Although I’m not sure their deal with BitTorrent Inc. means much (since BT Inc. is a company, not the protocol), I’m glad to see Comcast finally embracing a network management scheme that is reasonable, transparent, and easy to understand:
“In the event of congestion, the half percent of people who are overutilizing an excessive amount of capacity will be slowed down subtly until capacity is restored,” the chief technology officer for Comcast, Tony G. Werner, said. “For the other 99.5 percent, their performance will be maintained exactly as they expect it.
How can anyone argue with that? It sounds vaguely familiar, almost as if I’d made the suggestion five months ago. What took them so long?
That all said, the FCC continues its investigation of the Comcast kerfuffle, having opened an official probe in January. What I’ve been asking myself is, what law or rule exactly does the FCC think they would enforce against Comcast? I certainly can’t think of any.
Well, if a recent letter from Comcast to the FCC (PDF) is any indication, it seems like the Commission might be considering enforcing the Internet Policy Statement. That statement outlines a set of nondiscrimination principles, and was adopt along with (and apart from) the order that classified DSL broadband as an information service in 2005. The Comcast letter makes is clear that the policy statement does not have the force of law and can’t be enforced against the company. Money quote:
[I]t is settled law that policy statements do not create binding legal obligations. It was universally understood, as the contemporaneous statements of [Chairman Martin], Commissioner Copps, and then-Wirelince Bureau Chief Navin all explicitly recognized, that the Internet Policy Statement did not create enforceable rules. Indeed, the Internet Policy Statement expressly disclaimed any such intent.
Boy, so familiar again. Almost as if I’d written the exact same thing in a comment to the FCC’s broadband industry practices proceeding 10 months ago (PDF). Check it out for a detailed explanation of why the Statement is not binding, but it boils down to this: It was not adopted after a notice-and-comment rulemaking; the FCC can’t just issue rules out of thin air.
Better late than never, here are my thoughts on the FCC’s auction for the D Block public safety band. There was only one bid for the block, Frontline Wireless to shut down, and some are even suggesting improprieties. Sadly, we’ve got a long way to go before we have an operating public safety network. Why did the D Block auction fail? I think at root the problem is that the FCC simply placed too many restrictions on the would-be licensee, and that’s something the FCC should keep in mind as it considers what to do next.
Under the D Block’s service rules the commercial licensee must come to an agreement with the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (which is the licensee for the adjacent public safety spectrum) about the details of the network to be built. If it doesn’t come to an agreement, the FCC can impose whatever requirements it sees fit on the licensee, and if the licensee surrenders its license or has it taken away, they must pay a forfeiture penalty that can run into the millions. Because there are no similar penalties for the non-profit PSST to come to agreement, this allows the PSST to basically dictate the terms of the network. Why would anyone bid for the privilege to be a part of that deal?
Sadly, Chairman Martin doesn’t seem to get this. He recently lamented the fate of the D Block:
“Did we get everything perfect in it? Obviously not because no one was willing to end up taking on that burden,” Martin conceded. “So, do I wish that someone was willing to take on that burden? Yes. And do we need to restructure it in such a way that someone is willing to take on that burden? Absolutely. But absent somebody else coming up with some idea to solve this, this is the only way to solve what’s really a public-safety crisis.”
Instead of expecting some selfless corporation to “take on the burden” of such a thankless deal, why not try instead to create a license aligned with the interests of both the private sector (profit) and public safety (cheap and interoperable communications solutions)? Here’s my recipe:
- Get rid of the PSST, a bureaucracy more than prone to capture that will do nothing but hold a commercial licensee hostage.
- Take the spectrum now held by the PSST and combine it with the D Block. Create two national licenses on the combined spectrum so as to inject competition and avoid a monopoly provider.
- Place public safety obligations on each of those licenses but allow the licensees to lease excess capacity. What sort of obligations? Obviously public safety should have priority, and leased access would only be secondary. Beyond that, the FCC could include minimum performance standards in the licenses to ensure that the networks are built to public safety standards without having to prescribe specific technologies or methods.
- Auction the licenses without reserve prices.
There are no doubt more than a few hurdles for such a plan to overcome, but I think it makes sense to allow market forces develop public safety networks. I’d love to hear any critiques of this idea. No doubt I’ll be submitting a comment to the inevitable rulemaking on this issue and it would help me to figure out the weaknesses of this scheme.
I’ve been meaning to plug this here for a while and this week seems like the perfect time. Cord Blomquist and I have been producing a podcast called In Conversation that might be up your alley. We bill it as a weekly show for nerds and while it’s not focused on tech policy, we talk a lot of tech and other related geekery.
In this week’s episode we’re joined by another TLF contributor, Tim Lee, and we discuss the sneaky Safari update for Windows, whether the stimulus payment is a welfare check, Twitter and other low-intensity and low-cost web technologies, Cord’s mystery conference, FriendFeed vs. Facebook and open vs. closed, the viability of Mahalo.com, Clay Shirky’s new book Here Comes Everybody, distributed campaign phone banks (really amazing), and hipster hating.
I hope you’ll give it a listen, and if you like it you can subscribe in iTunes or via RSS.
I’m seeing more and more people joining Twitter and I thought I’d share a few thoughts about it. My initial reaction to Twitter was skepticism, but I became a convert after I subscribed to Clay Shirky’s feed and received a tweet from him a couple hours later about his talk in D.C. that I would have never known about. That was useful, and since then I’ve found Twitter more and more useful.
First of, I’d like to explain what it is for the sake of those who don’t know. I’ll do so by way of video:
http://www.youtube.com/v/ddO9idmax0o&hl=en
The first thing to note is that Twitter is a classic example of network effects because its usefulness increases relative to the number of users on it. Its usefulness also increases exponentially when people you know and care about make there way onto it. The network seems to be growing in concentric circles and while it’s been dominated by the elite digerati in Silicon Valley so far, it seems to be making its way to DC now.
