AT&T: Don’t Regulate Me, Regulate My Competitors

by on November 19, 2007 · 4 comments

Chairman Kevin Martin’s attempt to assert broad – and virtually unlimited — powers over cable television has sparked a real imbroglio over at the FCC. The key question: has the cable industry reached the magic 70 percent penetration rate required to trigger new regulatory powers? Martin says yes, apparently using numbers from Warren Communications (the owner of Communications Daily). Warren Communications itself, however, has said its data shows no such thing. Fellow GOP commissioners Robert McDowell and Deborah Tate – apparently feeling a bit betrayed by Martin — on Thursday took the unusual step of writing directly to Warren Publishing for “any and all information” regarding the data.

Warren hasn’t responded yet, but that hasn’t stopped a handful of regulation supporters from weighing in in defense of the FCC’s attempted power grab. Among them: Free Press, the Media Access Project, Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America, AT&T…

Whoa! What’s AT&T doing in this motley group?

Continue reading →

SHARE: 4 comments

FCC’s regulatory wrecking ball decimating cable stocks?

by on November 19, 2007 · 0 comments

Last week, the big news inside the Beltway was how FCC Chairman Kevin Martin was stepping up what many have labeled his “war on cable” by proposing still more regulations for the cable sector. Craig Moffett, a senior analyst with Sanford Bernstein & Co, summarizes the economic regs currently being proposed: “Over the past year, the Chairman has adopted an almost uniformly anti-cable stance on issues ranging from set-top boxes (CableCards), digital must carry requirements, cable ownership caps, video franchising rules, and the abrogation of exclusive service contracts with [apartment owners].” And in a short PFF paper last week, I also outlined the content / speech regulations that the Martin FCC has proposed for cable (as well as satellite and telco) operators.

As Jon Hemingway’s cover story in this week’s Broadcasting & Cable magazine points out, the FCC’s war on cable appears to now be having an impact in the stock market. Investors are turning against cable operators fearing that the regulatory reign of terror at the FCC will limit cable’s ability to respond to rising competitive threats. Here’s a summary of the bad news from the B&C story:

Continue reading →

SHARE: 0 comments

What EarthLink’s muni wi-fi announcement tells us

by on November 19, 2007 · 0 comments

EarthLink appears to be getting out of the muni wi-fi business for good. The company is at least is abandoning the major Philadelphia experiment it was in charge of. According to today’s press release:

“After thorough review and analysis of our municipal wireless business we have decided that making significant further investments in this business could be inconsistent with our objective of maximizing shareholder value,” said Rolla P. Huff, EarthLink president and CEO. “Accordingly, at this time, we are considering our strategic alternatives with respect to this business,” Huff added. EarthLink will seek to work closely with the municipalities in which it has operations as it considers these alternatives. The net book value of the assets attributable to EarthLink’s municipal wireless business is approximately $40 million.

A few years ago, many folks were telling us that muni wi-fi was like manna from heaven; the ultimate free lunch that would give us a broadband nirvana. As some of us predicted–reality often proves more complicated. Indeed, one lesson from this experiment is that demand counts. There was always a bit of “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” reasoning behind the Philly deal and other muni wi-fi proposals. But you can’t build a network without a customer base, and recent news reports indicated that demand was lacking.

Continue reading →

SHARE: 0 comments

WashingtonWatch.com Widget Makes Good

by on November 19, 2007 · 5 comments

The WashingtonWatch.com widget, which I touted here a couple of weeks ago, is making good.

Here are some of the blogs and Web sites using it to make their visitors more aware of the public policies that affect their lives.

http://crzegrl.net/?p=630 http://www.bmwe3014.org/ http://jodaya.blogspot.com/2007/11/hr-4138.html http://patrickmurphyblog.com/2007/10/31/im-back/ http://www.x8djembe.com/blog/2007/11/stop-illegal-logging-and-protect.asp http://allergyparenting.blogspot.com/2007/11/vote-for-it.html http://www.codeblog.com/archives/the_scoop/the_government_contemplates_nu.html

The crzegrl.net link is to a flight nurse’s blog. She posted about a nursing bill, but the widget is in her blogroll and most of the traffic is coming from another, very touching entry. Strong stuff. I love the Web.

Let’s see . . . what should you people care about today? Tom Bell has been posting about copyright a good bit. Here’s where things stand on the Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act of 2007.

http://washingtonwatch.com/info/widget.php?id=200504264

SHARE: 5 comments

Copyright on the Third Hand

by on November 17, 2007 · 0 comments

Larry Lessig recently emailed several helpful tips for my book-in-progress, Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good. He suggested, for instance, that I post on the book’s home page a brief summary of its theme. I came up with this:

Two views monopolize the ongoing debate over copyright policy. One view denigrates all restraints on copyrighted information, whether they arise from statutory law, common law, or technological tools. The other view equates copyrights to tangible property, concluding that they merit a broad panoply of legal protections. Left-wingers tend to favor the former position; right-wingers the latter.

I here offer a third view of copyright. I largely agree with my friends on the left that copyright represents not so much a form of property as it does a policy device designed to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” (as the Constitution puts it). I thus call copyright a form of intellectual privilege.

Like my friends on the right, however, I hold our common law rights in very high regard. Hence my complaint against copyright: it violates the rights we would otherwise enjoy at common law to peaceably enjoy the free use our throats, pens, and presses. That is not to say that copyright is per se unjustified. We can excuse facial violations of our common law rights, such as the takings effectuated by taxation or the restraints imposed by antitrust law, as the costs of obtaining a greater good. But it does mean that copyright qualifies, at best, as a necessary evil.

