Transit
I’m on my way to ICANN’s 33rd meeting, this time in Cairo. I’ll write from there on Monday.
Palo Alto fiber
So this is really interesting: three businesses putting up $30 million to build out the Palo Alto fiber network. They’ll operate it on a wholesale basis, collecting revenue for their coordination work, and they’ll get discounted use of it themselves. The city doesn’t have to pay for any of this service, and in 25 years Palo Alto can buy the network for a dollar. It’ll use standard equipment, so there will be lots of choices of vendors. Not to mention instant access to 100 Mbps connectivity.
And here’s what a city official has to say about this open-access network:
‘There’s a vision that you’re entering into the real 21st century with this kind of capacity,” said Joe Saccio, Palo Alto’s deputy director for administrative services. ‘It’s an economic tool and, hopefully, it can create new kinds of jobs and allow new applications and new software for consumers.’
That’s right: economic development is the reason. Story is here.
(HT: Frank Coluccio)
Google settlement: Changing Defaults
Back in 2004, Google felt quite strongly that its “Book Search” project was a fair use of copyrighted material. It kept pointing out that it wasn’t displaying complete copies of books covered by copyright. Instead, it scanned the material and then displayed snippets from these books in response to queries.
I was persuaded by this argument. It seemed to me that the making of the first copy - the copy needed to generate the snippets - was a necessary step to providing a card catalog, in essence. An incidental copy. The snippets themselves, I thought, were fair because they weren’t supplanting the marketplace for the book. There was no existing marketplace for “licensing-the-copying-of-books-for-use-by-search-engines” at the time that Google started its project. It seemed to me as if the publishers who sued (and perhaps not the authors being published) wanted to be sure to participate in Google’s profits in a way that went far beyond what copyright law would require.
Yesterday’s settlement agreement is remarkable in many ways. It’s a proposed settlement of a civil, private lawsuit, but the agreement feels public. It affects an entire industry, not just the parties concerned. It sets up a new kind of special-purpose collective rights association (h.t. James Grimmelmann), like ASCAP or BMI. Instead of Google acting to create access to a great library of books, it seems to point to the creation of a tremendous bookstore. Perhaps that’s the same thing, but it’s worth thinking about the changed default settings that this arrangement creates.
Here’s a simple default-change: In the original project, Google was scanning in-copyright and in-print books. Although it wasn’t displaying them in full, it was displaying snippets - a few sentences surrounding the sought word.
Now, if I understand the agreement correctly, the default will be that a search triggering a response from an in-copyright, in-print book will lead to bibliographic material. Nothing else will be shown *unless* the publisher affirmatively requests that the book be part of the displayed material. If that happens it will be easy for us to buy the book, we’ll get to see much more of it online than only snippets, and 2/3 of whatever money Google makes from the entire experience will go to the new collective rights organization (the Registry).
That may be all to the good, but it’s a substantial change, and it may affect arguments that other online players want to make about the legality of their content-related activities.
On the other hand, a very positive additional outcome from the settlement is that participating libraries will be able to use complete digital copies of the scanned books. And Google points out that the deal will bring millions of books to light online. Addition on 10/30: Google notes that the default settings are now *better* for in-copyright, *out of print* books, which make up 75% of books - you’ll be able to see 20% of the pages of these books for free, or buy electronic access to the entire book. In general, it is Google’s view that this settlement produces far more public benefit than a victory as to the fair use argument ever could have.
The bottom line: In 2004, Google thought it was shaping its conduct according to the law. But Google’s lawyers also have to shape the working situation in which Google operates. That working situation, from 2004 until yesterday, has involved great bitterness coming from publishers who could otherwise be Google’s allies. The pure legal principle of the fair use argument, weighed against that bitterness and the possibility of a win-win deal, had to defer.
Nov. 4
We have this election next week - but there’s also a big FCC meeting. (Plus the FCC v. Fox argument.)
On the agenda at the FCC: two big wireless mergers, a hugely-complicated set of changes to universal service and intercarrier compensation, and an order in the white spaces proceeding.
All of these things interrelate. Will the Commission confirm in the context of the mergers that its Internet Policy Statement also applies to wireless high-speed internet access (remember the Skype petition)? Will universal service become all about high-speed internet access, with its own openness requirements? Will intercarrier compensation be structured in such a way as to undermine the prospects of those wireless carriers who are trying to merge? Will unlicensed use of the white spaces be allowed - which may provide ways for rural high-speed internet access to be provided without having to rely on existing carriers?
Lots of political deals to be made, probably lots of drafting going on right now - all in the waning days of this administration.
Three things
1. Let’s not forget Sen. Stevens today - the famous video.
2. Great talk by Brian Reich today, with lots of examples of everything-changing. He’s optimistic - if you’ve got great information, great experiences, or great stuff to offer, you’ll be fine, even in these challenging times. But you’d better be using all kinds of technology to reach people. (The population of people in the room who are Twitter users was remarkably small, and almost no one at the talk has a blog. What’s up with that?)
3. White spaces wrangling continues - MSN makes its point, David Reed posts a public message about how things actually work, Michael Calabrese points to the elephant in the room, and the editor of TVNewsday fights back.
White spaces - timing
Last week’s emergency petition by the broadcasters to delay the FCC’s Nov. 4 vote is just part of the white spaces atmosphere right now. Ars Technica reports that the mud is really flying - the broadcasters are accusing proponents of white space use of wanting to kill off television.
It’s a familiar argument - “If you do Y, broadcast television as we know it will be destroyed.” (See Joel Brinkley, Defining Vision.)
Now the broadcasters have made a supplemental filing arguing in favor of drastically reduced power levels for white space devices. They’re saying that using these devices in channels adjacent to existing broadcast channels will “create[ ] the potential for interference to viewers’ DTV sets throughout 77% of a station’s service area.” Their proposal is for far lower power limits, no sole reliance on spectrum sensing (databases of uses would have to be checked - “geolocation”), and for setting aside special channels for wireless mics.
