PeerFlow

Japan Still Far Ahead of US in Internet Connection Speeds

While the U.S. still hopes to get up to 10Mbps Internet connection speeds by 2012, Japan already has such speeds for cable Internet service almost everywhere. And yes, I mean Internet connections, not just broadband.

But in Japan cable Internet service is of declining popularity, because 30 or 40 Mbps for $50 or $60 per month is not really fast there.

DSL in Japan goes up to 50 Mbps for also around $50-$60/month.

But for actual fast, cheap, Internet connections, people in Japan buy Fiber to the Home (FTTH), which actually costs less and delivers from 100Mbps to 1Gbps.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A., EDUCAUSE has proposed 100Mbps national broadband using a funding method that already failed in Texas.

Japan didn't get to 100Mbps by a single government-funded network. It did it by actually enforcing competition among broadband providers. Why did it do this? Because a private entrepreneur, Masayoshi Son, and his company Softbank, pestered the Japanese government until it did so.

Thus it's refreshing that these graphs laying out how far ahead of the U.S. Japan is come from the New America Foundation. Chair? Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.

Lessig's Herculean Holiday Present: Reboot the FCC

Here's a good test for the new U.S. Executive: to recognize that steady pragmatism means radical change, starting with the FCC:

The solution here is not tinkering. You can't fix DNA. You have to bury it. President Obama should get Congress to shut down the FCC and similar vestigial regulators, which put stability and special interests above the public good. In their place, Congress should create something we could call the Innovation Environment Protection Agency (iEPA), charged with a simple founding mission: "minimal intervention to maximize innovation." The iEPA's core purpose would be to protect innovation from its two historical enemies—excessive government favors, and excessive private monopoly power.

—Reboot the FCC, We'll stifle the Skypes and YouTubes of the future if we don't demolish the regulators that oversee our digital pipelines. By Lawrence Lessig, Newsweek Web Exclusive, 23 Dec 2008

Lessig gets the connection with his old topic of intellectual property and copyright. Those are monopolies granted by the federal government, and they have been abused by the monopoly holders just like the holders of communication monopolies:

Users Revolted: Net Neutrality to Win

The world has turned upside down:

This column is dedicated to the top managers of American business whose policies and practices helped ensure Barack Obama's victory. The mandate for change that sounded across this country is not limited to our new President and Congress. That bell also tolls for you. Obama's triumph was ignited in part by your failure to understand and respect your own consumers, customers, employees, and end users. The despair that fueled America's yearning for change and hope grew to maturity in your garden.

Millions of Americans heard President-elect Obama painfully recall his sense of frustration, powerlessness, and outrage when his mother's health insurer refused to cover her cancer treatments. Worse still, every one of them knew exactly how he felt. That long-simmering indignation is by now the defining experience of every consumer of health care, mortgages, insurance, travel, and financial services—the list goes on.

Obama's Victory: A Consumer-Citizen Revolt, The election confirms it's time for sober reappraisal and reinvention within the business community. If you don't do it, someone else will, By Shoshana Zuboff

She identifies Apple as one of the few companies that has actually gotten it about how to do business, with its iPod and iTunes. As we've previously seen, this is because Apple gets it that Porter's Five Forces model of competition breaks when open distribution channels are introduced.

It appears that Mark Anderson, Odile Richards, and William Gibson were right: "See-bare-espace... it is everting." Cyberspace just elected a president of the United States. And he knows it.

Obama has been publicly in favor of net neutrality for at least a year. And he has not backed off. He's put Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach in charge of reviewing the FCC. Now that's cyberspace inverted indeed!

Kevin Martin's Bottle: Weak Ruling Against Comcast Guarantees Court Challenges

The FCC recently ruled that Comcast has to stop throttling P2P. On the surface, that's a good thing. That Kevin Martin wanted it makes me wonder.

For once I agree with a net neutrality opponent:

By instituting this weird, weak, and barely legal regulation, Kevin Martin will get ‘net neutrality regulation bottled up in the courts for - what - the next five years?

— Game, Set, and Match: Martin! by Jim Harper, Technology Liberation Front, 6 Aug 2008

Harper goes on to predict that meanwhile real competition could develop. And pigs could fly, but that's not the point.

This is the point:

The paragraph prior to the provocative line suggesting regulation of universities contains this sentence: “Allowing some Internet service providers to manage P2P traffic - much less to engage in complete blocking of P2P traffic - while prohibiting others from doing so would be arbitrary and capricious.” This is an administrative-law term of art - “arbitrary and capricious.” The use of it tells us that NCTA or Comcast will challenge the FCC’s decision to regulate only one provider of Internet access without regulating all similarly situated.

But Comcast is under a different regulatory regime!, says Harold and the others. Not in an enforcement of this “broad policy statement” thing-y. The FCC is claming free rein to regulate - not authority based firmly in statute - and if it can throw that rein over cable ISPs, it can throw that rein over universities, over Starbucks, and over the open wi-fi node in Harold’s house.

Now, given the free rein that the FCC is asserting, there is a darn good argument that it’s arbitrary (and “capricious”) to regulate only cable ISPs or commercial ISPs in this way. The FCC has to regulate the whole damn Internet this way if it’s going to regulate Comcast.

This is not just theoretical. Fox News recently refused to pay an FCC-imposed fine, saying it was "arbitrary and capricious". Fox cited a previous case in which a federal court slapped down the FCC for fining a show for swearing, saying it was "arbitrary and capricious".

All that plus if a court rules the FCC's recent decision is "arbitrary and capricious", that will be used as a precedent to require universities to regulate content on their networks in favor of big copyright holders, as elements in Congress have been trying to do for about a year now.

I think net neutrality advocates underestimate Kevin Martin at their (and our) peril.

-jsq

Boehner's Latest Crying Jag

Boo hoo:

At least one lawmaker is already crying foul over Friday's expected Federal Communications Commission's censure of Comcast for faking internet traffic to limit its customers' peer-to-peer file sharing.

Republican minority leader Rep. John Boehner said the FCC would be "essentially regulating the internet."

— Lawmaker Cries Foul Ahead of FCC Net-Neutrality Decision, By David Kravets, ThreatLevel, July 31, 2008 | 7:02:45 PM

This is rather like crying foul because courts regulate contracts. I wonder how the free market would operate without them? The Internet free market in applications and services wouldn't operate very well without net neutrality.

I don't recall Boehner crying foul when Congress voted to regulate the Internet to require ISPs to hand over every bit (every email, phone call, web page, video, etc.) to the NSA and to legalize them having already done it when it was illegal. No free market talk from him then. Guess he didn't think the Fourth Amendment was worth crying over, unlike Anna Nicole Smith.

And back in 1995, it was the duopoly ISPs demanding regulation from the FCC, because they wanted to squelch VoIP.

Now they want to squelch everybody else's P2P and especially online video, except what they get a cut of. They think they can get away with it if the FCC stays out of the way, so now they are against regulation.

Their principles flip-flop kind of like Boehner's, don't they? Bunch of cry babies.

-jsq

Amnesty Foes 2.0: SenatorObama-PleaseVoteAgainstFISA

I've been waiting for this to hit the bigtime, and it has, it's been slashdotted:

ya really notes a blog posting up at Wired reporting that foes of the Telecom Amnesty Bill have mounted a campaign on Barack Obama's own website. Though the group was created only days ago, on June 25, it has grown to be the fifth largest among 7,000 such groups, just short of Women for Obama. Although it is widely known that Obama changed his stance from opposing telecom immunity to supporting it, many have not given up hope of getting him to switch once again.

Telecom Amnesty Foes On the Move, Posted by kdawson, slashdot, on Tuesday July 01, @08:02AM from the one-week-and-counting dept.

And today the group has more than 9,000 members and is #2 among all MyBO groups.

It's everywhere else, too, Time, WSJ, Wired, Huffington Post, TPM, DailyKos, MyDD, OpenLeft, digg, reddit, and of course facebook. Read all about it on the wiki.

(Yes, I'm a member of the group, since about the second day, and here's what I think about the issue.)

This group is a goldmine of information about which telecoms gave what money to whom.

The most significant part to me is that people are using a candidate's own organizing tools to attempt to organize the candidate. Not stopping there, either, attempting to organize allies for the candidate. Obama claims to be people-powered. Let him say that while other politicians follow money from lobbyists, he listens to the people who give him money, who are the people, and when they said think again he did, and discovered the bogus House FISA "compromise" bill is no such thing, and now he's against it. We'll see.

-jsq

Banana Republic, DC: Telecom Lobbying Revolving Door

Greenwald notes that AT&T spends more in three months for lobbying than EFF's entire budget for a year. Then he spells out how the lobbying revolving door works, and concludes:

The "two sides" referenced there means the House Democratic leadership and the telecoms. Congressional leaders are "negotiating" with the telecoms -- the defendants in pending lawsuits -- regarding the best way for immunizing them from liability for their lawbreaking, no doubt with the help of the former Democratic members and staffers now being paid by the telecoms to speak to their former bosses and colleagues about what they should do. To describe the process is to illustrate its oozing, banana-republic-like corruption, but that's generally how our laws are written.

None of this is particularly new, but it's still remarkable to be able to document it in such grotesque detail and see how transparent it all is. In one sense, it's just extraordinary how seamlessly and relentlessly the wheels of this dirty process churn. But in another sense, it's perhaps even more remarkable -- given the forces lined up behind telecom amnesty -- that those who have been working against it, with far fewer resources and relying largely on a series of disruptive tactics and ongoing efforts to mobilize citizen anger, have been able to stop it so far.

— How telecoms are attempting to buy amnesty from Congress, Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, Saturday May 24, 2008 06:48 EDT

Remember, AT&T and the other telcos and cablecos are the same companies that want to nuke net neutrality in the name of competition and progress; two other flags they behind, just like the banana republic flag of national security.

-jsq

ATCA Again: Duopoly Against VoIP Long Before Video

Back in 1995, an organization calling itself AMERICA'S CARRIERS TELECOMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION ("ACTA"), petitioned the FCC to regulate Voice over IP (VoIP) services. The gist of the matter was:

Permitting long distance service to be given away is not in the public interest.

In other words, if the telcos couldn't make money off of it, nobody should.

A usually reliable source says:

The ACTA petition was the first time that the FCC confronted VoIP as a policy issue. The FCC, however, never acted on the ACTA petition, and ACTA, the moving party, no longer exists. The question presented by the ACTA petition was whether the FCC had regulatory authority to regulate VoIP Internet software used by individuals to do telephony with each other, with no service provider in the middle.

— VoIP: ACTA Petition, Cybertelecom

It's interesting that the same telcos that now rail against regulation were happy to try to use it back in 1995 when it suit their purposes.

So ATCA failed to control VoIP via FCC regulation. But they can use volume charging to eliminate both VoIP and video they don't provide themselves.

The duopoly's claims of a few people using too much traffic are a smokescreen. The real issue is control: they want to control what passes through "their" networks so they can profit by as much of it as possible. I have no objection to telcos and cablecos making a profit. I do object to them squelching everybody else to do so. On the Internet you can connect any two tin cans, unless the duopoly can cut your string.

-jsq

T-Mobile Lobbying: $700K in Q1 2008

T-Mobile hasn't made the news like AT&T, Comcast, and Cox for violating net neutrality, but has nonetheless been busy lobbying behind the scenes:

WASHINGTON - Telecommunications carrier T-Mobile USA Inc. spent nearly $700,000 in the first quarter to lobby on spectrum matters and other issues, according to a disclosure report.

T-Mobile, which is owned by German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG (nyse: DT - news - people ), also lobbied the federal government on legislation involving wireless taxes, privacy and various consumer protection issues.

The company, the nation's fourth largest cellular carrier, also lobbied lawmakers on the issue of "Net neutrality," or the principle that all Web traffic be treated equally. Some Internet providers want to charge content providers extra to get their Web sites to load faster. Lawmakers have proposed legislation to make Net neutrality the law of the land.

— T-Mobile spent $700,000 lobbying in first quarter, Associated Press, 05.30.08, 5:26 PM ET

The T-Mobile lobbyist pictured is Michelle Persaud, former Democratic staff council for the House Judiciary Committee.

-jsq

Payola for the Duopoly

ISP meddling with net neutrality could unite indy musicians and record labels against the duopoly:

For the music business, the failure of net neutrality presents several big problems. Musicians are at the vanguard of digital distribution of music files, video files, and other space-gobbling content. Traffic throttling will almost certainly result in placing severe limitations on the amount and kind of content musicians can put out there — and it’s pretty likely that musicians will then be forced into partnering with businesses that have fewer limits and greater access, no doubt for a fee, to get their gear online. Another issue is that, as covered recently in this column, we are seeing a whole new universe of music-related business models, and we need to see some predictability in terms of licensing methods and how artists and copyright owners get paid. One of the most compelling proposals is that P2P music sharing should be rendered commercially viable and copyright-legal by the imposition of a blanket license that would be paid at the gate (i,e., through the ISPs). Institutionalized throttling would take this plan out at the knees.

Another problem is that record labels, distributors and retail chains who are already in desperate jeopardy can’t compete with ISPs and cellular providers who, having launched their own music stores, have all the incentive in the world to steer music consumers to their own services rather than open the pipe for folks to shop elsewhere.

— Net Neutrality, By Allison Outhit, Need to Know, June 2008

This observation comes from Canada, where current attempts by some to pass legislation similar to the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) has suddenly gotten noticed as a path to something music lovers have seen before:

McKie is referring to proposed changes modelled on the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which call for a much heavier-handed approach to interpreting what kind of content uses are protected by copyright. At the same time a Canadian DMCA would accord “safe harbour” status to service providers to shelter them from a potential onslaught of copyright litigation provided they act quickly to block infringing and illegal actions on their networks. A Canadian DMCA could impact net neutrality by putting police power in the hands of the networks, while providing ISPs with strong incentives to prefer privately-negotiated content distribution deals over the chaos of user-generated traffic. The bottom line is that musicians have come to rely on the net as their number one go-to distribution and marketing tool. The net got that way by being neutral to all comers. Whether you were a platinum seller on Universal, or a couple of unknown basement-dwellers, your video had an equal chance of going viral. Without net neutrality, all the good pipe will get eaten up by whoever has the power to make the deal. Which sounds a lot like the payola days all over again.

Yep, that's what we'll get if we don't have net neutrality: payola for the duopoly.

-jsq

Positive Externalities: What Yoo Ignores

It turns out Prof. Chris Yoo has been rebutted by legal scholars before:

Our article directly replies to a series of articles published by Professor Christopher Yoo on this topic. Yoo's scholarship has been very influential in shaping one side of the debate. Yoo has mounted a sophisticated economic attack on network neutrality, drawing from economic theories pertaining to congestion, club goods, public goods, vertical integration, industrial organization, and other economic subdisciplines. Yet he draws selectively.

For example, his discussion of congestion and club goods is partial in that he ignores the set of congestible club goods that are most comparable to the Internet - public infrastructure. Yoo focuses on the negative externalities generated by users (i.e., congestion) but barely considers the positive externalities generated by users (he simply assumes that they are best internalized by network owners). Yoo appeals to vertical integration theory to support his trumpeting of 'network diversity' as the clarion call for the Internet, but he myopically focuses on the teaching of the Chicago School of economics and fails to consider adequately the extensive post-Chicago School literature. And so on.

In our article, we explain the critical flaws in Yoo's arguments and present a series of important arguments that he and most other opponents of network neutrality regulation ignore.

— Network Neutrality and the Economics of an Information Superhighway: A Reply to Professor Yoo, BRETT M. FRISCHMANN, Loyola University of Chicago - Law School; Fordham University - School of Law, BARBARA VAN SCHEWICK, Stanford Law School, Jurimetrics, Vol. 47, 2007, Stanford Public Law Working Paper No. 1014691, Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 351

Hm, "positive externalities generated by users" as in participation and ad hoc content creation.

