I’m at the ICANN public meeting in Los Angeles this week. This is my first time at ICANN, so I’m going to be giving you my impressions of the whole thing over the next few days. And there are some interesting cultural, privacy and operational issues that will be considered.
ICANN will vote on how new gTLD (generic top level domain)
names will be added in the future, what to do about the privacy of domain name
registrants regarding the WHOIS process, and how to deal with Internationalized Domain Names, the process of translating names
into such languages as Arabic and Chinese. The later issue is the impetus for
the title of this meeting, “My Name, My Language, My Internet.”
ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers, and is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s
system of domain names (like .org, .museum and country codes like .UK). There are almost 1500 attendees at this meeting in the LAX Hilton. That’s
right, beautiful LAX airport! After past meetings in San
Juan, Lisbon, Sao Paulo, and Marrakech, I get to go to the one
just minutes from LA’s airport. Great.
Vint Cerf opened up the meeting. This is his last meeting as
Chairman of the Board of ICANN. He’s been on the Board for eight years.
Transparency and accountability are still important buzzwords here. Assistant Secretary for Communications at NITA, John Kneur and ICANN’s CEO, Paul Twomey, both spoke to the need for making sure that ICANN is sufficiently open to the public and all stakeholders.
The major topic for today concerns the introduction of new gTLDs to
supplement (or compete against) existing ones like .com, .biz, .mobi, and
.travel. ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization Council (GNSO) has a
proposal for this process. From ICANN’s website:
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If you we’re offered a pill that would cure a disease that afflicted you or a family member or friend, but the pill wasn’t researched or manufactured in the
U.S., would you still take it? Of course you would. Similarly, when it comes to foreign direct investment, we shouldn’t care whether the money comes from a company based in Canada, Japan, or…China.
A Dubai Ports-like
brouhaha could well be brewing in the IT industry, involving 3Com and
an IT company from China. In September, Boston-based Bain Capital
announced that it had entered into an agreement to purchase 3Com Corporation,
a U.S. seller of network and security products. The purchase would
include a limited financial stake for 3Com’s largest customer, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., a private China-based technology company.
Money and capital act a lot like people…they go to where they’re most welcome, and stay where they’re rewarded. This was one of the messages I tried to convey when speaking yesterday at the Heartland Institute‘s Emerging Issues Forum in Chicago.
To make money more welcome in the U.S., but to still be able to review foreign investments for legitimate national security concerns, we have a review process called CFIUS. You don’t have to say "gesundheit" after saying CIFIUS, and don’t be confused by the STD with a similar sounding name. CIFIUS stands for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. President Reagan established this review process to provide a predictable, nonpartisan and depoliticized process. Unfortunately, as Dubai Ports shows, these things can and do get political.
But our country needs foreign money.
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I felt like I was reading a story from the future when I read this lead from a news article about a Microsoft exec. pleading why desktop software is still relevant:
A top Microsoft executive defended desktop application software, the
source of the company’s revenue for three decades, arguing on Tuesday
that even services-based companies such as Google still need it.
But then I just realized that I’m old, and time and the competitive software marketplace has moved quickly the past few years.
Nevertheless, I’m so intrigued by all the new business models that are vying for both the business customer and consumers like you and me that I’m currently writing a paper on it. My public policy bent is nuanced, but relevant: do new business models (not a single technology, not a specific technology, but a particular way of doing business like licensing, services, ad-based) need a regulatory helping hand to compete? I’m talking about interoperability mandates, spectrum auction rules, standards…you get the drift. Of course, I’m going to have to say that even if you can think of a reason for antitrust regulation, FCC intervention, etc., there are countervailing reasons against government regulation that are likely more compelling. Back to paper writing….
It appears that Senator Lamar Alexander has a different tactic in his
opposition to a federal prohibition of the states ability to tax Internet
access (he’s been an ardent with his states’ rights rhetoric in the past).
In support of a temporary ban, not a permanent one, he’s
saying that it’s in the public interest that Congress periodically review the
ban so that it can keep up with new technologies. He even says that "since
the moratorium was enacted in 1998, we’ve extended it twice while changing the
law substantially to meet changing technology." Um, not really.
