700Mhz for Public Safety and Wireless Broadband

At Freedom to Connect, Reed Hundt mentioned that his current company, FrontLine Wireless, was making a proposal to the FCC; it was released yesterday:
The plan would enable the FCC to simultaneously advance public safety goals and speed broadband wireless access for all Americans — especially those living in rural areas — all goals to which the FCC has demonstrated a steadfast commitment.
The idea is to license some 700Mhz commercial spectrum for a commercial wireless network, provided that the licensee simultaneously support public safety communications. Continue reading →

Wireless Carterfone

Landline broadband isn’t the only arena in which net neutrality is needed.
A paper published by Columbia University Law School Professor Tim Wu claims that wireless networks don’t play by the same rules that wired networks do and limit consumer choice. Skype, for one, agreed with him and petitioned the FCC to mandate that wireless network operators open their networks to more devices and applications. The CTIA fired back.

Wu stated that the FCC’s Carterfone rules “continue to affect innovation and the development of new devices and applications for wireless networks.” His comments elicited a large response from the industry and refocused the net neutrality discussion, this time on the wireless networks.

Wu went on to argue that the carriers exert too much control over the design of mobile equipment and said, “They have used that power to force equipment developers to omit or cripple many consumer-friendly features.”

Paper Sparks Wireless Net Neutrality Debate, By Eric M. Zeman, WirelessWeek, February 28, 2007, NEWS@2 DIRECT

Skype then filed with the FCC to open wireless networks to non-carrier equipment. Continue reading →

EduCause Talking Points

EDUCAUSE, the higher education information technology organization, is active in net neutrality. Why? The first two points of their Talking Points on Net Neutrality answer that:
  1. Net neutrality is fundamentally important to allowing universities fulfill their educational mission. Universities’ goal is to deliver high-quality multimedia instructional material to as many students as possible, including off-campus students and those in rural areas. The widespread availability of open, affordable broadband communications makes distance learning more accessible and effective.
  2. Universities’ Internet research laboratories could be undermined if the Internet is not open to innovation and experimentation. Universities are developing next-generation Internet technologies that will drive the Internet economy. If Internet service providers are allowed to inhibit or degrade these research activities, the United States could lose its leadership role in the creation of Internet-based technologies.
Universities need net neutrality to do their two most basic jobs: teaching and research. Continue reading →

Public Outcry for Net Neutrality

A recent poll says the U.S. public supports net neutrality:
The nationally representative survey found that more than 75 percent of Internet users polled are seriously concerned about not being able to freely choose an Internet service provider or being required to pay twice for certain Internet services. Another 70 percent were concerned about providers blocking or impairing their access to Internet services or sites, such as Internet telephone service or online retailers like Amazon.com. Fifty-four percent want Congress to take action to ensure that Internet providers are prohibited from engaging in these practices.

Importance of the Internet Public Support for Net Neutrality New Survey: Consumers Want Congress to Protect Right to Access Information, Services on Internet, “Network Neutrality” Issue Needs Pro-Active Response from FCC, Congress to Ensure Consumers, Start-Ups Are Not Subject to Discrimination, FCC Commissioner Copps Calls for National Dialogue, ConsumersUnion.org, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006

This poll was of 1,000 households in November 2005. Continue reading →

Net Neutrality and Innovation

A newspaper article claims that net neutrality is unnecessary and counterproductive:
On the present Internet, ISPs do have control over what information can pass through their infrastructure, but cases of actual unfair discrimination against certain services are extremely rare. Currently, both the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission have authority to enforce competition rules and punish Internet providers for discriminating against unaffiliated services.

Markets, not mandates, for Net, By Dominik Saran, Washington Times, February 28, 2007

Well, yes, the FCC could do that, but in August 2005 it chose to get rid of what remained of net neutrality and to replace it with four vague principles that are not enforced. Continue reading →

Berners-Lee for Net Neutrality

The inventor of the World Wide Web testified before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday 1 March, summing it up in one sentence:
“We are a society only in as much as we are individuals communicating.”
Not that that’s all he said:
Berners-Lee didn’t endorse specific Net neutrality proposals largely supported by congressional Democrats, but he said the Web as a communications medium deserves “special treatment” to protect its nondiscriminatory approach to content.

While he was growing up in the U.K., there were high penalties for interfering with mail delivery, because mail was one of the main ways to communicate, Berners-Lee said. Now, the Web is a major communications medium worthy of protections, he said.

One company or country shouldn’t control access to the Web, he added.

Berners-Lee offers thoughts on Net neutrality, DRM, Legendary Web originator weighs in Grant Gross, IDG News Service, March 01, 2007

He didn’t get much opposition to his thoughts on net neutrality, but he did get some to his DRM comments. Continue reading →

EU Sues Germany over DT Broadband

It seems the European Union sees broadband monopolies differently than the U.S. FCC does:
EU spokesman Martin Selmayr told reporters that a letter “of formal notice” was sent to Berlin after it ignored repeated warnings not to adopt legislation that could grant Deutsche Telekom a de-facto monopoly on a new broadband network.

The German parliament on Friday passed the telecommunications law, exempting Deutsche Telekom’s high-speed network from regulation and demands to open up its network to competitors, at least for now.

EU Sues Germany Over Broadband Limits, Associated Press 02.26.07, 8:34 AM ET

Seems like the EU realizes monopoly is bad for competition. Continue reading →

Participation and Patterns

In a long post about why LibraryThing has 10 times as many tags per book as Amazon, Tim Spalding says this:
Take one example: LibraryThing users have applied over 3,900 tags to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, including “apples,” “office” and “quite boring.” With just a few tags, it might be thought a desert cookbook, a business book or—worst of all—a boring one. But these are all single-instance tags. With a larger number of tags, clear patterns emerge, with high-level descriptors like “history” (755 times) and “anthropology” (293 times) standing out clearly against the noise. Even lower-frequency tags, like “social evolution” (25 times) and “pulitzer prize” (20 times) can be trusted as relevant.
So if you can get people tagging their stuff, i.e., books they read, you can collect enough opinions to see relevant patterns.

This is participation, which the Internet does better than any other medium. It’s not broadcast centralized content, which too many big ISPs (telcos and cablecos) seem fixated upon. It also wouldn’t happen if LibraryThing had to pay for a premium channel to reach all those people. Participation is a big reason net neutrality matters.

-jsq

PS: Seen on Joho the Blog.

Who Was Gutenberg, Anyway?

Regarding exogenous technological change, it occured to me that I didn’t really know who Gutenberg was, nor whether he fit the profile.

I’m quoting a bio of him in full, because it doesn’t have a copyright on it and I can’t figure out where it came from originally, other than by the style of writing it is probably 19th century or earlier and probably a translation of a German original, and thus likely long out of copyright:

GUTENBERG, JOHANNES, or Henne, who is regarded as the inventor of the art of employing movable types in printing, was born near the close of the 14th century, at Mainz. He was sprung from a patrician family, which took the name of Gutenberg, or Gensfleisch, from two estates in its Possession. Of Gutenberg’s early life no particulars are known, but it seems probable that he devoted himself at an early age to mechanical arts.

Biography of Gutenberg

For “patrician family” then read “middle-class” now. He was apparently a tinker, who might have been tuning cars in the 1950s or computers in the late 20th century or early 21st. Continue reading →