March 2010

Apple v. HTC: The Plot Sickens

by on March 5, 2010 · 6 comments

I’m quoted briefly in a story today in E-Commerce Times (see “Apple’s Patent Attack:  This Too May be Overhyped” by Erika Morphy) about the patent lawsuit filed this week by Apple against rival mobile device maker HTC.

Apple, of course, produces the iPhone, while HTC makes Google’s Nexus One and other devices that run on Google’s Android operating system.

So right from the start this case looks less like a simple patent dispute and more like a warning shot over Google’s bow.  The two companies are increasingly becoming rivals.  In August of last year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s board.  Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote at the time, “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished….” Continue reading →

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The Real Reason the Google Convictions in Italy are Bad Precedent

by on March 4, 2010 · 0 comments

In interviews last week and this week (see KUOW’s “The Conversation”), I argue that the convictions of three Google executives by an Italian court for “illegal handling of personal data” threaten the future of all hosted content.  More than that, I said that the convictions had a disturbing subtext:  the on-going effort of the Italian government to intimidate the remaining media outlets in that country it doesn’t already control.  (See “Larger Threat is Seen in Google Case” by the New York Times’ Rachel Donadio for the details.)

In Italy and other countries (think of the Twitter revolt following dubious elections in Iran), TCP/IP is quickly becoming the last bastion of a truly free press.   In that sense, the objectionable nature of the video in question made Google an easy target for a prosecutor who wanted to give the appearance of defending human dignity rather than threatening a free press.

In a post that was picked up on Saturday by TechMeme, I explained my position in detail:

The case involved a video uploaded to Google Videos (before the acquisition of YouTube) that showed the bullying of a person with disabilities.

Internet commentators were up-in-arms about the conviction, which can’t possibly be reconciled with European law or common sense.  The convictions won’t survive appeals, and the government knows that as well as anyone.  They neither want to or intend to win this case.  If they did, it would mean the end of the Internet in Italy, if nothing else. Still, the case is worth worrying about, for reasons I’ll make clear in a moment.

But let’s consider the merits of the prosecution. Prosecutors bring criminal actions because they want to change behavior—behavior of the defendant and, more important given the limited resources of the government, others like him.  What behavior did the government want to change here? Continue reading →

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Welcoming Larry Downes to the TLF

by on March 4, 2010 · 4 comments

It’s a great honor and pleasure for me to welcome Larry Downes to the TLF. Larry coined the term “Killer App” in his 1998 book, Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance. He’s written a few great pieces for CNET recently. And you can find our more about him at his website.

His latest book, The Laws of Disruption, was a rare bright spot in a decade of terrible books about technology and revived a venerable tradition of dynamist classics, including his previous book as well as Clayton Christensen’s 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail and Virginia Postrel’s 1999 The Future and its Enemies. The Laws of Disruption expresses both optimism about the capacity of ongoing disruptive innovation to improve our lives and a healthy skepticism about regulation—as Adam noted in his 10 Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2009 review.

Larry’s taught technology law (Northwestern) and business (Chicago, UC-Berkeley) over the years and is currently a nonresident Fellow with the Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society. He’s a terrifically nice guy, a great writer, and a welcome ally in the fight for cyber-freedom.

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My Swan Song Moment: I Will Take Elmo Hostage in the Name of First Amendment Freedoms!

by on March 4, 2010 · 2 comments

But I Don't Love You, Elmo

I have decided what my swan song moment in the field of public policy will be. For some time now I’ve been considering retiring from the public policy world since I am really quite sick of political BS in Washington, but I’ve always wanted to go out in style. So, here’s what I plan to do to end my career next week. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has just announced that he will be delivering a major policy speech outlining how the agency’s new National Broadband Plan will benefit children and families next Friday at 10:30.  According to the press release, the Chairman will be joined by Sesame Street’s Elmo when making the announcement.

So, here’s my plan… I will go to the event , rush the stage as Genachowski goes up with Elmo, grab Elmo, pull out a fake gun, put it to Elmo’s head, and then shout: “Stop regulating the Net and free speech rights now or the Muppet gets it!”

An ugly scene will no doubt follow in which several of my old friends at Common Sense Media, who are co-hosting the event, will try to talk me down from the cliff by asking me hand over the gun and to “think of the children.” But I’ll rush out the back door of the auditorium with Elmo in tow and escape in my getaway car. (I plan to live in mountains in rural Idaho and skim money off of the FCC universal service fund & the E-Rate program since I know how to rig the system from reading years of GAO reports on fraud and abuse of both!)

OK, so you get that this is all sarcasm, right? I don’t want to Secret Service showing up at my door on the grounds that I am threatening a Muppet.  And I certainly don’t want to live in Idaho. But, seriously, what is the deal with politicians appearing with puppets? That’s always freaked me out a bit. I will never forget attending a congressional hearing about children’s television issues back in 1993 and watching a surreal exchange between Rep. Ed Markey and Lamb Chop, the sock puppet.  Really, a woman with a sock on her hand (Shari Lewis) delivered testimony to Congress. No, seriously, it really happened. Check it out: Continue reading →

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A Bailout for Newspapers? The Onion Gang Says NO!

by on March 4, 2010 · 1 comment

Adam says no, as have Sonia and Wayne. Adam and I have pointed out that the FTC might want to think twice about crippling advertising at a time when it’s needed more than ever—before rushing to the kind of media bailout called for by the neo-Marxists at Free Press. The Onion‘s team of leading commentators generally agrees, but points out an under-appreciated dimension of the debate.


How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

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Broadband Availability: The Dog that Didn't Bark

by on March 3, 2010 · 0 comments

I was slow to adopt broadband. So maybe it’s also appropriate that I was slow to read John Horrigan’s highly informative survey on broadband adoption released by the Federal Communications Commission on February 23. Or maybe it’s fortuitous, because the delay let me take a look to see what messages the news media took away from this survey.

Two clear messages appear in the news coverage.  The first is a variant of the screaming headline the FCC put on its own press release: “93 Million Americans Disconnected from Broadband Opportunities.” You’ll find this as the headline or lead paragraph in coverage by the New York Times and AFP.

The second type of message highlights the main reasons one-third of the population does not subscribe to broadband. “FCC Survey Shows Need to Teach Broadband Basics,” notes the headline on an Associated Press story. According to the survey, the three main obstacles to broadband adoption are cost, lack of digital literacy, and non-adopters’ perception that broadband is not sufficiently relevant to their lives.  (I got a chuckle when I saw that non-adopters said they would be willing to pay $25, on average, for broadband; that’s the magic price that finally induced me to give in and sign up!)

But whoa, what’s missing here?  Our old friend Availability. Broadband was supposed to be some kind of noveau public works project that would take hundreds of billions of dollars to bring to fruition, because many Americans lack access to broadband. “Build it and they will come!” “Pour that concrete information superhighway!” “Stimulate the economy!”

The FCC survey tells an interesting story about availability:

Of the … non-adopters, 12 percent say they cannot get broadband where they live. This translates into a 4 percent share of Americans—on the basis of their reports on infrastructure availability in their neighborhood—who say they are unable to obtain broadband because it is not available. This means that 31 percent of all Americans can get service but do not. (p. 5)

The survey also notes that 10 percent of rural respondents say broadband is not available where they live.  I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but that’s all?  Heck, I’d have guessed a higher percentage than that.   

To put the numbers in perspective: 4 percent of Americans say they don’t have broadband because it isn’t available, while almost three times as many — 10 percent — lack broadband because they think the Internet is irrelevant to their lives.

Is availability a problem in some places?  Sure. But the FCC survey shows it isn’t nearly the size of problem we’d been led to believe. So let’s hope the National Broadband Plan’s discussion of availability is similary circumscribed and appropriately targeted.

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testimony at FCC’s Hearing on “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era”

by on March 3, 2010 · 8 comments

Today I am testifying at an FCC hearing on “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era.” [Speaker lineup here.] The purpose of the workshop is to explore:

  • A brief history and overview of policies involving “public interest” requirements for commercial media and telecommunications companies;
  • The state of local commercial broadcast TV and radio news and information; and
  • The impact of media convergence and the emergence of the Internet, mobile technologies, and digital media on FCC media policy.