The authors also address David P. Reed's point that competition is not the holy grail of networking:

By focusing only on the market for last-mile broadband networks, Yoo not only neglects the importance of unfettered application-level innovation for realizing economic growth and the role of a nondiscriminatory access regime in fostering the production of a wide range of public and nonmarket goods. His argument also neglects other ways to solve the problem of broadband deployment that would not impede competition and innovation in complementary markets.

-jsq

Fair Trade: Fixing Antitrust for the Internet

So suppose for the moment that net neutrality is an antitrust issue. Does this bill fix antitrust law enough to deal with it?

Federal lawmakers have introduced yet another network neutrality bill, but this time with a focus on fair trade issues.

This week, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced legislation that addresses the issue by labeling it an antitrust matter. Conyers' H.R. 5994 would ban discriminatory network management practices by amending the Clayton Act.

The bill, labeled the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act, would require carriers to promote competition and allow people to use any device they want to on the carriers' networks. The bill makes exceptions for emergencies, criminal investigations, parental controls, marketing, and improvements to quality of service.

Under the Detroit Democrat's proposed legislation, ISPs could give preference to certain types of data, but they must give the preference regardless of the data source. It would ban ISPs from discriminating based on content, applications, or services.

— Lawmakers Eye Net Neutrality As Anti-Trust Issue, The Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act would require carriers to promot e competition and allow people to use any device they want to on the carriers' networks. By K.C. Jones, InformationWeek, May 9, 2008 05:42 PM

And does this fix the problems Google and Ebay complain about?

Meanwhile, a cosponsor sums it up:

U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has co-sponsored the legislation.

"Recent events have shown that net neutrality is more than a hypothetical concern. We need a meaningful remedy to prevent those who control the infrastructure of the Internet from controlling the content on the Internet," Lofgren said. "This legislation will help guarantee that the innovative spirit of the Internet is not trampled."

-jsq

Freedom v. Market Mythology

Here's a question that answers itself:

...what is it about individual freedom that "conservatives" like the Spectator and Armey don't like?

To be fair, the debate is larger than the Spectator and Armey. Most congressional Republicans oppose the idea of giving consumers freedom on the Internet. They take shelter in their anti-government, anti-regulation rhetoric, preferring to allow Internet freedom to apply to the corporations which own the networks connecting the Internet to consumers, rather than to consumers themselves. There could, of course, be a larger discussion about the meaning of "conservative" and Republican, and whether the two are synonymous.

(To be fairer still, it's not only Republicans. Many a Democrat also speaks out against Internet freedom. They don't have the fig-leaf of misbegotten ideology to hide behind, as they largely back worthwhile government action in many other areas. They are simply servants of corporate and/or union interests. The question applies equally: What about freedom don't they like?)

— Why The 'Right' Gets Net Neutrality Wrong, Art Brodsky, HuffingtonPost, Posted May 5, 2008 | 10:21 AM (EST)

The clue is "servants of corporate ... interests". (Unions occasionally get into this act; corporations much more frequently.) And it's not simple greed for corporate lobbyist money or kickbacks or the revolving door: many politicians and people really believe the "free market" will solve all problems. That's the origin of the doctrine of "market failure" that has pervaded all U.S. federal departments and agencies. Nevermind that when it's a major airline or automobile manufacturer or, even worse, a financial institution such as Citibank, these same people support all sorts of governmental market manipulations and bailouts. We're talking mythology here, kind of like the "rational actor" myth of economics.

Brodsky digs into the misconceptions behind this myth:

[Peter] Suderman's analysis: "In fact, not only were all of these companies [eBay and Google] born in an era with no mandated net neutrality, it's utterly unclear that a lack of neutrality would've impeded them in any way whatsoever."

That is not how it happened. This is how it happened:

Hamlet in DC: To Legislate or Not to Legislate, That is the Question

The U.S. Senate takes up net neutrality again, to legislate or not to legislate:

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing entitled "The Future of the Internet" on Tuesday, Democratic politicians argued for passage of a law designed to prohibit broadband operators from creating a "fast lane" for certain Internet content and applications. Their stance drew familiar criticism from the cable industry, their Republican counterparts, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who said there's no demonstrated need for new rules, at this point.

— Net neutrality battle returns to the U.S. Senate, by Anne Broache, C|Net News.com, 22 April 2008

Some of the senators seemed to think the Comcast debacle indicated there was need for legislation:

"To whatever degree people were alleging that this was a solution in search of a problem, it has found its problem," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). "We have an obligation to try and guarantee that the same freedom and the same creativity that was able to bring us to where we are today continues, going forward."

Kerry is one of the backers of a bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, chiefly sponsored by North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan and Maine Republican Olympia Snowe, which resurfaced at the beginning of 2007 but has gotten little attention since. A similar measure failed in a divided Commerce Committee and in the House of Representatives nearly two years ago.

Unsurprisingly, Martin says he doesn't need a law to enforce, because he can make it up as he goes along:

Arbitrary and Capricious: FCC (says Fox)

The FCC seems to have no friends these days:

Fox Television said it won't pay its part of a $91,000 indecency fine levied recently by the Federal Communications Commission for a 2003 episode of a reality TV show that featured strippers and whipped cream.

Fox said in a statement that it won't pay the fine imposed against five of its stations because it believes the FCC's decision that the show in question was indecent was "arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with precedent, and patently unconstitutional." The network said it will appeal the FCC's decision and proposed fine on behalf of 13 stations....

— Fox TV Refuses to Pay Indecency Fine by FCC, By Amy Schatz, Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2008

Fox lifted the wording from a 2007 court ruling, apparently about a different show. Oh, right: that one.

Maybe if the FCC would get back to actually dealing impartially with real matters of public policy, it might garner public and Congressional support.

-jsq

Google Wins by Losing 700Mhz Wireless Spectrum Auction

This interpretation seems good:

The real winner here is Google precisely because it lost. Google committed to bidding the minimum $4.6 billion that would trigger open device and open application rules that it had lobbied for, but nobody seriously thought it actually wanted to win the auction. Building out and operating a wireless network is a much lower-margin business than search advertising, and even leasing out the spectrum would have been a distraction. But by putting its $4.6 billion on the table early, it was able to dictate the new rules of the game. Rules that Verizon is now stuck with. All Google really wants are broadband wireless networks that cannot discriminate against Google mobile apps or Android phones no matter who operates them.

— Breaking: FCC Confirms that Big Winner in Spectrum Auction is Verizon. So Why I s Google Smiling? Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, 20 March 2008

The new rules aren't as good as one might have hoped, and now somebody has to make the FCC enforce them, but at least they're better than the old rules.

-jsq

Jettisoned: 8 Centuries of Common Carriage Law

Someone at CAIDA (presumably kc Claffy by the writing style), went to

an invitation-only intensely interactive workshop on the topic of Internet infrastructure economics. participants included economists, network engineers, infrastructure providers, network service providers, regulatory experts, investment analysts, application designers, academic researchers/professors, entrepreneurs/inventors, biologists, oceanographers. almost everyone in more than one category.

— internet infrastructure economics: top ten things i have learned so far, by webmaster, according to the best available data, October 7th, 2007

and wrote up a report including this summary of the political situation:

...and it turns out that in the last 5 years the United States — home of the creativity, inspiration and enlightened government forces (across several different agencies) that gave rise to the Internet in the first place — has thoroughly jettisoned 8 centuries of common carriage law that we critically relied on to guide public policy in equitably provisioning this kind of good in society, including jurisprudence and experience in determining ‘unreasonable discrimination’.

and our justification for this abandonment of eight centuries of common law is that our “government” — and it turns out most of our underinformed population (see (1) above) — believes that market forces will create an open network on their own. which is a particularly suspicious prediction given how the Internet got to where it is today:in the 1960s the US government funded people like vint cerf and steve crocker to build an open network architected around the ‘end to end principle’, the primary intended use of which was CPU and file sharing among government funded researchers. [yes, the U.S. government fully intended to design, build, and maintain a peer-to-peer file-sharing network!]