The Senator has it backwards about why we had to revise the
moratorium twice. It’s not to update the law for new technologies.
Instead, it’s to close loopholes that states have used to tax what the
Moratorium said they could not tax.
Note this excerpt from the House Judiciary Committee report:
While it is true that Congress has made changes to the law
virtually every time it has extended the moratorium, those changes have largely
been directed at preventing states from circumventing the law….For
example, the definition of ‘‘Internet access’’ was modified in 2004 to prevent
states from taxing Internet access providers that purchase capacity over wire,
cable, fiber to connect end-users to the Internet backbone. That definition is
modified again in this bill, also to ensure that States do not tax the Internet
backbone. Why does Congress have to make this change again? Because eight
States (AL, FL, IL, MN, MO, NH, PA, WA)
continue to tax the Internet backbone, despite Congress’ clear admonitions
to the contrary.
Now’s also a good time to remind the Senator that rural
areas of Tennessee aren’t going to get the next generation of broadband
buildout if new taxes suppress consumer demand. Here’s why:
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I’d like to invite TLF readers to a lunch panel discussion next Tuesday at noon on copyright law and space shifting – and for the geek in you, live demonstrations of the Slingbox, Apple TV, and a Windows Media Center tied to the XBox 360.
Space shifting
includes such activities as copying music from a CD to an MP3 file for use on a
portable player or watching your local television broadcast on a computer
located outside your home. Essentially it’s using digital content on a device other than
the one for which it was originally intended. We’ll discuss space
shifting, its legal implications (including how/if litigation between wary parties can be avoided) and suggestions for continued success in
bringing consumers cool stuff.
The
lunch discussion will feature Morgan Reed and Debbie Rose of ACT (Debbie was on last week’s TLF podcast about file sharing), Gigi
Sohn of Public Knowledge, and Patrick Ross of the Copyright Alliance.
Details: 12:00 noon, Tuesday, October 23,
2007, B340 House Rayburn. email or RSVP to
mmoskal at actonline dot org
Online social networking sites are again in the news. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said on Monday his office is investigating Facebook for allegedly not keeping young users safe from sexual predators and not responding to user complaints. Cuomo joins fellow AGs Roy Cooper from North Carolina and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut among activist AGs parading the horribles of social networking websites.
Law enforcement and industry efforts are important, but what’s the single most effective way to keep kids safe online? Education. And at least one state AG gets it, as Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has this to say on online safety:
“While it is certainly important to have stronger laws against Internet sex predators and child pornography, education for Internet users of all ages is paramount,” said McCollum. “Parents and children alike must be more aware of the dangers often encountered online and understand and employ basic safety tips for surfing the Internet.”
Students everywhere are back in their classrooms and beginning to tackle familiar subjects like math, reading, science and social studies. But how many students will receive classroom education about the importance of Internet safety? Hardly any—even in light of a growing concern about the safety of chat rooms and social networking sites.
Unlike summer breaks of the past, where kids would anxiously yearn for the social scene of classrooms and hallways, today kids can easily keep in touch online all summer long. Social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Xanga allow teens to stay in regular contact with their classmates during summer vacation. Ninety-six percent of teenagers use some form online social networking technologies, which also include instant messaging and chat forums.
Yet there’s a surprising lack of online safety education in our nation’s classrooms. Only a few states require that online safety education be taught in school. Last year Virginia became the first state to pass a law that mandates the integration of internet safety into their regular instruction. Yet over half of school districts pursue a prohibition—not an education—strategy by banning the use of social networking sites while on school property, according to a recent study from the National School Boards Association.
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I want Microsoft’s
market share to diminish to significantly less than 95%. I can’t say that it
has to be precisely 50% or whatever number, but it has to be significantly
less than 95.
– Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Competition Policy
Today’s decision from the European Court of First Instance
affirms the broad role that competition policy has in Europe.
You can slug through the lengthy court opinion, but these press conference
Q&A comments of Neelie Kroes (including the above quote) are revealing.
