing much today - but thank goodness for Sen. Leahy:
“I have said since the beginning of this debate that I would oppose a bill that did not provide accountability for this administration’s six years of illegal, warrantless wiretapping,” said Leahy. “This bill would dismiss ongoing cases against the telecommunications carriers that participated in that program without allowing a judicial review of the legality of the program. Therefore, it lacks accountability measures that I believe are crucial.”
More from ArsTechnica. Good luck to everyone involved today.
ICANN Paris starts tomorrow. I’ll write here when I can.
Great things at/via TheyWorkForYou.com
Take a look at TheyWorkForYou.com.
Now look at OpenAustralia.org.
Look familiar? Indeed, look identical?
This happened (as I understand it) with the blessing of TheyWorkForYou. It’s a movement! It’s crossing the globe! Very exciting.
Another great thing happening at TheyWorkForYou is crowd-sourced video-marking. It’s quite impressive - and so simple. The problem: lots of video of parliamentary sessions, hours and hours of it. Lots of transcripts of parliamentary sessions - not necessarily accurate. Very hard to get to precisely the comments on the video that you want to see for a particular issue etc., much less compare that video to the transcript.
So TheyWorkForYou gets people to thump a red button when a certain speech starts. Thousands of people are helping out. This way, the content TheyWorkForYou provides is getting more and more useful for everyone.
And the genius move, appealing to our competitive side:
You can start matching up speeches with video snippets right away, but if you take 30 seconds to register a username then we’ll log every speech that you match up and recognise your contribution on our “top timestampers” league table. We’ll send out mySociety hoodies to the top timestampers - they’re reserved exclusively for our volunteers as a badge of honour.
It’s like the NASA crater-labeling activity - but much more immediately useful for everyone. Plus prizes.
I understand Tom Steinberg of TheyWorkForYou is coming to PdF next week - yet another reason to show up, provided there are any seats left.
HT Kevin Marks.
Supernova2008 wrap-up talk
Noshir Contractor of Northwestern:
“When you want to find out more about some person or some thing, or some concept, what do you do?” Will you Google your question, or go to a web site you know about, or a person? And if you find out who is an expert, will you go ask that person - or the lovable fool? We’re really interested in the social motivation of searchers… and how we can embed those kinds of motivations into search tools.
Lots of social drivers for creating and sustaining communities. Lots of projects investigating those social drivers. Demonstrates searching from particular perspectives - not just expertise, but relationship between searcher and searched. (If I know someone, he is more likely to return my call.) Maybe search can be improved.
“As we think about multidimensional networks, let’s use social relationships in order to enhance search.”
Supernova 2008
This is the first time I’ve been able to attend Supernova, and it seems like a fine conference. It’s all being made available online:
Conversation Hub:
http://www.conversationhub.com
Live video stream:
http://www.mogulus.com/supernova2008
IRC Chat:
irc://irc.freenode.net/supernova2008
Twitter feed:
http://twitter.com/supernova2008
http://twitter.com/supernova2008
In a back-and-forth this afternoon between David Morin of Facebook and Kevin Marks of Google, Morin said that FB had “turned off” Google’s Friend Connect application because it was a violation of FB’s Terms of Service. Morin also said that that FB wants to make sure that privacy settings applied to FB data travel with that data, even if those settings change. When asked by Marks how the Friend Connect service violated the TOS precisely, Morin declined to respond. The violation was “a legal matter,” he said, and “our representatives are talking.”
Also, this afternoon, Joi Ito made clear that he thinks of Creative Commons as a standard, like TCP/IP. And Chris Sacca of Google made clear that the thing to worry about is the physical infrastructure layer and the control that gatekeepers (increasingly, wireless companies) have - and that we’re asleep at the wheel.
A good day.
Bit caps, consolidation, and Clearwire
The news that Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T are all considering capping use of their networks - so that “overuse” would trigger a charge - has prompted intense discussion of just why these network operators are moving in this direction. One camp suggests that these operators have to do *something* to manage congestion, and because any protocol-specific discrimination plan raises howls of protest from the Net Neutrality side of the fence adopting bit-usage discrimination schemes is inevitable. It’s the least-bad approach, following this view.
The Net Neutrality side, for its part, points out that (1) each of us will fall into the 5% of “over-users” at some point or another, (2) the operators want to make sure that they remain the chief sources of video content, rather than allowing internet access to video undermine their business plans, and (3) it seems odd to manage to scarcity rather than invest in improved access for everyone. It’s as if the operators would prefer to keep internet access expectations at 2003 levels. And if you really wanted to manage congestion you’d charge differently for usage at different times. (Meanwhile, Korea.)
People in countries with experience in volume limits (e.g., Australia) tell us that it’s miserable having fixed caps and overage charges. In Japan, they began with expensive metered access and left it as soon as they could move towards an unbundled/separated regime - now costs are low (and flat) and speeds are very high.