That's right folks: "resource sharing" was the buzzword back then, and every node was supposed to be potentially a peer to every other.

WSJ Fears Innovation: Net Neutrality As Internet Wrecking Ball

Apparently this WSJ opinion writer couldn't actually argue with Ed Markey's net neutrality bill, so he made up a straw man:

Imagine a town that has all sorts of gasoline pipelines running by it but only one gas pump. Rationing is inevitable. So are price controls.

Everyone gets equal amounts, except of course first responders like police and ambulances, which should get all the gas they want. And, well, so should the mayor. And if you can make a good business case that you work 60 miles away, you can file paperwork and perhaps pull some strings for more gas. How about those kids hot-rodding around town who can't drive 55? They get last dibs, and maybe we can sneak in some gas thinner to slow down their engines and not waste gas.

— Internet Wrecking Ball, By Andy Kessler, Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2008; Page A15

What's especially amusing about this strawman is that it's what the duopoly is planning as they do away with net neutrality, except it's not first responders or governments that will get favored bandwidth: it's Hollywood. Meanwhile, Markey's bill doesn't say any of that. It doesn't include any regulation at all.

Kessler invokes Orwell:

This is the essence of the Ed Markey's (D., Mass.) Orwellian-named Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, which would foist network neutrality on the wild and woolly Internet.

Kessler maybe wasn't around in the earlier days of the Internet, or he would know that net neutrality is what we used to have, until it got chipped away starting in about the year 2000, as the FCC failed to enforce the Unbundled Network Elements (UNE) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and reclassified cable modem access as an information service in August 2002, wireline broadband in August 2005, and wireless broadband in March 2007. The FCC stripped common carriage status from Internet provision, something never done before in the U.S. So what Markey's bill is actually trying to do is to preserve the freedom the Internet used to have before the present administration and the duopoly systematically tried to do away with it. That's the opposite of Orwellian: that's the plain truth.

If Kessler did know Internet history, or had been around when we were making it, he would know not to write things like this:

Shills By Comcast at FCC Hearing

This appears to be the week for Comcast to really make a fool of itself.

Comcast acknowledges that it hired people to take up room at an F.C.C. hearing into its practices.

— Grassroots Support? Or Astroturf? by Sam Gustin, Portfolio.com, Feb 26 2008

Some reports said the shills were Comcast employees, but it turns out many of them were hired off the street. They were given yellow highlighters to put in their shirt pockets so they could identify themselves to each other.

Comcast, the company that claims to understand the Internet so well it thinks faking TCP Resets is good network management (which is what that FCC meeting was about), apparently thought in this day of cell phone cameras and blog posts that nobody would notice....

-jsq

Internet Freedom Policy Act

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Chip Pickering (R-MS) have introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, which will amend Title I of the Communications Act of 1934 to say Internet freedom, commerce, innovation, participation, and speech are the policy of the United States. It's interesting what this bill does not say. It doesn't specify any regulations, so that those who oppose net neutrality don't have a leg to stand on when they say net neutrality is all about regulation. It doesn't say "net neutrality": it says "freedom", "marketplace", "innovation", and other positive benefits. (I think I'll take a cue from Commissioner Copps and start referring to Internet freedom.) It doesn't say "consumers" except a few times, including once where that word is immediately qualified by

(i) access, use, send, receive, or offer lawful content, applications, or services over broadband networks, including the Internet;

Let's see, if "consumers" can send their own content, applications, and service, they're not really consumers in the traditional sense, now are they?

This is all very nice, in that Markey and Pickering apparently get it about what Internet freedom is about. However, why does this bill have no teeth, unlike Markey's bill of last year or the Snowe-Durgan bill before that?

Canadian Net Neutrality

In Canada, an ISP has even gotten up to blocking striking employees' website:

During the Telus strike in 2005, the corporation blocked access to a website run by striking Telus employees called “Voices for Change” (and at least 766 other websites). Those familiar with network-control issues in Canada also accuse Rogers and Bell of limiting peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, which people use to share audio, video and other digital data with one another. So, here we have ISPs blocking or at least limiting the use of what is likely the most innovative, creative and participatory use of the Internet. In response to customer concerns, Bell recently admitted that they “are now using Internet Traffic Management to restrict accounts that are using a large portion of bandwidth during peak hours. Some of the applications that are included are the following: BitTorrent, Gnutella, LimeWire, Kazaa….”

— The Fight for the Open Internet, Steve Anderson, Canadian Dimension magazine, January/February 2008 issue

The rest sounds very familiar:

Settling for Slow: Duopoly or Competition

This is what the duopoly doesn't want:

In France, for example, the regulator forced France Télécom to rent out its lines. One small start-up firm benefited from this opportunity and then installed technology that was much faster than any of its rivals'. It won so many customers that other operators had to follow suit. In Canada, too, the regulator mandated line-sharing, and provinces subsidised trunk lines from which smaller operators could lease capacity to provide service.

— Open up those highways, The Economist print edition, Jan 17th 2008

The duopoly will settle for the U.S. being slow and expensive as long as they get to collect the rents.

Here's how other countries do it:

Forensic FCC Oversight

Preventive Congressional oversight had no effect on the FCC. We'll see if forensic oversight does any better:

Bipartisan leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee launched an investigation of the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, three weeks after the agency's controversial vote to ease media ownership restrictions.

In a letter sent to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, the committee asked that all electronic records and personal e-mails related to FCC work be saved.

The committee has "initiated a formal investigation into FCC regulatory procedures to determine if they are being conducted in a fair, open, efficient, and transparent manner," said the letter written by Chairman John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, and ranking Republican Joe Barton of Texas.

"This investigation will also address a growing number of allegations received by the committee relating to management practices that may adversely affect the agency's operation," the letter said.

— House panel launches probe of FCC practices, Reuters, Tue Jan 8, 2008 4:15pm EST

Maybe Congress will slap the FCC with another stern letter. I'm sure Kevin Martin is quaking in his boots.

-jsq

FCC: Shocked to Hear There's Gambling Going On!

The dateline is ironic:

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Federal Communications Commission will investigate complaints that Comcast Corp. actively interferes with Internet traffic as its subscribers try to share files online, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday.

A coalition of consumer groups and legal scholars asked the agency in November to stop Comcast from discriminating against certain types of data. Two groups also asked the FCC to fine the nation's No. 2 Internet provider $195,000 for every affected subscriber.

"Sure, we're going to investigate and make sure that no consumer is going to be blocked," Martin told an audience at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

—FCC to Probe Comcast Data Discrimination, By PETER SVENSSON, AP, 8 Jan 2008

In other news, Las Vegas Board of Realtors announces investigation of gambling! Sorry; I made that up.

Note that Martin is not only chair of the FCC that continues to enable telecom and media consolidation, he also continues to refer to ISP customers and participants as "consumers", as in the old broadcast model where the broadcasters produce and you the customer are expected to consume whatever they give you.

The organization doing the most investigating of stifling, blocking, etc. by Comcast, Cox, et al., has been the Associated Press, which also originated this story. Interestingly, the AP is not owned by any of the usual five companies that own most of the media in the U.S. The AP is a non-profit cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers. So one of the few national news organizations in the U.S. that has not been consolidated is the one that has been investigating stifling by ISPs.

-jsq

PS:

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

—Captain Renault, Casablanca, 1942

Consolidation Flood: What Will Really Stifle Internet Innovation

Advocates of the "exabyte flood" political campaign against net neutrality claim they are for innovation and that the coming flood of Internet usage will stifle innovation unless they get their way.

What will really stifle innovation on the Internet is this:

The Federal Communications Commission, at the urging of Chair Kevin Martin, voted 3-2 on Tuesday to relax longstanding rules that block corporations from owning a broadcast TV station and a newspaper in the same city.

— Uproar Over FCC Vote on Media-Ownership Rules, By Frederick Lane, Top Tech News, December 19, 2007 10:14AM

No, not specifically newspaper and television consolidation. Further consolidation of media and information distribution in the hands of a tiny number of companies. This December the FCC lets newspapers and TV stations consolidate. Last December it let SBC buy Bellsouth. Internet access is already in the hands of a tiny number of companies (typically at most two in any given area) that are increasingly moving to control the information they carry on behalf of a small number of companies including themselves and movie and music content producers.