In my remarks, I focused on “Why Expansion of the FCC’s Public Interest Regulatory Regime is Unwise, Unneeded, Unconstitutional, and Unenforceable.” Down below I have attached my written remarks. Continue reading →

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Innovation at the Core Drives Innovation at the Edge (& Vice Versa)

by on March 3, 2010 · 2 comments

Progress Snapshot 6.6, The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PDF)

Mobile broadband speeds (at the “core” of wireless networks) are about to skyrocket—and revolutionize what we can do on-the-go online (at the “edge”).  Consider four recent stories:

  1. Networks: MobileCrunch notes that Verizon will begin offering 4G mobile broadband service (using Long Term Evolution or LTE) “in up to 60 markets by mid-2012″—at an estimated 5-12 Mbps down and 2-5 Mbps up, LTE would be faster than most wired broadband service.
  2. Devices: Sprint plans to launch its first 4G phone (using WiMax, a competing standard to LTE) this summer.
  3. Applications: Google has finally released Google Earth for the Nexus One smartphone on T-Mobile, the first to run Google’s Android 2.1 operating system.
  4. Content: In November, Google announced that YouTube would begin offering high-definition 1080p video, including on mobile devices.

While the Nexus One may be the first Android phone with a processor powerful enough to crunch the visual awesomeness that is Google Earth, such applications will still chug along on even the best of today’s 3G wireless networks.  But combine the ongoing increases in mobile device processing power made possible by Moore’s Law with similar innovation in broadband infrastructure, and everything changes: You can run hugely data-intensive apps that require real-time streaming, from driving directions with all the rich imagery of Google Earth to mobile videoconferencing to virtual world experiences that rival today’s desktop versions to streaming 1080p high-definition video (3.7+ Mbps) to… well, if I knew, I’d be in Silicon Valley launching a next-gen mobile start-up!

This interconnection of infrastructure, devices and applications should remind us that broadband isn’t just about “big dumb pipes”—especially in the mobile environment, where bandwidth is far more scarce (even in 4G) due to spectrum constraints.  Network congestion can spoil even the best devices on the best networks.  Just ask users in New York City, where AT&T has apparently just stopped selling the iPhone online in order to try to relieve AT&T’s over-taxed network under the staggering bandwidth demands of Williamsburg hipsters, Latter-Day Beatniks from the Village, Chelsea boys, and Upper West Side Charlotte Yorks all streaming an infinite plethora of YouTube videos and so on. Continue reading →

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Misdirected Blame on Internet Companies for Failures in International Affairs & China

by on March 3, 2010 · 5 comments

“With a few notable exceptions, the tech industry seems unwilling to regulate itself. I will introduce legislation that will require Internet companies to take reasonable steps to protect human rights, or face civil and criminal liability.” – Senator Dick Durbin, as reported by the Washington Post.

We hear you, Sen. Durbin. The practices of many nations toward free speech and political dissidents are terribly wrong. But we respectfully and strongly disagree with your statements at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary hearing on global Internet freedom and the rule of law.

The growth of IT companies throughout the world has been an enormous boon to free speech and human rights. Although these technologies present new challenges, particularly when taken together with widely varying laws, they are doing far more good than harm, everywhere that they are deployed.

But if you attended the hearing and knew nothing about the Internet, you’d think that American online companies doing business in China and elsewhere were pure evil – as if they were the ones with the power to not comply with – or change — the criminal laws of other nations.

In particular, Facebook and Twitter were called out for not joining the Global Network Initiative (GNI). The product of more than two years of study and development by companies and public interest groups, the Initiative offers a set of guiding principles for global IT companies doing business in an increasingly global environment.

But while the GNI exposes online companies to new scrutiny, it doesn’t provide any protection from aggressive governments. And at a price tag of $200,000, the GNI isn’t cheap. How effective will it be, really, at changing the practices of totalitarian nations? Continue reading →

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Stats, Stats, & More Stats (@ the Net & Online Media)

by on March 2, 2010 · 0 comments

Very cool little video here by Jess3 documenting Internet growth and activity. Ironically, Berin sent it to me as Adam Marcus and I were updating the lengthy list of Net & online media stats you’ll find down below. Many of the stats we were compiling are shown in the video. Enjoy!

  • 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide as of Sept 2009; an 18% increase from the previous year.[1]
  • 81.8 million .COM domain names at the end of 2009; 12.3 million .NET names & 7.8 million .ORG names.[2]
  • 234 million websites as of Dec 2009; 47 million were added in 2009.[3] In 2006, Internet users in the United States viewed an average of 120.5 Web pages each day.[4]
  • There are roughly 26 million blogs on the Internet[5] and even back in 2007, there were over 1.5 million new blog posts every day (17 posts per second).[6] Continue reading →

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