When I was away from NY last year, sitting in a hotel room halfway around the world, I found myself checking Gothamist.  It has a certain flavor.  Here's a recent entry:  The Most Inconvenient Commute Contest.

My commute, between my bedroom and my living room, was not all that bad during the transit strike.  There was a shoe in the way at one point, but I made it through.  That's because I'm just writing papers and grading exams; I don't have to leave home.

But these have been tough days for millions of other people.  BlogNYC.net is selling commemorative t-shirts:

There are many many pictures of the transit strike atmosphere.  Newyorkology has many useful strike-related posts (sample). It took people hours and hours to get home. NYCMetblogs is full of stories.

The big story has got to be, though, that lots of people stayed home and huddled around their broadband connections.  Or maybe I'm just feeling slightly guilty for having avoided the entire thing. 

Not to be tendentious, but it really does seem that we're lurching from one crisis of leadership to another here in the U.S.  And none of them, for whatever reason, are sticking -- so we go on lurching.

What went wrong?

I'm reading a biography of Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin called Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln managed to travel some very difficult political roads in his life, and I thought the book might be helpful in understanding political dirty pool -- surely 19th-century dirty pool was just as dirty (maybe dirtier) than 21st-century dirty pool is. 

Here's a paragraph that struck me yesterday:

It was a country for young men. "We find ourselves," the twenty-eight-year-old Lincoln told the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, "in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate." The founding fathers had crafted a government more favorable to liberty "than any of which the history of former times tells us."  Now it was up to their children to preserve and expand the great experiment.

Great experiment?  Peaceful possession? And, the big one:  a government more favorable to liberty than any other in history?

What went wrong?

One of the big problems with the enormously problematic E911 Order [warning: very large and very strange pdf file] is that it required VoIP providers to hook into the legacy E911 system controlled by the Baby Bells without mandating that the Bells allow the VoIP guys to connect.

This was a tailor-made holdup situation for what was already an enormous holdup.  (Remember that it took the wireless industry more than ten years to figure out how to work with the legacy E911 world, but the FCC only gave the VoIP companies a few months.)  The Bells had full authority to give the appearance of being helpful while slowly dragging their feet and pushing the VoIP providers (their competitors) closer and closer to a deadline that (initially at least) was supposed to trigger mass cut-offs of VoIP customers for whom E911 service wasn't available.

Diabolical, right?.

Well, the scheme is even worse than that.  The Bells are required to let local competitors (the people who know the acronyms call them CLECs) connect.  CLECs can, therefore, provide VoIP guys with the access to the E911 system that they need to avoid being subject to enforcement actions by the FCC.  

So this paragraph in a recent Drew Clark column caught my eye:

‘That [selling retail access to VoIP providers to selective routers] is probably a business opportunity for many of the carriers that are out there,’ [FCC Chairman] Martin said . . . ‘I have continued to believe that the competitive carriers are going to play an important role and many of our rules and regulations should be viewed as actually an opportunity for people.’

What?  Let's get this straight.  This means that the FCC is not only pushing for VoIP providers to be obligated to go through the legacy system—a solution that is bad enough in itself—but further ensuring that they must work with middlemen to do so. (If the Commission had wanted to open the legacy hardware to the VoIP people, the FCC could have done that.)  And, to boot, FCC is propping up the middleman-market as an “opportunity” for their familiar regulated entities, telephone companies.

I'm pretty cynical about the entire E911 debacle, but this is breathtaking.

Let's go for BPL and hand it over to FERC.  Soon.

(like the acronyms?)

If you are looking around for places to park your tax-deductible contributions, I want to recommend two to you:  Public Knowledge and Greenwood.

They don't compete with one another, so they can't be miffed about being included in the same post.

Public Knowledge had some great victories this year, and has more battles ahead.  They won their case about the broadcast flag, they're fighting tech mandates on the Hill, and they're digging into a host of telecom issues.  You can go here to donate to them.

Greenwood is a music camp in western Massachusetts that is dedicated to teaching kids about chamber music.  It's a generous, kind place and you'd like anyone who ever went there (this is not a plug -- I didn't go there).  You can go here to donate to them.