The exaflood politics isn't really about how much infrastructure the duopoly has to build out. It's about maintaining the duopoly and extending its control of information, to the duopoly's short-term profit and the long-term detriment of of us all, including the duopoly.

-jsq

Moderate? Comcast Stifling Isn't

Promising unlimited access, not delivering, and refusing to admit it is managing a network for the good of the many above the activities of the few? Pete Abel thinks so:

Earlier this month, Comcast — the nation’s largest cable broadband company — was caught doing what any good Internet Service Provider (ISP) should do, i.e., manage its network to ensure that the online activities of the few don’t interfere with the online activities of the many,

Fair vs. Foul in Net Neutrality Debate, By Pete Abel, The Moderate Voice, 24 November 2007

The problem with Comcast stifling BitTorrent by faking reset packets from a participant is not that Comcast is trying to manage its network: it's that Comcast used a technique that if it came from anyone other than an ISP would be considered malicious denial of service, that Comcast still hasn't admitted doing it, and that Comcast bypassed numerous other methods of legitimate network management, such as those used by PlusNet. Comcast could even use the Australian model and sell access plans that state usage limits and throttle or charge or both for usage above those limits. What Comcast is doing it seems to me is much closer to the false advertising of unlimited access that got Verizon slapped down for wrongful account termination.

The biggest problem with what Comcast (and Cox, and AT&T, and Verizon) are doing is that their typical customer has at most one or two choices, which in practice means that if your local cable company and your local telephone company choose to stifle, throttle, block, or terminate, you have no recourse, because there's nowhere to go. Competition would fix that.

Abel tries to back up his peculiar interpretation of network management with revisionist history:

China: Unlocked iPhones

Can't get an unlocked iPhone inthe U.S.? Try China:

The iPhone is readily available in computer superstores in most large Chinese cities. In Beijing's Zhong Guancun, a 15-story mall filled with technology vendors, almost all the stalls are stocked. Two weeks ago, the blogger of Too Many Resources for the iPhone asked several of these vendors whether they could sell him 100 iPhones. They all answered "No problem."

— China's New 'Love Craze' — Black Market iPhones, By Aventurina King, Wired, 11.19.07 | 7:00 PM

These are unauthorized uninsured iPhones. Apparently they aren't copies: they're the real thing. The iPhone is manufactured in China, and these ones are shipped out and back through Hong Kong or eBay.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. of A., you're stuck with an iPhone that works only on AT&T's network, while the FCC finagles a spectrum auction so lockin will continue and plans further media consolidation so you won't know anything better.

Bruce Sterling sums it up:

(((China is the New America because, not only do they have sexy movies, they have iPhones that actually work and aren't choked to death with legalistic BS IP consumer lock-in.)))

— China: The New America (part II), By Bruce Sterling, Beyond the Beyond, November 20, 2007 | 7:44:11 AM

-jsq

FT on FCC: SOP

From London, it appears the emperor's apparatchik has no clothes:

The commission, under Mr Martin, has turned US media policy into mere political theatre, while technology marches on apace, revolutionising media markets without any serious input from the regulators in the public debate about the implications.

Big Media control of the airwaves is simply not the threat to democracy and choice that it once was (in the days before cable or, for that matter, bloggers and MySpace). This is yesterday’s battle. It is time to move on to the tougher challenge: how to ensure that quality news survives the YouTube era.

— New rules for yesterday’s problem, Editorial, Financial Times, Published: November 14 2007 19:15 | Last updated: November 14 2007 19:15

Well, the first step would be to ensure that people get to look at it, for example that they are able to view the Financial Times. Economic models would be good, too. Some traditional news media seem to be developing those.

But it is not clear how one troubled industry (newspapers) can be helped by grafting it on to another one (the broadcast media), when both have essentially the same problem: the internet is stealing their advertising revenues.

Well, the New York Times has discovered can make more money by advertising if they don't charge for articles. And that didn't involve merging with a TV station. With real ISP competition, somebody would also develop a real first-mile ISP business plan.

-jsq

Decreasing Competition: Teletruth Documents FCC Harm to Wireline

Here are the main points:

• 56% Drop in Competitive Local Exchange Carrier Lines: Loss of 10 Million Competitive Lines Since 2004 -- and Falling.
• Lack of Competitive Choices Led to Massive Local and Long Distance Price Increases; Billions in Investor Losses.
• FCC's Deregulation Picked Winners and Losers -- The Duopoly -- Creating Economic Harms to Wireline-Competition, Favoring Cable Companies.

...

DROP 10,330,000 lines -56%

Only 7.1% competitive lines.

— Part One: Harm to Wireline Competition: Harm to Customers and Investors. TeleTruth, 15 November 2007

Many details are in the report. The bottom line is that there is no effective competition in wireline POTS in the U.S.

-jsq

Obama Catches up with Edwards on Net Neutrality

Back in June, John Edwards wrote a letter to the FCC back in June about the 700Mhz auction, in which he got it about the Internet and participation and opportunity.

Now Barack Obama answers a question from a former AT&T engineer, Joe Niederberger, that made it to the top of a video contest:

Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to re-instate Net Neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint FCC commissioners that support open Internet principles like Net Neutrality?"

— Net Neutrality becomes issue in presidential race, Extra Technology News, 29 October 2007

Part of Obama's answer:

Facebook, MySpace and Google might not have been started if you did not have a level playing field for whoever has the best idea. And I want to maintain that basic principle in how the Internet functions. As president I’m going to make sure that [net neutrality] is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward.

Here's the question and answer on video.

-jsq

U.S. Broadband Competitiveness: Let's Study It To Death

Let's study it to death:

The United States is starting to look like a slowpoke on the Internet. Examples abound of countries that have faster and cheaper broadband connections, and more of their population connected to them.

What's less clear is how badly the country that gave birth to the Internet is doing, and whether the government needs to step in and do something about it. The Bush administration has tried to foster broadband adoption with a hands-off approach. If that's seen as a failure by the next administration, the policy may change.

In a move to get a clearer picture of where the U.S. stands, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday approved legislation that would develop an annual inventory of existing broadband services -- including the types, advertised speeds and actual number of subscribers -- available to households and businesses across the nation.

— U.S. sees some countries overtake it in broadband speeds, but is there a problem? Associated Press, 30 Oct 2007

On the one hand, this sounds like a popular approach to global warming by its deniers: now let's ask some scientists to study it. After all, the Okefenokee and surrounds burned more acres than in living memory, western wildfires have increased fourfold since 1970, 30 million people in half a dozen southwest states may run out of water in the next decade or so, and 12 million people in the Atlanta metro area are less than 3 months from having no water. And hundreds of climate scientists have already turned in their verdict. But, hey, now let's ask some scientists to study it.

On the other hand, this is Ed Markey's committee, and he has seemed serious about doing something, so maybe he's just cojmpiling a case. Sure, he's probably reacting to people like this who are taking the same tack as outlined above:

FCC: Trick or Treat! Media Consolidation

Today is November First, which is the deadline for comments on the FCC's media consolidation move. There's still no notice on the FCC web pages of a hearing on November 2.

Oh, wait! Kevin Martin held a hearing two days earlier, on Halloween instead! Without ever announcing it on the FCC web pages.

Dissident commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein appeared at a rally outside the FCC's office in Washington to object to Martin's chicanery. "Neither we nor the public received any confirmation that the hearing would occur until ... just 5 business days before the event," the commissioners said before entering the building for the hearing. "This is unacceptable and unfair to the public."

Joining Copps and Adelstein were political, labor and community leaders who condemned Martin's assault not merely on media diversity but on the basic standards for making regulatory shifts.

— No Treats for FCC Chair and Media Monopolists, John Nichols, The Nation, Wed Oct 31, 6:03 PM ET

Jesse Jackson, National Organization of Women, United Church of Christ, Future of the Media Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives; they all protested.

