A current FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is suggesting guidelines for IP-enabled services.  At CFP yesterday, Bob Cannon and Chris Savage gave a thorough FCC tutorial, and ended with a discussion of this NPRM and VOIP generally.  I raised my hand and asked whether "IP-enabled services" included the DNS and email.  Answer:  yes.

Here's the footnote setting the scope of the NPRM: 

Specifically, the scope of this proceeding – and the term "IP-enabled services," as it is used here – includes services and applications relying on the Internet Protocol family. IP-enabled "services" could include the digital communications capabilities of increasingly higher speeds, which use a number of transmission network technologies, and which generally have in common the use of the Internet Protocol. Some of these may be highly managed to support specific communications functions. IP-enabled "applications" could include capabilities based in higher-level software that can be invoked by the customer or on the customer’s behalf to provide functions that make use of communications services. Because both of these uses of IP are contributing to important transformations in the communications environment, this Notice seeks commentary on both, and uses the term "IP-enabled services" to refer to "applications" as well as "services." Recognizing the broad scope entailed by this definition, we invite comment below on how we might more rigorously distinguish those specific classes of IP-enabled services, if any, on which we should focus our attention. We emphasize, however, that this Notice does not address standard-setting issues for the Internet Protocol language itself, which are more appropriately addressed in other fora, or other items outside this Commission’s jurisdiction, such as Internet governance.

That last sentence makes you think about ICANN -- the White Paper said that the idea was to create a group to deal with "management and administration of Internet names and numbers on an ongoing basis," and not to provide "Internet governance."  So maybe the FCC is interested in taking on ICANN.  Whoof.

But putting ICANN aside, what about everything else that uses IP?  What about email (and blogging applications)?

The pro-regulatory view is that email is "affected with the public interest" and some sort of a common carrier. Email equals Western Union. Whoof again.  The thinking would be that because we all use email, maybe there should be CALEA obligations inherent in it (backdoors for snooping).  Or 911 obligations.  Or address portability.  Or you name it.

My reaction is mostly amazed disbelief.  Aren't there user agreements that have to do with email?  Don't we want to let the market dictate which email solutions people prefer because of the kinds of rules and promises those solutions provide? Don't we want to encourage businesses to roll out applications without having to check whether FCC guidelines are being met? Is there really a market failure here that drives a need for regulation?

Because one bit looks very like another, all of the VOIP discussions may also apply to any other sort of application you can think of.  What does this mean for the future?