Bit caps are portrayed as similar to familiar cellphone models - getting a “bucket of minutes” for a fixed price. But the history of internet usage hasn’t proceeded that way, and it should be hard to force users into these plans. Should be - but may not be, both because users here in the US don’t expect to be able to access enormous amounts of video online at high speeds, and because users don’t have a lot of choices for network provision. If most of the big ones move in the bit-cap direction there will be few opportunities for users to vote with their subscription fees and escape.
Speaking of “most of the big ones,” the big ones may get bigger. Verizon’s purchase of Alltel will mean that two companies - AT&T and Verizon - will “control 150 million of the 260 million wireless customers in the US.” (From Public Knowledge.) Verizon will have 80 million of those customers alone. All around the world, wireless providers are consolidating as they seek to “become national players in next-generation mobile networks.”
So here we are: a retrograde move towards metered pricing, increased consolidation, and no necessary link between any of this activity and better internet access for everyone.
The Sprint/Clearwire transaction seems like a possible work-around (thanks to those of you who sent me the filing from last week - I still can’t link to it but I will when it’s available). Their claim is that they’ll create “a new nationwide advanced wireless broadband network that will increase competition across the country and vault the US into a leadership position in the broadband innovation and deployment.” They’re planning to provide speeds that are five times as fast as current wireless speeds, as they roll out the “world’s first nationwide WiMAX network.” (It’s always good to appeal to our national pride.) They’re planning to allow wholesale access - although perhaps only by the cable investors in the plan, Comcast and Time Warner. (There’s a vague mention of other unaffiliated firms, but no assertion that just anyone will be allowed to re-sell their network.) Now, they’re not giving up on “reasonable network management” or “no devices that harm our network.” But they’re asserting that wireless access is the future, that it’s the fastest-growing segment of the US telecom industry, and that a new competitor is needed.
There are worries - will the $3.2 billion from the investors be enough to make a nationwide network possible? Will the technology actually work - penetrate walls, go through anything? What about backhaul problems? Backhaul may be the big unexplored issue here - without a line taking all of those WiMAX communications somewhere, they won’t succeed, and those lines are controlled by incumbents who don’t have any incentive to charge market prices. Because there isn’t a market.
So that’s today’s picture. Head-scratching about bit caps, intense consolidation, and the glimmer of a possibility that a “third pipe” might emerge. It all ties together, because without the cooperation of the incumbent network operators (the people who feel bold enough, market-powerful enough, to float metered pricing), the third pipe may not have a realistic chance of succeeding.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world watches US wireless policy closely.
Sprint/Clearwire WiMAX promises
Nate Anderson has a story here about details of the Sprint/Clearwire plan. His piece refers to a petition for “permission to merge the 2.5GHz spectrum assets of Sprint and Clearwire into ‘New Clearwire,’” and I’ve just spent some time looking for that petition. If you have a copy, could you send it to me?
Only the good parts
Maybe you’ve avoided Wagner operas - and, in particular, the Ring cycle - because the plots seem silly and the singers plant themselves in the middle of the stage and sing steadily without moving much for extraordinarily long periods of time.
What if someone put together all the exciting and moving bits in one piece? It would be like kicking the record player so the the needle jumped to the good parts.
That’s what I saw tonight at Carnegie Hall, with the NY Philharmonic’s performance of Lorin Maazel’s The Ring Without Words. Maazel conducted without a score. He seemed agile, distinguished, and magisterial - a fine combination for a conductor, and an even better combination for a conductor leading his own work. He had a tremendous brass section, several harps, and a fabulous percussion team in front of him. (I was drawn tonight to the cymbal player, who managed to convey several different levels of cymbal fervor with confident accuracy and beautiful sound.) And strings - the front desk players were all shining tonight.
“It was fun” doesn’t really convey how this evening went, but it *was* fun. Here is Maazel’s description:
I was intrigued by the challenge: could a symphonic synthesis of the Ring reveal the essentials of its code? I bolted the following list of criteria to my drawing board:
ONE: The synthesis must be free-flowing (no stops) and chronological, beginning with the first note of Rheingold and finishing with the last chord of Götterdämmerung.
TWO: The transitions must be harmonically and periodically justifiable, the pacing contrasts commensurate with the length of the work.
THREE: Most all of the music originally written for orchestra without voice must be used, adding those sections with a vocal line essential to a synthesis and only where the line is either doubled by an orchestral instrument, “imaginable” or, in the rare instance, when it can be reproduced by an instrument.
FOUR: Every note must be Wagner’s own.
Say you’re bored by baseball. Wouldn’t it be great if you could see just the highlights, seamlessly flowing from one to the next? You would like this piece.
The warm applause seemed to be in thanks for Maazel’s entire career as well as for this particular piece. My companions were very impressed that a 78-year-old had carried off the performance without a score. Ah, that’s nothing for him - he had his debut at nine, with the Interlochen orchestra at the 1939 World’s Fair. I’ve seen a picture of him at that age that I wish I could show you, but I can’t find it online. Just imagine a very intense and mature boy; now imagine a tan, fit, confident conductor. He is having a good life, it seems, and he’s given us all the good parts.