Martin even has the Parents Television Council against him.

Notice of a meeting only five days before to the other commissioners, and apparently none to the public? You'd think Martin didn't know how to talk to the press. Yet just a few days ago he was chatting with the New York Times about ending cable monopolies to apartments.

I wonder if he told the telcos about that Halloween meeting more than five days before? Nah, that would be corruption.

-jsq

FCC To End Cable Exclusive Deals for Apartments

Regulation by PR?

Why wait for a boring FCC meeting that no one will watch to announce a major policy, when you can talk to a New York Times reporter instead? Days before the official FCC meeting at which the issue will be discussed, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has just told the newspaper that his agency is ready to strike down the exclusive contracts that cable operators have signed with apartment managers and homeowners' associations across the country.

— FCC to strike down exclusive apartment complex cable deals, By Nate Anderson, ars technica, October 29, 2007 - 01:45PM CT

Ars technica indicates that Martin sounds like he's serious on this one. Of course, Martin sounded serious about open access rules for 700Mhz spectrum, too, yet watered them down until they don't mean much. However, ars technica points out the biggest backers of this apartment rule change are telcos, so maybe he really means it this time. Hm, and I wonder who will sue this time?

Christian Coalition Joins Naral Against Telco Censorship

Verizon's blocking of NARAL has led to some strange bedfellows:

Today, the presidents of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Christian Coalition co-authored a Washington Post op-ed calling on Congress to address the censorship policies of phone companies like Verizon and AT&T. Last month, Verizon arbitrarily banned text messages from NARAL, deeming the lawful political speech too "controversial and unsavory" to send.

"We are on opposite sides of almost every issue," wrote NARAL President Nancy Keenan and Christian Coalition President Roberta Combs. "But when it comes to the fundamental right of citizens to participate in the political process, we're united -- and very worried. Whatever your political views -- conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, pro-choice or pro-life -- it shouldn't be up to Verizon to determine whether you receive the information you requested."

— Groups Fight Cell Censorship, Unstrung, 17 October 2007

Most of the U.S. political spectrum seems to be against censorship by telcos and cablecos. The next question is whether this opposition will have any effect, or will the telcos get the FCC to lay off anyway, or will telco and cableco political contributions and lobbying convince Congress to turn a blind eye.

-jsq

Revive OTA?

Just last week I was talking to somebody who used to work for the Office for Technology Assessment, which was a bipartisan Congressional research group that brought in various outside experts to help out. She recognized me from various times I showed up.

Serendipitously, Susan Crawford says "OTA: You Are Missed".

Nearly a decade ago, Congress closed its Office of Technology Assessment. The president of the Federation of American Scientists, a former OTA employee, called the closing the “equivalent of a self-inflicted lobotomy.” Between 1974 and 1995 OTA produced 750 thorough reports about a wealth of scientific and technical studies.

Since then, the Congressional Research Service (thanks, CDT!) has been providing Congress with quick summaries of issues, but CRS doesn't have the deep technical expertise that OTA did, or the resources to do sustained studies. The National Academies have the time and the resources, but they take too long and they have too many constituents to serve.

In re-writing the Telecom Act and jumping into having the FCC regulate the internet, it would be good to have a neutral, expert, bipartisan group advising Congress about the consequences of their actions.

For example, such a group might have told Congress that current antitrust law isn't well positioned to deal with problems of lack of competition since broadband was wrenched from one legal regime into another.

-jsq

FCC, Telcos, Congress, and FISA

The FCC won't investigate possible illegal telco activities:

The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission declined to investigate reports that phone companies turned over customer records to the National Security Agency, citing national security concerns, according to documents released on Friday.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin turned down a congressional request for an investigation as a top intelligence official concluded it would "pose an unnecessary risk of damage to the national security," according to a letter National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell sent to Martin on Tuesday.

— FCC won't probe disclosure of phone records, By Reuters, October 6, 2007, 4:00 PM PDT

It seems unlikely the FCC will investigate active wiretapping, either. National security: the root password to the Constitution.

But Congress won't let the telcos off the hook, well, not completely:

House Democrats have refused to submit to Bush administration requests to save telecommunications companies that assisted in a warrantless wiretapping scheme from lawsuits or prosecution, and they want to require judicial approval for future efforts to spy on Americans.

...

Under the new law, the Attorney General or Director of National Intelligence would be authorized to receive blanket warrants to eavesdrop on several foreign intelligence targets who could call into the United States, but the bill would restore FISA court reviews of targeting procedures and steps taken to "minimize" Americans' exposure to surveillance. If an American is to become the "target" of surveillance, intelligence agencies would be required to seek an individualized warrant from the FISA court.

— Proposed FISA update would not give telecom companies legal protection, by Nick Juliano, RawStory, Tuesday October 9, 2007

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court already is so secretive that although its court rules say it has a seal, there's no image of it available anywhere on the web that I could find, and it already lets intelligence agencies apply within a few days for retroactive authorization for wiretaps.

Of course, this bill would have to pass the Senate and get signed by the president or get enough votes to override a veto. But at least the former law didn't retroactively immunize the telcos, and this bill doesn't, either.

-jsq

700Mhz Owners and Uses: Public Safety Counts, Too

There are other issues in 700Mhz spectrum allocation than AT&T's bottom line:

“It is a life or death issue,” said Harold Hurtt, Houston Chief of Police and President of Major Cities Chiefs, an organization that represents 63 of the nation’s largest police organizations. Hurtt made his comments in a video interview distributed during the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International 71st annual convention in Denver.

— 700 MHz On The Line by samc, dailywireless.org, Monday, September 5th, 2005 at 1:00 pm.

And some of that spectrum has already been allocated. AT&T just cherrypicked the biggest previous 700Mhz spectrum holder, Aloha Partners, but there are more than a dozen others. Don't be surprised if some of those get gobbled up, too.

-jsq

AT&T Goes Around FCC with Aloha 700Mhz

Why wait for the auction when there's another way?

AT&T announced today that it has purchased 12MHz of spectrum in the prime 700MHz spectrum band from privately-held Aloha Partners for close to $2.5 billion. Aloha purchased the spectrum in Federal Communications Commission auctions held during 2001 and 2003, but hasn't done much with the licenses since the auctions ended.

The licenses to the spectrum cover around 196 million residents of the US and 72 of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, including the ten largest markets in the US. AT&T isn't divulging much in the way of specifics for the bandwidth, other than saying that the company will use it for voice, data, and video. "Aloha's spectrum will enable AT&T to efficiently meet this growing demand and help our customers stay connected to their worlds," said Forest Miller, AT&T's group resident for corporate strategy and development.

— AT&T surprises with beachfront 700MHz spectrum purchase By Eric Bangeman, ars technica, October 09, 2007 - 12:29PM CT

And since Aloha got this batch of 700Mhz spectrum in a previous auction with no open access strings attached, AT&T can thumb its nose at Google about that. For the particular geographical locations that Aloha covers.

-jsq

Google v. Verizon v. FCC + Lobbyists

Verizon is suing the FCC about the watered down rules the FCC passed recently. Now Google has filed a complaint with the FCC about that. And apparently Verizon has been having private meetings with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Could this be one source of the illegal leaks the GAO finds the FCC providing to lobbyists?

While Verizon's court case proceeds through the legal system, the company's competitors have grown unhappy with the way that Verizon has handled its FCC lobbying. Frontline Wireless has gone so far as to ask the FCC to bar Verizon from the auction because Verizon has allegedly not disclosed some of its lobbying contacts with the agency quickly enough or in enough detail.

Despite Verizon's reticence to spell out exactly what it has been talking about with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in private meetings, Google believes that it has pieced the conversation together. Google's understanding is that Verizon wants the FCC to impose the open access requirements only on the network, not on the devices. That is, Verizon could still sell handsets that are locked and controlled by the company, but its network would have to be open to unlocked handsets from any operator.