The video presents Twitter as a way to let people know what you’re doing at the moment. In fact, Twitter itself suggests that you use the service to answer the question, “What are you doing?” But if we took that literally, like some do, Twitter would truly be dull: “Going to the bank,” “Eating ice cream,” “Going to sleep.” Alex King suggests that the “what are you doing” question be replaced with the imperative, “Say something interesting.” In practice that’s what most people have done.
My friend Julian Sanchez uses Twitter mostly to announce at which bar he is currently so that anyone nearby who gets his tweet on a mobile phone can drop in an join him for a drink. I’m sure people join him who otherwise wouldn’t have. Blogger Robert Scoble uses it to crowdsource. Recently he was scheduled to interview the CFO of Amazon on stage before a conference. He’s got about 13,000 people in his network and he asked them what he should ask the CFO. He got back many insightful questions he would never have thought up himself. (As an aside, I’m curious if you know of other innovative uses. Post in the comments.)
Ultimately the best thing about Twitter is that it’s a different experience for each user. You only see the tweets of the people you follow. If someone’s not your cup of tea, you can silently boot them. The result is a stream of interesting stuff that only gets more useful as more people you know get on it. In the short while I’ve been on it I’ve been pointed to more interesting article, sites, and videos than I could have imagined. Give it a whirl… and follow me!
Over at Techdirt (and here on TLF), Tim Lee takes issue with my post suggesting that Wikipedia should consider selling ads instead of asking for donations. He has a good point, which is that right now the only reason to volunteer to work for Wikipedia is because you’re passionate about it, but that might change if money became involved. But I think Tim overstates his case:
Being a member of the Wikipedia board would no longer be a thankless exercise in public service, but would be a relatively glamorous opportunity to direct hundreds of thousands of dollars to one’s pet causes. Over time, the senior leadership positions would be sought out by people who are more excited about doling out largesse than editing an encyclopedia.
I’m not sure why that would be the case. By that rationale we could never have large philanthropic foundations because they would attract self-interested directors. As long as their actions are transparent and they are accountable to the wikipedians, I don’t see why the money couldn’t be directed for the benefit of Wikipedia. And if the directors enjoy some vicarious “glamour” as a result, then I think that’s a fine reward for hard work—it might even attract better candidates than are interested today.
Since it’s Sunshine Week I’ll stress that the key is transparency. And Tim is right on this point, too: institutions matter. Right now Jimmy Wales is taking some heat for conducting his Wikipedia business in a less than transparent manner. If that’s how Wkipedia is going to operate, them perhaps money will corrupt it and Tim is right that “there’s no reason to think an institution built to edit an encyclopedia is going to have any special competence to oversee the spending of millions of dollars.” Still, I guess I’m just more optimistic about what the Wikipedia community is capable of.
P.S. Yeah, I love Twitter! Check me out at twitter.com/jerrybrito.
I’ve started to force myself to use Twitter to see if I can discover why people find it so compelling. Well, yesterday, after UPS delivered Clay Shirky’s new book, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” I decided to subscribe to Shirky’s tweets. Lo and behold, a few hours later I get this tweet from Shirky: “Getting ready for a talk tomorrow at New America Foundation in DC.” I had no idea he would be in town. Twitter is actually useful.
So, I attended the talk at the New America Foundation. It was based on his book, which looks at the how new online tools of conversation and collaboration (like Twitter) are affecting society. I took notes and thought I’d share them here. Be warned they’re more or less chicken scratch, but they should give you a flavor for his ideas. They’re after the jump.
Continue reading →
I’ve had an itch for a while now, and this week I finally scratched it.
See, like lots of tech geeks, I depend heavily on RSS feeds for my data intake–whether it’s news, blogs, package tracking, following forum discussions, or keeping up with friends on Facebook or Flickr, I love feeds. One thing was sorely missing, though. I wanted to subscribe to a feed of the FCC’s docket and be alerted each time the Commission issued a new proposed rulemaking or other notice.
The FCC’s website certainly doesn’t offer such a thing, as I’ve previously lamented. Recently, I praised Regulations.gov for finally adding an RSS feed to the site. Unfortunately, it was only one feed, containing every notice from every agency. Not very useful to an individual.
The cool thing about structured data, as I explain in my recent paper on e-transparency, is that independent third parties can take a feed and manipulate it to make it more interesting and useful. So, I took my own advice and threw together a new site, OpenRegulations.org.
Basically it’s an alternative interface to the Regulations.gov database. Stripped down, simple, and (I’d argue) elegant. More importantly, though, it offers RSS feeds for each regulatory agency on an agency-by-agency basis. Here are notices from just the FCC, for example. Check it out and please spread the word.
For someone who’s portrayed as an economic reformer that understands, for example, why a 35-hour workweek is a disastrous idea, French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s newly announce plan to tax Internet connections to subsidize television is quite shocking. From the IHT:
But France, like other countries around the world, is struggling to find ways to keep cultural industries, like video and music, afloat at a time when their traditional audiences are waning.
Sarkozy, proposing “a real cultural revolution” and stressing twice that his proposal was “unprecedented,” said: “I want us to profoundly review the requirements of public television and to consider a complete elimination of advertising on public channels.”
Instead, he said, those channels “could be financed by a tax on advertising revenues of private broadcasters and an infinitesimal tax on the revenues of new means of communication like Internet access or mobile telephony.”
Do I really have to spell out how this not only props up an antiquated technology that people seem not to want, but simultaneously stifles innovation of the technology that people
do want? You know, maybe we should tax digital cameras to subsidize Kodak’s film technology.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.