I can't really pretend to tie these two things together.  But these are tough times for telecom policy and chamber music and both causes should be supported.

In the ICANN context, it seems to me that we could benefit in many ways by having between-meeting discussions, asynchronously, using visual tools that incorporate text. 

We might be able to come to decisions -- something that is almost impossible to do in an email stream.

We might be able to continue communicating, rather than letting things sit for three months while we gather our strength for the next eight-day meeting.

We might be able to get quick input from people other than those who are able physically to attend meetings.

And, finally, we might make more visible ICANN's policy processes -- something that is needed.

I received a few email messages after my last post about this subject, but I'm looking for more.  Send word if you've worked with an online application that seems to facilitate this kind of work and is easy to use.  And is free (or inexpensive).

Particularly in an era in which our own President doesn't seem to care much about what laws say, it seems important that at least the people drafting the laws -- senators and representatives -- have a pretty good fix on what they're writing down.

So I want someone to call both Mr. Sensenbrenner and Mr. Conyers and ask them to explain how the Analog Hole bill (introduced late yesterday - 35 page PDF) works.

I bet they won't be able to do it.  Oh, maybe they'll say something about "protecting digital content in a terrifying time," but they probably won't be able to go farther down the rhetorical ladder.

It's not an easy bill to parse.  It looks as if two marking schemes, CGMS-A and VEIL, are going to be required to be acknowledged and adhered to through all analog-digital conversions of video.  That's just my guess.  The bill will probably affect an enormous variety of devices that have analog inputs.

Now, the existence of analog inputs has been heavily relied on in Hollywood's discussion of why the broadcast flag was such a dandy idea -- "plenty of room for fair use!  you've got all of those analog outs that we're leaving alone!" -- so if these things disappear that has to affect the fair use balance.  The bill appears to carve out private copying of broadcast television, but that's not very clear, and even that will presumably disappear as DTV is phased in.

More to the point, this bill has the appearance of a snarling, heavily-detailed technical mandate.  It even has a Table W at the back, where the marking system is (impenetrably, to me) tied to a particular approved device response. 

I await the responses of Messrs. Sensenbrenner and Conyers.  Surely the proponents of such a technical bill will be able to explain it to us.

There's an article [requires registration, sorry] by Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe from a couple of days ago making the rounds.  It reports on yet another assault by incumbent telecom providers on the open internet.  We need to leave these dinosaurs in the dust.

Here's their plan: to provide tiered access to online services.  "Regular" internet access would be pokey; "premium" access would be fast enough to allow for a good video experience; and no competing services would be allowed on the "premium internet."  Of course, the "premium" whatever -- let's just go ahead and call it a "channel," because this is just a dumb broadcast model plunked onto online life, borrowed from the mobile phone world -- would not be the internet.  There would be no place for start-ups who couldn't afford to pay their way in; consumer choice would be sharply limited; and walled gardens would be the order of the day.

BellSouth says this:

''When costs are being driven into an equation, they have to be recovered somewhere," said Bill Smith, chief technology officer of BellSouth. ''Why do fundamental business economics not apply to the Internet?"  

BellSouth and the others say they won't be able to provide high-speed access unless they can be confident they can monetize their networks -- and avoid competition for their video and voice services.

They wouldn't be able to do this if we had more choices for broadband access.  These companies are able to act like monopolists -- raising prices for what should be commodity services -- because they don't have competition.  That's why the first move has to be to find alternative routes online. 

The hard question is:  how unhappy will Americans be with comfortable, broadcast-style, fully-packaged-and-protected highspeed access?  Maybe not unhappy enough to revolt.

Meanwhile, Chairman Martin plans to take yet another legacy disaster, the Universal Service Fund, and have it siphon off funds from online applications.  It's unclear how this will work, but recently proposed legislation would levy fees on any use of IP addresses.

According to the CNET story,

The mammoth fund--$4.7 billion was distributed during the first nine months of this year--has been beset by charges of mismanagement and fraud during its seven-year history.