According to Google's new public statement on the issue, "From our perspective, this view ignores the realities of the U.S. wireless market, where some 95 percent of handsets are sold in retail stores run by the large carriers. More to the point, it is simply contrary to what the FCC's new rules actually say." Those rules focus on customer freedom to access content and applications from any device.

In a filing with the FCC, Google asks the agency to stick to its original plan. The company points out that while the open access rules might make the spectrum less attractive to Verizon (and thus might bring in less money at auction), the rules actually make it "more attractive, not less" to Google.

— Google attacks Verizon's attempt to water down 700MHz "open access" rules, By Nate Anderson, ars technica, October 04, 2007 - 11:11AM CT

Silly Google! Verizon is part of the incumbent duopoly, and you're not!

-jsq

FCC: Media Consolidation in November

Last year the FCC rushed through approval of the AT&T-Bellsouth merger at the last minute in December before the new Congress was convened in January. This year the rush is on reducing ownership of the majority of media in the U.S. from 50 owners to 5 in the past two decades wasn't enough already.

The Federal Communications Commission is responding to critics’ complaints that the agency isn’t giving them enough time to examine the scientific studies prepared for the agency’s media ownership review.

The FCC’s Media Bureau today extended the deadline for comment by three weeks, citing the request of Free Press, Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America.

Nearing the end of its examination of media ownership rules, the FCC on July 31 released 10 studies of various issues of media consolidation and indicated they could help form the basis of any rule changes. The studies included examinations of the impact of consolidation on news content, opinion, advertising and programming and also looked at minority ownership trends.

FCC Extends Deadline for Comments on Media Ownership Studies, By Ira Teinowitz, TV Week, September 28, 2007

Various groups complained, so the FCC made an extension:

The FCC said comments that were to have been filed by Oct. 1 now may be filed through Oct. 22, with responses now due by Nov. 1.

That's right: three more weeks to study an issue that will affect news, politics, government, and, well, basically everything for the indefinite future. Or, to be more specific, to study studies picked by the FCC.

Some observers are relatively confident of concessions, apparently not taking into account that some previous concessions have already fallen by the wayside:

Net Neutrality Won't be Fixed by Anti-Trust: B. Cherry

At TPRC Sunday, Barbara Cherry walked through the evolution of bodies of law in the U.S., and made some fascinating observations, including:

• Net neutrality is a manifestation of moving from a Title II industry-specific business legal regime under the Communications Act of 1934 to a Title II-based regime and greater reliance on a general business regime of antitrust and consumer protection laws, as the FCC did in August 2005 for wireline broadband access service to the Internet and in 2002 for cable modem access service.
• Simply mMoving among traditional and deregulatory legal regimes for transportation carriers does did not strip common carriage status; it merely changesd the legal overlay that enforcesd it.
• FCC stripping broadband of common carriage was a radical departure: nothing classified as common carrier has ever been declassified before.
• Anti-trust doesn't automatically cover problems from previously addressed in the Title II industry-specific regime when a business is moved to the Title II general business regime. Anti-trust needs modification to do this.
• Liability is also different between regimes. Without tariffs some legal protections for limited liability constraints are gone, and common carriers are now potentially fully liable for damages. The final filed rate doctrine should have no applicability to a detariffed world.

The above is, I think, a reasonably close paraphrase of some of her points.

I infer from this that the economists and politicians and telco and cableco executives who say that we shouldn't regulate because we don't know what will happen and anti-trust will catch problems if they occur are not taking into account that anti-trust doesn't automatically apply to or address problems in the new legal regime into which broadband has been thrust.

In other words, people see things in the context of what they know, and economists don't usually know about legal evolution.

Telco and cableco executives, on the other hand, may well have business and political reasons for claiming there's no need for regulation, whether or not they know that existing anti-trust law is inadequate. doesn't apply.

You can't have markets without some form of property rights of contract law. There is also basic legal infrastructure you need for communication infrastructure.

I see little or no understanding of these points in FCC, FTC, or Congress.

Prof. Cherry's whole paper is well worth reading: Consumer Sovereignty: Redrawing the Boundaries Between Industry-Specific and General Business Legal Regimes for Telecommunications and Broadband Access Services, by Barbara A. Cherry, TPRC, 30 Sep 2007

-jsq

PS: Markup for increased accuracy kindly supplied by Prof. Cherry.

Benton, Universal Service, TPRC, Social Contract

Many good papers on aspects of universal service at the Benton Universal Service Project:

As Congress and the FCC put universal service reform at the top of its telecom policy agenda, the Benton Foundation is supporting a series of papers advancing a new vision for Universal Service -- for making broadband as universal as telephone service is today and a pathway for retaking the lead as a broadband leader. This project outlines the policy rationale, the pathway forward, and the 12 key steps for advancing universal broadband and modernizing the universal service program for the information age.

Many of the authors of the papers are on a panel this afternoon at TPRC, including topicssuch as

The social contract implicit in telephony universal service versus the social contract implicit in broadband universal service.

Hm, maybe Verizon could learn from that one?

-jsq

Content Protect v. Internet Freedom

Here's another view of what the telcos and cablecos have in mind for us, or, rather, what they want in our minds: approved content. This is substantially different from the Internet freedom we have today to look at whatever we want to and to publish our own content.

Remember:

AT&T Inc. has joined Hollywood studios and recording companies in trying to keep pirated films, music and other content off its network — the first major carrier of Internet traffic to do so.

Get ready for the Amazon Channel or settle for Internet Base Service.

Verizon Sues FCC

Well, even though the FCC only provided half-measures to open up the 700Mhz market, Verizon thinks that's too much and is suing the FCC because it partly unlocked cellphones:

Verizon Wireless seeks judicial review on the grounds that the Report and Order exceeds the Commission's authority under the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, 47 U.S.C. §§ 151, eg. seq., violates the United States Constitution, violates the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701 et. seq., and is arbitrary capricious, unsupported by substantial evidence and otherwise contrary to law.

— Verizon Wireless v. FCC, Case No. 07-1359, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, 10 Sep 2007

Curious how the burden of proof always seems to be on anybody but the telcos and cablecos. I mean, didn't the FCC get the memo that it was only supposed to do anything if somebody proved market failure?

-jsq

PS: Seen on SavetheInternet.com

One sentence sums it up:

When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission.

&mdash: Net Neutrality: This is serious by timbl (Tim Berners-Lee), DiG, Wed, 2006-06-21 16:35

That's Internet freedom. That's why we need net neutrality.

What is net neutrality?

If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

Where you and I are any pair of participants on the Internet.

Now this would be a good thing if it happened:

House telecom subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) repeated his call for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate widespread allegations of telecom privacy law violations by intelligence agencies that received cooperation from telecom carriers in anti-terrorist surveillance efforts.

— Markey renews calls for FCC investigation into wiretapping, By Jeffrey Silva, RCCWireless News, September 12, 2007 - 2:13 pm EDT

That would be about as likely as Gonzales starting such an investigation.

Oh, wait:

After Markey wrote Martin in March to ask him to launch an investigation into whether telecom privacy laws have been broken, the FCC chairman wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to verify that the agency could not conduct such a probe because it would violate federal laws governing disclosure of state secrets. Gonzales, who recently announced his resignation, has yet to respond to Martin.

Markey points at a number of events since his first request, such as that it's not a secret anymore that the government has been using telcos to wiretap.

It would be good if the FCC were to represent the public interest, rather than just the telco and cableco and the administration's interest.

-jsq

PS: Seen on Fergie's tech blog.

It's good to see a newspaper not mince words:

A free-for-all web (after normal monthly broadband charges have been paid) is one of the wonders of the world and a binding force for all communities.

...

The Federal Communications Commission has just been advised by the US department of justice, under heavy lobbying from the operators who stand to gain from higher data charges, that a neutral net might "prevent, rather than promote" investment and innovation. This is twaddle. An open-access net has produced one of the greatest surges of innovation ever recorded and has given an opportunity for people all over the world to communicate with each other and share knowledge on equal terms. Long may it continue to be so.