Is the “potential” for interference enough, should it be enough, to stop the FCC from opening up the white spaces to portable unlicensed uses at the power levels it has suggested so far? Harold Feld says no, and asserts that the entire effort is a shameless attempt to run out the clock at the FCC, forcing the entire issue into the lap of the new administration.
It has been six years since the FCC started studying this issue. It does seem as if the matter could be resolved now. We know the FCC’s own engineers have concluded that “spectrum sensing in combination with geo-location and database access techniques can be used to authorize equipment today under appropriate technical standards and that issues regarding future development and approval of any additional devices, including devices relying on sensing alone, can be addressed.” In other words, the prototypes worked well enough for the Commission to go ahead in creating certification standards for actual devices.
The question now is whether the Commission will delay its scheduled Nov. 4 vote. I think it would be a mistake to do so, but I also think that the “broadcast television as we know it” argument has weight with Congress. On the other hand, Sen. Kerry wants the Commission to go ahead, and he’s been a principled and helpful voice on this subject for a long time.
It’s a torrent, a tsunami of lobbying - a river of contestable interference data - a blizzard of references to earlier tens of thousands of filings, a hurricane of imprecations flung from side to side. Lots of disruptive pre-election weather. Rough sledding for all concerned.
Poll watchers needed in Michigan
The Obama campaign is looking for law students and other people to volunteer as poll watchers on election day in Michigan. They need lots of people. Anyone interested needs to attend a two-hour training session. Sign up at my.barackobama.com/milaw.
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While you’re signing up, here’s Gov. Sarah Palin talking to pianist Jeremy Denk about the Hammerklavier sonata.
Attention
I’ve often written here about attention as the key scarce resource. I’m not sure how the rest of you manage it - I feel flooded with interesting, relevant, worthwhile information that I cannot possibly assimilate. It’s compounded by traveling - you just flick through emails in airports, not really working through them, and then they’re all there later. I don’t feel threatened or oppressed by information (I think that reaction could kick in when anxiety was already there, though), but I do feel a little sad that I can’t get to . . much of anything.
As a counterpoint to all the bits and pieces of information swimming by that can’t be seized, plane rides are ideal for taking in a whole essay, an entire piece of a book, an entire draft article. It’s almost too bad that the plane has to arrive, because then it’s all shuffling and waiting and interruption again.
My latest favorite book is The Closed World, by Paul Edwards. Edwards’s focus on the role of institutions and colleagues - social networks, collaboration, personal experiences - in constructing scientific theory is very useful. He’s also big on metaphor.
Because I’m focusing myself on the wonders of open-access fiber networks these days, I’m finding networks of people that are also writing about them. Everyone’s being very generous, sending me links and files. So that’s the social experience of this field right now.
What’s the metaphor for this way of looking at the world of computing? Is it just the open world of collaboration, the guy demo-ing his new Android app, the laughter of the people listening to him? The metaphor for the Cold War research was the all-seeing, all-controlling, closed-world computer. Maybe the metaphor this time is the utility, the useful playing-field - but that’s not very colorful.
Or maybe it’s collective, dreamlike, almost hallucinatory imagination about future possibilities.
No - it’s human communication. In a sense, we’re back to “channels” of communication, but all the noise is helpful and meaningful, not just something to discard. Worth paying attention to.
Abundance
I’m grateful to Frank Coluccio for pointing me to George Gilder’s Fibersphere piece from 1992. I’m spending time these days trying to figure out what an open access fiber optic network would look like.
It’s astonishing what abundance could be unleashed by combining a few components: dark, unlit fiber; a coordinating entity that could ensure that different providers were using different wavelengths to communicate across that fiber; a small box with power and air-conditioning for that coordinating entity to operate in; and modulation schemes taking advantage of different frequencies. That’s it - and then you’d have potentially hundreds of thousands of “channels,” each possibly provided by a different vendor, each carrying the communications of thousands of knowledge-workers. It really would be the end of scarcity. Transmission would be the cheap element - device-manufacturers and coordinating entities would have to leap into innovation mode.
The way Verizon has built up its fiber network doesn’t allow easily for this kind of unbundling, for many reasons. The top reason is that the potential interconnection points (”splitters”) are out in the field, without power or air-conditioning, so no one else can interconnect there. Also the hardware, software, and protocol standards used by this network are hard-wired to Verizon. You could interconnect right near Verizon’s central office, but you’d need a lot of cooperation from Verizon.
I’m just beginning to understand that the architecture chosen by Verizon makes it difficult (if not impossible) to retrofit abundance and open access into their network. The company gets a lot of credit for bringing more fiber to more people. But what tradeoffs are implicitly being made?
The Closed World
That’s the title of a 1996 book by Paul Edwards. It’s about the effect of technology on culture, and the effect of culture on technology - as he puts it, “the social construction of tchnology . . [and] the technological construction of social worlds” - in the context of the Cold War. Edwards provides some background on the research strengths that Americans had before the mindset of the Cold War kicked in:
“The [WWII] effort . . brought about the most radical disciplinary mixing, administrative centralization, and social reorganization of science and engineering ever attempted in the United States.. . Almost as important as the institutional restructuring was the creation of an unprecedented experience of community among scientists and engineers. Boundaries between scientific and engineering disciplines were routinely transgressed in the wartime labs, and scientists found the chance to apply their abilities to create useful devices profoundly exciting.. . Connections formed during World War II became the basis. . for enduring relationships between individuals, institutions, and intellectual areas.”
Interdisciplinarity, community, and a sense of purpose, all driven initially by the need to design better bombing capability.