They show the true intent of the European Commission’s competition policy
regulators: competition policy is about
micromanaging software development and dictating market evolution.
Here’s the largest buzzword from both Kroes and the EC’s
press statement: interoperability. Again, a quote from Kroes, this time from
her prepared statement:
In confirming the interoperability part of the Commission’s decision, the
Court has confirmed the importance of interoperability for consumer choice and
innovation in high tech industries. If competitors are unable to make their
products "talk to" or work properly with a dominant company’s
products, they are prevented from bringing new innovative products onto the
market, and customers are locked into the products of the existing provider.
Sure, interoperability is often an important feature of IT
— if it’s market-driven. Otherwise,
it smacks of the sort of “infrastructure socialism” that Adam Thierer and Wayne
Crews have cataloged in their book.
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What is the best way to promote the creation and adoption of new software and communications technologies? That was the weighty second panel of ACT‘s day-long innovation session at the Economic Forum 2007 in Krynica, Poland.
All panelists agreed that the future of software innovation is a mixed one – a combination of both open and proprietary licensing. According to, the panel’s moderator, ACT’s Chairman Mike Sax, we see mixed use today and we’ll see it tomorrow.
Petri Peltonen, (Director General, Technology Department, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Finland) emphasized that innovation performance is crucially dependent on strengthening investment in and the use of new technologies by both the public and private sectors. Information and Communication Technologies provide the backbone for the knowledge economy and account for around half of the productivity growth in modern economies.
As one the open source community’s chief advocates, Larry Rosen was on his game. He called the development of open source software the result of community-driven meritocracy. And in response to a question, he professed that he didn’t see problems with legislation that would mandate procurement preferences.
Should there be a limited or expansive role for government regulation and subsidies of ICT? Government shouldn’t be prescribing fixed mandates in such a dynamic industry, said Piotr Stryszowski, an economist at the OECD (who emphasized he was speaking on his and not his employer’s behalf). Piotr is helping conduct an important OECD study on the drivers for software innovation.
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There are two related articles in today’s papers that – one on technology and the other on yesterday’s Microsoft antitrust hearing. A New York Times article discusses thin client computing, a technological development that will provide new competition to traditional PCs and desktop software. And a Washington Post article describes how a group of six states and the District yesterday asked a judge to extend the terms of Microsoft’s antitrust settlement through 2012.
The more I read about the state AG request for continued oversight of the Microsoft antitrust consent decree, the more I’m convinced that they’re engaging in political grandstanding instead of sound legal principles.
Quoting from the Post:
Kollar-Kotelly said that its [the consent decree’s] effectiveness should not be measured by
Microsoft’s market share, because the 2002 decree did not specifically
set out to reduce Microsoft’s dominance. Its intent was to correct
Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices, she said.
Remember that in the U.S. monopolies are not per se illegal – just the illegal maintenance of a monopoly. But Microsoft’s desktop dominance is far from secure. Quoting from the Times:
The business strategy behind the thin-client push is different than it
was a decade ago. Today, thin computing is not part of an
anti-Microsoft crusade. The technology has “matured, by and large,
around delivering the Microsoft desktop experience remotely,” said Tad
Bodeman, the global director of Hewlett-Packard’s thin-client business.
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Today Judge Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge in charge of quarterly reviews of Microsoft’s consent decree compliance will hold a conference in Washington, DC. But remove any visual images you have of a court, with wood paneling and expensive suits – instead, thanks to State AGs and Google, this review process is beginning to look like a three-ring circus.
A new ACT paper describes the changes in the PC software market and why it’s appropriate to let the Consent Decree expire. Microsoft’s largest competitors are now simply using the consent decree process as a way to trip up the company at every turn. Competitors like Google, Symantec, and Adobe have all used the system to file nuisance complaints that have slowed Microsoft’s ability to deliver new features.
It’s time for this review process to end, because this antitrust case is sooooo 1990s.
Innovation and competition—driven by applications that harness the power of the latest technologies—continue to transform the landscape of the software industry. The on-demand model has risen to challenge thick-client desktops from Microsoft, Apple, and Linux.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.