So:  Graft, fraud, taxes, slowed services, and walled-garden control.  Someone on Capitol Hill needs to remember that the internet came to be the economic engine that it is because we restrained ourselves from acting this way.  America should be leading the world in its enlightened approach to the internet -- instead, we seem to be falling farther and farther behind.

I spent part this evening as part of a panel talking about Google Book Search. 

The publishers take the view that any effect on any prospective market they might want to enter into fatally undermines a finding of fair use.  The logical outgrowth of this position is that because there are innumerable possible markets out there, mass uses of any kind can't possibly be fair -- to the publishers, scale matters enormously.

Translated:  Google makes a complete scanned copy of books.  That copy isn't made available to anyone else (other than the libraries with which Google has arrangements, and their uses are in turn sharply limited.)  That reproduction is fair use, in my view, and doesn't require permission from the publishers.

Why?  Because it's an essential step towards the transformative "snippet" view -- can't get there without making a copy.  And even though it's a complete copy, that doesn't mean the use isn't fair (see the "multiple copies for classroom use" part of Sec. 107).  And the existence of this reproduction doesn't undermine sales of the book.  In fact, the snippet view may actually lead to many more sales.

Well, that doesn't satisfy the people who have sued Google.  They point to the fourth factor in Sec. 107, and say, "Google's possession of this copy is having an effect on the POTENTIAL MARKET for the work.  Google is working itself into a position to be the world's bookstore for e-books.  We won't be able to create our own market along those lines, and so our potential revenues are being undermined."  Q.E.D.

The world is sufficiently unpredictable that anything could happen, right?  So fair uses that threaten any possible secondary market can't exist, according to the publishers.  In effect, they'd like to use copyright law to protect against network effects and first-mover advantages that they can't personally monetize.

I very much hope that Google won't settle this case.  We need these issues decided.

In the US, we are dangerously close to requiring indecency limitations on cable channels -- next will come calls to similarly regulate satellite, and eventually online streaming video, all in the name of maintaining a level regulatory playing field.  All of this is probably unconstitutional, according to the Congressional Research Service. 

(Recent joke:  Kevin Martin is so conservative that he wants to take the "F" out of "FCC".) 

In Europe, the Television Sans Frontieres initiative continues to steam along, with a new draft directive coming out from the Commission by the end of 2005.  Draft language from July 2005 read::

Member States shall take appropriate measures to ensure that audiovisual content services are not distributed in such a way that might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of minors.

In respect of non-linear audiovisual content services [e.g., streaming online video requested by users] Member States are encouraged to put in place systems of co-regulation or self-regulation as well [as] systems of filtering, age verification, labelling and classification of content.

It's not clear to me what the plan is for the end-of-December legislative draft, but I will wager that some restrictions on online video pronounced in the name of protecting children will be included ("in order to protect the public and to avoid the distortions of competition," in the words of a French official).  Mandated standards will likely be set by government, to be implemented by industry.

Migrating a Television Sans Frontieres-like regime (which includes rights of reply, advertising restrictions, and other elements as well as "protecting children") onto cable-satellite-internet in the US might have seemed unthinkable ten years ago.  But times have changed.

Many members of Congress think that pornography on the internet has to be regulated, and mere unconstitutionality probably isn't a good enough reason for them not to pass such laws.  And the FCC seems ready to break some kneecaps (= block some deals) in order to reach similar ends.

So here's what we need:  an idealistic, persuasive, charismatic, well-informed mogul of the First Amendment.  Someone who isn't conflicted by client representations or business interests.  Someone who can talk to the whole country about the importance of the free flow of speech online and off.  Someone who can lead.

Send word if you spot this person on the street or in a meeting.

James Enck does it here using this tool.

via Eurotelcoblog

Back in 2003, an analyst's report noted admiringly that Intrado provided more than 80% of the nation's 911 service (both traditional telephone and wireless).  But the analyst was cautious about Intrado's future:

It is popular to highlight the importance of emergency services at the state and local level, but to back the rhetoric with funding is another thing.

Since then, of course, things have changed -- the FCC has mandated that VoIP services very quickly find ways to provide E911 capabilities to their subscribers.  Intrado has found yet another source of funding.

Not that Intrado was doing badly -- far from it.  In several presentations to the FCC over the last year, Intrado emphasized that it counted as its customers all of the Baby Bells, over 40 wireless carriers, and more than 800 cities and government agencies.  It touted its "strong relationships" with over 7700 emergency call centers.  Intrado recently announced that it was now in a position to provide VoIP services with nationwide coverage, through its deals with telephone companies and public safety call centers. 

Intrado is 911 in America.

Here's how it works for VoIP: 

1.  A VoIP customer calls 911.

2.  The call goes to the VoIP provider's server, using SIP.

3.  The VoIP provider then queries Intrado's servers.  Why?  Because Intrado has an amazing database of subscriber address information -- 206 million records.  And often people in emergencies can't say where they are, so E911 (or "enhanced" 911) requires that there be a way to associate their location with the call.

4.  Intrado's servers then route the call to the relevant telephone company's "selective router" -- the physical piece of hardware that is dedicated to getting calls to the emergency call centers (or PSAPs). 

5.  At the same time, Intrado routes the customer's telephone number and address into the Automatic Location Information Database used for E911 calls in the US.  This is the legacy way of attaching address information to calls, with a twist:  Intrado forces new data into the ALI database at this point in the transaction, tagged uniquely in such a way (as I understand it) that the PSAP operator can pull it out and associate the data with the call.

Intrado is doing all of this for almost all emergency calls in this country -- running the database, connecting to the selective routers, associating the call with the address information.  And maybe that's fine.  We wouldn't want to confuse our emergency calls, and Intrado has been doing this for thirty years.

But the part I'm troubled about is the influence that Intrado appears to have had -- going slowly here -- over the entire E911 for VoIP situation.  Frequent readers know that my opinion is that it made no sense to force the old legacy E911 solution onto all VoIP providers, with its reliance on selective routers (hardware!) and its inflexibility.

But it did make sense to Intrado to have things go this way.  And so they met, month after month, with the Commmission staff, talked on the phone, did their best, and ended up with a lot more business.  AT&T's CallVantage uses Intrado.  Verizon uses Intrado.  Vonage uses Intrado.

Enter Intrado.

It has been great having David Post here in NYC this term.  David is working on a book called Mr. Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace, and I can't wait for him to finish.

In the prologue, David tells the story of Jefferson fighting against the Old World belief that animals and humans degenerated in the New World -- that every creature was smaller and less powerful in American than it was in Europe.  To prove his point, Jefferson had an entire [dead] moose shipped to Paris and reconstituted in stuffed form in his entrance hall.  There, see?  Things are large in America!  That moose was seven feet tall.  (You can read another account of this controvery here.) 

(This may be an elk, not a moose, but it is beautifully framed and I thought you might enjoy seeing it.)

David wants to put Jefferson's ideas to work in describing cyberspace as a new place -- he's writing his "notes on cyberspace" to reflect Jefferson's "notes on the State of Virginia."

The great question for me, and the question I put to my class today, is:  What is the moose of cyberspace?  What's the thing you'd show people to convince them that the internet is hugely different from a telephone network or a broadcast system and that entirely new things are possible there?  We've got this unbelievable group-forming-network-of-networks -- how do we show people what it is?

Several people said Wikipedia is the moose of cyberspace -- an amazing encyclopedia created by everyone.  There were also strong voices for eBay and Google.  Imagine having knowledge at your fingertips, 1/4 of a second away!  That's big.

So -- what do you think is the moose of cyberspace?

Thanks to David Post for the idea and Catherine White for the elk/moose picture. 

Next Wednesday evening, December 14, I'll be part of a discussion about Google Book Search.

The other panelists are Allan Adler, of the American Association of Publishers; Paul Aiken, of the Author's Guild; and Cameron Stracher, of New York Law School.

It's free -- it runs from 6:30 to 8pm at the bar association building at 42 W. 44th in New York City.

We had our organizational call this afternoon to prepare for the panel.  It took no time and we were all very polite to one another.  I'm open to all suggestions for transformational arguments -- things I can say that will make the other side suddenly see a shaft of light descending from the ceiling, accompanied by a fluttering and well-read spirit from the future.

But I'll start by making sure we all have our facts straight.  Snippets, folks, snippets!  And the libraries are using their digital copies to make books available to the blind and disabled!  And it must be that the publishers have it in for libraries -- they can't stand the idea of all this free-form borrowing.  If that's the case, why haven't they sued the libraries?

Or is this whole fight just a holdup?

AP reported yesterday that the head of the European Publishers Council has Google on his mind.  According to the Publishers Council:

The value of content must be understood by consumers so that new business models can evolve. Industry must have legal certainty and the confidence that their intellectual property will be protected.

What Google does is respond to search queries by providing snippets -- thumbnail pictures and a line of text here, a line from a page there, a headline -- and helping people get to where those things were posted.  That's pointing, not copying, and it's a key element of Web 2.0. 

The publishers, and the news agencies, are having trouble with this evolution -- heck, they had enough trouble with Web 1.0, much less the groupness we're seeing now-- and are relying on incumbent laws (like copyright law) to protect their ability to charge for content.

But there's a great opportunity here that shouldn't be missed:  news companies can become not only providers of great stories (well-researched, well-written, unlike blog posts) but also  sources of order.  There is so much information now -- we need help!  We need priority, and sense of impact, and sense of global connections.  We need visualizations, and links, and commentary.  All of these things are valuable.  We'll pay -- with our attention, our loyalty to the brand, and maybe even with money if the reporters' own personalities are allowed out to play.

A search engine, alone, can't provide this kind of judgment.   Not even Google can say which story is likely to have an important impact on our collective future.  There is a Web 2.0 model for publishers, and they can only get there by letting go.

The ICANN official board meeting just ended.   During the morning, Vint Cerf read this statement about the com set of issues:

The board has listened long and hard this week to all constituencies with regard to the .COM agreements

We are deeply grateful to the efforts made by all constituencies to respond to the board’s invitation to organize comments on the proposals and to provide, where possible, concrete suggestions for improving them.

We are also very grateful for the time each constituency spent going over with the board their ideas and reactions.

We ask the staff to accept any further written comments until December 7 and to produce for the community a public report summarizing, analyzing and organizing the feedback provided on the .com and settlement agreements by December 11.

We recommend that staff approach VeriSign with the results of the report on the proposed contract and settlement. We remind all parties that the board has not yet agreed to the terms of the contract and settlement.

We also note the existence of a policy development process on new gTLDs and strongly believe that this PDP should be informed by the results of the comments received on the proposed contract for .com and settlement with VeriSign.

I am looking forward to the board's continued strong and detailed involvement in this process of dialogue, and I want to underscore the importance of the GNSO's policy development process in developing a framework for all of this.

Bret Fausett has been collecting podcast material.  Joi Ito has been busy blogging.  Me?  I've been in a very analog mode -- taking notes with pen and paper, standing around in the hallways talking to people, and thinking about paths forward. 

Jordyn Buchanan made a good point at the meeting between the Board and the registrar constituency this afternoon.  Why don't we have a policy framework for registry agreements?  Why can't the negotiators of those agreements have policy advice from the community in advance?  Just a question.

Wendy Seltzer at today's ALAC meeting said that it's really difficult to persuade people to be interested in ALAC -- here's the pitch --

If you form an organization, you can join ALAC.  You can't join as an individual.  And if your group joins ALAC, you can then work on forming a regional group-of-groups.  And if you do that, your regional group can work on getting someone on the ICANN nominating committee.

That doesn't sound gripping, does it?  There's got to be a way to facilitate individual participation in ICANN policy processes that will attract people. 

So I'll go back to analog mode now, and hope that the bloggers here are capturing what's going on.  The Public Forum will be webcast tomorrow, and will be worth watching. Go here to see the schedule.