— In praise of... a freely available internet, Leader, The Guardian, Tuesday September 11, 2007

The Guardian brings up a related point:

It has only become an issue because the US Congress is scrutinising the question of "net neutrality", though why the US authorities - rather than an international body - should deem themselves to have jurisdiction over the internet is not clear.

The usual answer to that is that a properly constituted international body would do even worse. Although nowadays, it seems the otherwise unlateralist U.S. government is toeing the (pseudo-)capitalist international party line.

-jsq

I should have expected the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to be involved in this:

Another document came out last week that ties this all together. It's from the ITU, and it's called "Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2007: The Road to Next-Generation Networks (NGN)."

The ITU defines "NGN" as a network that provides quality-of-service-enabled transport technologies. The idea is that packet transport will be "enriched with Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) to ensure Quality of Service (QoS)."

Translation, as far as I can tell: packet transport becomes the same as circuit-switched transport. Prioritization is controlled; it's a network optimized on billing.

— Tying things together, by Susan Crawford, Susan Crawford blog, Mon 10 Sep 2007 08:05 PM ED

This takes us back to the bad old days when national telephone companies sold you data service by the byte, through their preferred protocol, X.25. The advantage of circuit switching was supposed to be fully provisioned copper wires or other resources all the way through between two parties. The disadvantages were that you sometimes couldn't get a connection and the high price, which got even higher between countries. It seems the telcos have settled on MPLS as their modern equivalent of X.25.

-jsq

Interesting post here on Scott Cleland's Percursor Blog:

A major reason why the stakes are so high in the FTC's review of the Google-DoubleClick merger is how remarkably fast online advertising is overtaking other advertising industry segments that have been around for decades.

— Online ad trends show the huge stakes in the Google-Doubleclick merger, by Scott Cleland, Precursor Blog, Wed, 2007-09-05 17:38.

Interesting especially in that I don't recall him having any similar trepidations about the AT&T-Bellsouth merger.

He quotes eMarketer as saying that:

a recent report from equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson predicts that the Internet will displace television as the No. 1 ad medium by 2011." [bold added]

Cleland did not provide a link to eMarketer or to VSS.

A little googling finds the VSS press release about its report, which actually says:

Internet advertising is expected to become the largest ad segment in 2011, surpassing newspapers.

— New Veronis Suhler Stevenson Forecast: Shift to Alternative Media Strategies Will Drive U.S. Communications Spending Growth in 2007-2011 Period; Consumer Media Usage Expected to Level Off Going Forward, Press Release, Veronis Suhler Stevenson, 7 Aug 2007

VSS says newspapers: not television. Looks like somebody had television on the brain.

Shortly after a high level U.S. official acknowledged that telephone companies have helped the government in illegal spying, this comes out:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House's controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.

The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the program.

The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or "any other form of assistance" to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.

— Bush Seeks Legal Immunity for Telecoms, By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer, August 31, 2007 - 5:02 p.m. EDT

Let's let President Nixon sum it up:

Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

— Richard M. Nixon interviewed by David Frost, 19 May 1977.

Yet the same administration can't be proactive about effective regulation of first-mile Internet access for effective competition.

-jsq

When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission.

One sentence sums it up:

When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission.

&mdash: Net Neutrality: This is serious by timbl (Tim Berners-Lee), DiG, Wed, 2006-06-21 16:35

That's Internet freedom. That's why we need net neutrality.

What is net neutrality?

If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

Where you and I are any pair of participants on the Internet.

FCC Investigating Wiretapping?

Now this would be a good thing if it happened:

House telecom subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) repeated his call for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate widespread allegations of telecom privacy law violations by intelligence agencies that received cooperation from telecom carriers in anti-terrorist surveillance efforts.

— Markey renews calls for FCC investigation into wiretapping, By Jeffrey Silva, RCCWireless News, September 12, 2007 - 2:13 pm EDT

That would be about as likely as Gonzales starting such an investigation.

Oh, wait:

After Markey wrote Martin in March to ask him to launch an investigation into whether telecom privacy laws have been broken, the FCC chairman wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to verify that the agency could not conduct such a probe because it would violate federal laws governing disclosure of state secrets. Gonzales, who recently announced his resignation, has yet to respond to Martin.

Markey points at a number of events since his first request, such as that it's not a secret anymore that the government has been using telcos to wiretap.

It would be good if the FCC were to represent the public interest, rather than just the telco and cableco and the administration's interest.

-jsq

PS: Seen on Fergie's tech blog.

Twaddle v. a Wonder of the World

It's good to see a newspaper not mince words:

A free-for-all web (after normal monthly broadband charges have been paid) is one of the wonders of the world and a binding force for all communities.

...

The Federal Communications Commission has just been advised by the US department of justice, under heavy lobbying from the operators who stand to gain from higher data charges, that a neutral net might "prevent, rather than promote" investment and innovation. This is twaddle. An open-access net has produced one of the greatest surges of innovation ever recorded and has given an opportunity for people all over the world to communicate with each other and share knowledge on equal terms. Long may it continue to be so.

— In praise of... a freely available internet, Leader, The Guardian, Tuesday September 11, 2007

The Guardian brings up a related point:

It has only become an issue because the US Congress is scrutinising the question of "net neutrality", though why the US authorities - rather than an international body - should deem themselves to have jurisdiction over the internet is not clear.

The usual answer to that is that a properly constituted international body would do even worse. Although nowadays, it seems the otherwise unlateralist U.S. government is toeing the (pseudo-)capitalist international party line.

-jsq

Back to the ITU Future

I should have expected the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to be involved in this:

Another document came out last week that ties this all together. It's from the ITU, and it's called "Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2007: The Road to Next-Generation Networks (NGN)."

The ITU defines "NGN" as a network that provides quality-of-service-enabled transport technologies. The idea is that packet transport will be "enriched with Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) to ensure Quality of Service (QoS)."

Translation, as far as I can tell: packet transport becomes the same as circuit-switched transport. Prioritization is controlled; it's a network optimized on billing.

— Tying things together, by Susan Crawford, Susan Crawford blog, Mon 10 Sep 2007 08:05 PM ED

This takes us back to the bad old days when national telephone companies sold you data service by the byte, through their preferred protocol, X.25. The advantage of circuit switching was supposed to be fully provisioned copper wires or other resources all the way through between two parties. The disadvantages were that you sometimes couldn't get a connection and the high price, which got even higher between countries. It seems the telcos have settled on MPLS as their modern equivalent of X.25.

-jsq

Merger Mania

Interesting post here on Scott Cleland's Percursor Blog:

A major reason why the stakes are so high in the FTC's review of the Google-DoubleClick merger is how remarkably fast online advertising is overtaking other advertising industry segments that have been around for decades.

— Online ad trends show the huge stakes in the Google-Doubleclick merger, by Scott Cleland, Precursor Blog, Wed, 2007-09-05 17:38.

Interesting especially in that I don't recall him having any similar trepidations about the AT&T-Bellsouth merger.

He quotes eMarketer as saying that:

a recent report from equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson predicts that the Internet will displace television as the No. 1 ad medium by 2011." [bold added]

Cleland did not provide a link to eMarketer or to VSS.

A little googling finds the VSS press release about its report, which actually says:

Internet advertising is expected to become the largest ad segment in 2011, surpassing newspapers.

— New Veronis Suhler Stevenson Forecast: Shift to Alternative Media Strategies Will Drive U.S. Communications Spending Growth in 2007-2011 Period; Consumer Media Usage Expected to Level Off Going Forward, Press Release, Veronis Suhler Stevenson, 7 Aug 2007

VSS says newspapers: not television. Looks like somebody had television on the brain.

Intended vs. Legal

Shortly after a high level U.S. official acknowledged that telephone companies have helped the government in illegal spying, this comes out:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House's controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.

The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the program.

The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or "any other form of assistance" to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.

— Bush Seeks Legal Immunity for Telecoms, By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer, August 31, 2007 - 5:02 p.m. EDT

Let's let President Nixon sum it up:

Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

— Richard M. Nixon interviewed by David Frost, 19 May 1977.

Yet the same administration can't be proactive about effective regulation of first-mile Internet access for effective competition.

-jsq