Continue reading →

SHARE: 0 comments

Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

by on November 16, 2007 · 62 comments

In Jerry’s post “Is Comcast discriminating against BitTorrent?” he points out the following about Comcast’s acceptable use policy:

In its acceptable use policy,1 Comcast reserves the right to take any measures it deems necessary to deal with subscribers who use too much bandwidth (although how much is too much is not clearly defined). But if the AP is right, this is targeting a specific application, not specific users.

Jerry is right that targeting specific users would be well outside of Comcast’s acceptable use policy when it comes to bandwidth hogging, however, Comcast can target and block individual users who are running servers, whether they be for email, websites, or file-sharing. Their acceptable use policy also includes:

Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to:

followed by:

xiv. run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;

The policy later says in relation to prohibited activities such as this that:

Continue reading →

SHARE: 62 comments

The Indelicate Imbalancing of Copyright Policy

by on November 16, 2007 · 7 comments

Courts and commentators often claim that copyright policy strikes a delicate balance between public and private interests. I see copyright policy in a different pose, however. I see it wobbling precariously, tipping over, and falling into statutory failure. What has put copyright on such unsure footing? The brutish prodding of special interests. Rather than “delicately balanced,” then, I describe copyright policy as “indelicately imbalanced.”

Continue reading →

SHARE: 7 comments

Considering an Open Future

by on November 16, 2007 · 16 comments

Presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-Texas) became the “Internet” candidate this month when 36,672 people contributed more than US$4 million online to his campaign in a single 24-hour period. This impressive feat demonstrates the power of an open source culture, a lesson that should not be lost when it comes to other important issues.

The campaign to raise money for Rep. Paul was open source in a number of ways. First, it was a decentralized effort, promoted by people all over the country simultaneously. Indeed, Paul’s campaign was so hands-off that the candidate told The New York Times that he “had nothing to do with it.” It was two independent people who started the ball rolling.

James Sugra posted an online video proposing a big day of fund-raising for Paul, and Trevor Lyman separately created a site, www.thisnovember5th.com, that featured the video. Lyman’s site is now planning another big day on Dec. 16, the anniversary of the Boston Tea party.

On that day, Paul’s open source campaigners are hoping to encourage 100,000 people to donate $100 each.

Choosing a historical day may not be a particularly new fundraising tactic, but the additional open source cultural spin is that the site is automatically updating how many people have pledged so far. This transparency complements the home page of Ron Paul’s Web site, which constantly pops up names of his campaign donors. Those revelations stand in direct contrast to traditional campaigns, which tend to be silent and proprietary about who is donating.

Paul’s “donation feed” is reminiscent of the somewhat addictive “newsfeed” on social networking site Facebook,and it appears to have the effect of increasing donations. In a society where privacy is shrinking, it seems many embrace the idea of sharing more information, not less. Paul’s supporters are not alone in their recognition of the power of a voluntary open source culture.

Internet giant, Google, announced this week that it is offering $10 million in prizes for people who build the best software for Android, the company’s new open platform for mobile devices. This move shows that Google knows its tech history. Back in 1985, Apple made a huge mistake of saying no to a young Bill Gates who wanted the company to open up its proprietary architecture to developers. We all know how that ended, and now a similar story is likely to play out if the big phone companies stay closed while Google opens things up.

This reality, unfortunately, has led many to the erroneous conclusion that since openness is good, the government should force it, no matter what the cost. However, government force rarely leads to the open societies people seek. Take Net neutrality advocates, for example.

[…]

Read more here.

SHARE: 16 comments

Obama Seeks Openness in ‘Net Policy and Government Disclosure

by on November 15, 2007 · 5 comments

Comcast’s decision to limit Internet traffic from the peer-to-peer software BitTorrent would be against the law if Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama had his way, an aide to the Democratic Senator said Thursday.

In a conference call organized by the campaign for Sen. Obama, D-Ill., high-profile technology experts Lawrence Lessig, Beth Noveck and Julius Genachowski endorsed the technology and innovation agenda that Obama released on Wednesday. Also on the lines were three Obama aides, who declined to speak for attribution.

“What I find compelling about the Senator’s [stance] is a strong commitment to Net neutrality,” said Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, referring to the notion that broadband providers be barred from favoring business partners with speedier Internet delivery.

Obama “addresses the problem of Net neutrality in a way that could actually be enforced,” said Lessig. By contrast, Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton “can’t stand up for Net neutrality.”

Continue reading →

SHARE: 5 comments

Enlightening Some of the Closed Thinking about Openness

by on November 15, 2007 · 2 comments

When and how does ICT interoperability drive innovation? This is the subject of a new paper on interoperability by the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society (the webcast of yesterday’s launch event at the Reagan Building is now available).

Co-authors Urs Gasser and John Palfrey have published a thoughtful and well-balanced study. There’s a lot to agree with, especially their essential conclusion: that interoperability is important for innovation in the IT sector and the market, not government, is the preferred mechanism for achieving interoperability.

But I also think this paper achieves something more, even if unintentionally. It helps debunk the rhetoric we’re hearing about “openness” (and there are many definitions) as the best and only way to achieve interoperability.

First of all, according to the paper, “interoperability is not an unqualified good and is not an end in itself.” Furthermore, just because interoperability is not present doesn’t mean there’s a “market failure” — the authors cite DRM-protected music distribution and the growing shift toward unprotected music as a response to interoperability concerns voiced by consumers.

Importantly, the paper identifies that interoperability can be achieved by multiple means: IP licensing, APIs, standards (including “open” standards), and industry consortia.

As it affects innovation, interoperability can help some types of innovation, especially incremental innovations. But higher levels of interoperability may diminish incentives for radical innovations if the network effects of interoperable systems increase switching costs for consumers.

Continue reading →

SHARE: 2 comments

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →