It's impossible to deny that biological evolution happened.  Combining many simple steps many times, plus mutations and contextual struggles, resulted in human beings. We didn't spring from the head of Zeus or any other god.

Because of this evolutionary process, right now humans have minds that have great computational powers of pattern recognition and language acquisition. We're able to note that the pace of technological development is quickening.  We can tell that devices are getting smaller and smarter.  (We're still evolving slowly.)

We don't avail ourselves of most of our computational powers, though, even as we are amazed by the nuances we can notice.  Neither our bodily computers -- our minds -- nor the computers we buy are fully used.

Kurzweil thinks that if we are able in the coming years to take advantage of growth in computing power and access more of it, we'll soon be able to reverse-engineer the functioning of the human mind.  We won't necessarily be able to compute (or describe) personality, but we may be able to figure out functions and replicate them.  With this information, he thinks we can evolve better ("stronger") intelligence amplification processes.

Perhaps if we can persuade the Administration that research into the functioning of the human brain will reveal truths about intelligent design, these reverse engineering efforts will be better-funded.  Brain research:  the ARPANET of the 21st century.

On a more practical level, the book is full of claims based on concrete cases that the rate of technological change (and consequent paradigm shifts) is increasing exponentially.

If this is true, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, perhaps worries about standard network access providers being able to inspect and charge for unauthorized services (providing "smart pipes") are misplaced.  The unauthorized services are changing so rapidly, evolving and mutating along the way, that the pipes won't be able to keep up.  Pipes aren't generally good at evolutionary models of service development.

So one possible alternative use of the words "intelligent design" is to denote "evolutionary design."  Designing for adaptability and evolution, as the instigators of TCP-IP did, is extremely intelligent.

A major premise of the Kurzweil book is that technological change accelerates exponentially, and that even the exponentials are accelerating.  Each epoch builds on the last.  Epochs are getting shorter.

Kurzweil focuses on complexity, noting that evolution produces increasing order, and that technology can extend evolution by building ever-more-efficiently on this order.  Very quick feedback loops are all around us, pushing the rate of technological change along and producing faster and smaller devices.  Meanwhile, biological evolution continues, but at such a slow rate that it hardly matters.

He boldly predicts that computers as we know them will disappear by the end of this decade, to be replaced by virtual reality environments.  No more offices by 2020. He suggests it's time to invest in tiny sensors and natural language search engines that can topple Google.

He's probably right, although it may take more than 20 years for all of this to happen. 

[Really -- why can't we ask a question of all of this online information and get back something meaningful?  Search engines right now are great at finding things we are already confident exist, but not so great at helping us put information in order so that we can increase our own intelligences.  Training in pattern recognition -- that's what we need search engines for.]

Even if he's only half right (or even less than half right), Kurzweil's work suggests that it's a good time to be alive and interested in the effect of technology on human beings.

Someone told me yesterday that the battle over internet access was "cable's to lose."  In other words, cable companies have such a great position in the marketplace that all they have to do is persuade content companies to trust them.  (Apparently cable royalties to content guys are a bit black-box-like -- so the people with content are predisposed not to trust.  I'm sure there are other reasons as well.) 

Cable wants to provide the internet "triple play":  voice, data, and video.

But here's a problem with this scenario:  Cable doesn't care about uplinks.  Cable companies provide asymmetrical connections, with download speeds that are much higher than upload speeds.  Much, much higher.  (Telephone companies also do this, but the differential is higher, generally, for cable.)  As CNET reported earlier this month, this is a huge problem for users that actually want to build and share things online, as more and more people want to do.

Citizen journalism?  Forget it.  Can't get there from here.  Video blogging?  Can't be done. 

If users come to expect slow uploads, they'll be content with ... slow uploads.  They'll be swallowing "triple play" material managed for them by cable/content behemoths. 

So I'm proposing some slogans (send in suggestions, please). 

Up With Up! 

Up Counts

They Better Care About Up

We Are Up

Up. 

In my mailbox today was an enormous package with an enormous black-covered book inside it:  The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil.  I'm pledging to you here, right now, that I will read this right away and report back.  I almost missed getting off the subway today (the urban equivalent of sitting in the driveway listening to a show on your car radio that you just can't bear to leave) because I was diving into the prologue.  Note: not "introduction." "Prologue."  This book is a theatrical event.

The subtitle of Kurzweil's new book is "When Humans Transcend Biology."  His premise is that humans have the ability to understand, model, and extend their own intelligence, using the computational power of machines to help.

We're trying to model e coli, so why not model our own minds?  It's a big big book, so part of my plan in telling you about its dramatic arrival in my life is to set the stage for some later posts.  The chapters go off on genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, diet (we knew he'd go there), and many many pages of responses to critics.

Deep breath. Onward.

USIIA today released a white paper that outlines ten principles for broadband policy and suggests that there should be an industry self-regulatory organization for broadband questions (that would handle conflict resolution and drive consensus on policy, among other things).  USIIA's white paper does not contain good news for internet users, as I'll explain in a moment. 

But I'm conflicted about the essential move that USIIA is making, which is to assert that "the industry" can manage its own house.  In general, I'm all for industry self-management.  Here, though, it looks as if providers of transport are ganging up with providers of content to ensure that all internet experiences are carefully managed.  Who gave transport providers the right to cut across layers of the protocol stack and dictate what applications run on their networks?  Answer:  telephony and cable history.  But that's not the same as the history of the internet, which is full of aspirations to not discriminate against other layers.

This self-regulatory move is different from, say, the ICANN model.  ICANN is organized to manage consensus on global domain name policy, and to coordinate entries into the root.  But ICANN carefully does not get into other layers, and nor do domain name registries.  Com doesn't try to manage the services that .com registrants can use or see. 

So although I'm all for industry taking care of itself through contracts, as long as there is adequate competition and real choice, there are at least two problems with the USIIA model:  First, it's masking an aggressive push towards fully managed networks in which transport and content are fused.  It's not so much "self regulation" as "cartel creation," and it's based on magnificent layer-crossing.  Second, the provider principles are founded on the assumption that adequate competition exists in the broadband world in the US, and I'm not sure that's true.  Take a look at this quote from p.8:

Is that true?

USIIA is suggesting that "the broadband industry" needs to transition to a "consumer-focused" marketplace in which external legislation and regulation isn't needed.  There's a coy suggestion n.8 on p.12 that USIIA might itself be the right self-regulatory body for broadband issues:

It may be assumed that the US Internet Industry Association would serve as the industry body, since it already has non-profit incorporated status, a strong reputation for service to the Internet industry and a recognized presence in the industry. 

USIIA's principles add five provider-oriented bullet points to the four that were foreshadowed by the FCC earlier this month (plus one about spyware services, just to balance the slate between "consumers" and "providers").  Here they are, together with questions they raise in my mind: 

1.  Network providers are entitled to interconnect with broadband transport services and other network providers through agreements and commercial contracts based on volume, terms, points of connection and other established market parameters;

Is this a principle that would cut against the idea of providing commodity transport? It's a moot point for the moment, based on Brand X and the FCC's declaration on DSL treatment, but why is this a principle that is good for  users?

2.  Network providers are entitled to offer vertically-integrated broadband access and applications;

How does this principle relate to end-to-end?  If something is successfully vertically integrated, users don't get to choose whether or not to use it.  It's the only choice.

3.  Network providers are entitled to offer proprietary services to their customers, so long as the provision of such services does not interfere with the customer's right to access content and run applications of their choice.

Is the "so long as" meaningful?  If a provider's terms of service say "you can't do X," won't that trump whatever "rights" the user has in the abstract?  If contracts are to be respected, surely the EULA is the most respected of all.

4.  Network providers are entitled to offer managed services to their customers;

What's the difference between this and No. 3?  And what happened to the "so long as" proviso in No. 3?

5.  Network providers are entitled to operate on the same basis as other network providers in the same market without interference from local governments or political subdivisions.

This seems to be a shot at derailing municipal broadband efforts.  Why shouldn't cities get a chance to do this if they want to?

These principles, together with the FCC's four, seem to point in just one direction:  a new internet, carefully managed and monetized for the benefit of network managers.  Why is this better?

The USIIA work deserves a close look, but it doesn't seem like good news for anyone other than large incumbents who want to make deals without interference. 

Jerry Falwell's sensibilities were injured by a site calling itself www.fallwell.com.  The site clearly said that it had nothing to do with Falwell, and was critical of Falwell's views -- it also received only 200 hits a day.

After a district court found that the name was infringing Falwell's trademark rights, and ordered the site to transfer its name to Rev. Falwell, the site owner bravely appealed.  Today the Fourth Circuit acted with enormous sense, and issued an important opinion [pdf] striking down Rev. Falwell's claims.

Among other things, the opinion makes clear that you need to consider domain names in context -- here, there was no question, once you got to the content of the site, that you weren't dealing with the "real" Falwell.  And the opinion is rightfully skeptical of "initial interest confusion." 

(The idea behind "initial interest confusion" is that if you persuade a consumer to follow your signage [domain name] thinking that they're going somewhere in particular that isn't your site, even if by the time of purchase from you they're absolutely clear about what they're buying, something has gone terribly legally wrong.  Right -- it doesn't really make sense.)

Congratulations to Paul Levy of Public Citizen, and all the lawyers and law professors who weighed in on this case.

One of the joys of this past weekend that I didn't write about (because I was enjoying it too much to type) was a session by Paul Graham about writing essays.  I came into the room as he was urging people to have the courage to delete large chunks of text, and I stayed. 

Someone asked, "You always get slashdotted.  What's up with that?"  Graham had a graceful response, but he could also have said, "Well, I write well-crafted essays full of new ideas.  And my essays aren't too long."

He talked a good deal about controversial subjects that he doesn't want to write about, many of which are gender-related.  His style in the room was relaxed and conversational, and there were people leaning up against the walls all around him.  It was a great session, and I'm looking forward to reading Hackers and Painters.

Danese Cooper talks about women in open source.  Why are only 2% of open source project people women?  She and her colleagues are looking for concrete information about what kinds of people self-select (and are happy) into open source projects.  She talks about the Debian women project, which affirmatively welcomes women without letting them lurk, and finds them mentors.  Someone quips:  "This is Women 2.0!"

Danese says there's a fear that bringing in women will make open source projects less fun.  There are lots of trolls on women-oriented development lists.  People discuss what to do with lists like these.  It takes leadership to change the list environment.  (Danese notes that she was the first woman interviewed by Slashdot and many of the questions were inappropriate.  Men don't seem to notice this.) 

Someone suggests that Apache could change its practices to be more acceptable to both men and women.  Someone says that these same issues will hold back developing country newbies.  Several people agree that mentoring is the real issue.

Someone talks about Maria Klawe, the dean of engineering at Princeton, who has done studies about getting women to stay longer in computer science.  Forced mentoring doesn't work, but when freshman curricula is all labs in programming pairs, both women and men stay on. There's a discussion about fathers teaching daughters.

Danese wants O'Reilly to do an entire track on this subject at some future conference.  She suggests that actually working on the issue, rather than just talking for an hour or two, could be helpful. She's interested in the summer of code, and what will happen there.  Danese is starting a women's effort connected with opensource.org, and urges people to subscribe.

Joi Ito and Geir Magnusson talk about making money with open source.  Joi says you can compete with numbers of customers, not code, when you have an open source business.

Geir works for IBM because he came from a company providing support for people using Apache Geronimo. IBM bought the company, and is keeping the same model.  Later he says that enterprises want the support services, because "they want one neck to choke."

Joi says he knows a Japanese bank going to Linux and all open sourceware.  They've cut the cost of the bank to 10% of what it was, and that investment has paid out.  It's easier to save money than make money, someone notes, with open source businesses.

Joi asks:  is it really true that big companies re-release the modifications they've made to open source?  The response:  big companies like interactions between professionals, so they'll work professionally with the open source community; IBM does a good job as being a steward; neither big companies nor open source people are idiots.  

Joi says St. Gallen did a course on management of software and published all the results as case-studies.  The companies didn't mind having their competitors see this information, because they weren't competing on this basis.  The lesson is that sharing information (like open source software) often has no competitive impact on a company that isn't primarily in the business of developing software. 

Sometimes people release things under open source just to get market share and put competitors out of business. 

Joi notes that there's an interesting relationship between open source and open standards.  Ability to influence a standard can have enormous effects.  Bram Cohen notes that he's reluctant to add new elements to the BitTorrent protocol that don't make sense from an engineering standpoint.  HTTP 1.0 was straightforward; HTTP 1.1 went into a huge list of features and was a disaster from a software engineering standpoint.  Protocols aren't being worked on well.

We drift into talking about open source and protocols.  There are lots of BitTorrent clients that don't use Bram's software.  Bram stewards the protocol and provides technological leadership.

Chris DiBona notes that standards bodies take enormous resources to follow, much less dominate.  He talks about a process that can fix particular problems by just having Yahoo!, Google, MSN engineers talk to each other (eg, "nofollow").  Things can emerge that don't have the blessing of standards bodies but that act like standards. Broken/expensive standards don't get chosen.

Joi says that the rest of the world is just at a tipping point with open source.  Brazil is getting it, but other countries aren't there; they're still looking for certificates and authenticated things.  Peope get fixated on proprietary material.  Similarly, companies like to set rules and open source often gets filtered out.  Not paying is psychologically scary ("you get what you pay for").

Having the best product isn't the answer in software sales, says Joi.  Often it's having the sales channel or consulting services -- and bragging customers.

The open source companies in the room care a great deal about the terms of the license associated with their software.

There are companies that are Windows shops just so they can use Windows calendar.  Why is there no open source replacement for this?  Chris DiBona:  Exchange is easy to install, easy to use, lots of devices only talk to this program.  This battle will go on for another 30 years.

Calendar sharing, contact book management - all this is a big issue with open source.  It's not happening.  Pulling something together to solve these problems is hard.  There are so many independent entities. 

Joi says the customer can drive this.  It's harder to do a Chandler than for a bank CEO (or the army) to fix this himself.  A bank CEO can assign 150 people to work on the problem.  But the open source community isn't working effectively on synching yet.  And MSN is giving away product to avoid the open source threat (this is just a rumor).

Salesforce.com did a tool that manages 75% of customer relationship management -- sometimes doing just enough is...enough.  They made a fortune.  We need open source calendaring that is "good enough."

Saul Griffith shows some howtoons, along with some video of kids enjoying building things.  Howtoons are coming out in books soon.  He says 10-year-old boys all want to build flying skateboards.  Ten-year-old girls all want machines that will allow them to see their friends' dreams.  He hopes some of those girls will grow up to be neuroscientists.  He talks a lot about liability risks.  In the question period, people talk about how to scale Saul's operation (he does evenings at science museums for kids). Someone points us to sas.org.

In general, everything SquidLabs is cool.  Take a look at instructables.

Two very interesting discussions:  open source VoIP technology, and Identity 2.0.

1.  Surj Patel talked about mergers of online applications with telephony.  Some examples:  amabuddy -- amazon over voice (great); dodgeball -- social app with hacked free sms; google sms -- over wireless voice next?, and more.  He predicts that software will get better and punks will start writing cgi scripts for their own phone-network applications.

Surj himself is building an open source linux cellphone.  It's made of inexpensive components.  He predicts he'll have a prototype in 3-4 weeks.

2.  Nivi introduced us to "email for voice":  slawesome.com.  He just put it up a week ago.  You can also use it to make podcasts.  He wants to take text and make it into interactive audio and video. 

3.  Brian McConnell talked about providing on-demand access to any audio resource, using Asterisk as the telephone part.  He's created a telecast system.  Call 415-368-3022.  You'll hear an English radio station that's coming from somewhere in Switzerland.

4.  Blaine Cook talked about the slowness of the telephone companies.  For example, someone discovered that TMobile voicemail uses caller-ID for authentication, and caller-ID can be spoofed.  TMobile offered to hire the person who pointed this out (but TMobile didn't fix the problem).  Everything can be spoofed -- ANI databases (central to E911) -- and so the rules by which the telephone network works are crumbling.

Last year during the Republican National Convention, Blaine and his colleagues did radio streaming so people with cell phones could listen to radio news.  They did text-to-speech, so that people could get voice messages about what was happening.  Same during the election -- working with four people for 20 days, they built a system that allowed a voicemail message to be delivered to 10,000 people in 20 minutes.

2.  Identity 2.0:  Dick Hardt gave his celebrated presentation.  His view is that Sxip will be widely adopted because it's simple, clear, open, and allows claim-based mechanisms to determine identity.  He said that talking about identity now is like talking about the net in 1993 -- everyone needs really basic information to grasp the concept.

Brian Fitzgerald talked about OpenID, and a lively conversation ensued.

It's very hard to blog this conference -- there are so many things going on at once, and everything is interesting.

After lunch (waaaay over my head) (not the food, the conversation), I went to hear what O'Reilly is up to in terms of new book publishing techniques.

Rael Dornfest did a very zippy demo of Aardvark (not available online), which is a combination of a wiki and a blog for authors and publishers that exports to formats for publishing.  You can write your book in the right format, with everything beautifully tagged, and your readers can read it chapter by chapter.  The point is that everything is becoming atomized online, so let's publish in an atomized way as well.  Very interesting.

1.  Howard Rheingold is working hard on pulling together information about collaboration and cooperation across many disciplines.  He's been teaching a course at Stanford, and wants to do a book. 

2.  Jonathan Aquino talks about yubnub.  He says it's a command line operating system.  Yubnub makes it possible to save web sequences (sequences of web pages) as an arbitrary word.  Then you can run these sequences (either by going to yubnub or by using a yubnub plugin).  So, for example, people have created commands to find a pizza place in a particular locality, using Google local. Or commands to find scholarly papers, using Google scholar.  Yubnub harnesses the power of traditional command line syntax for the web. 

Someone suggests that he find a way to allow web services to be invoked in the command line.  Someone else says that it might make more sense for yubnub to be the library, and to have all the commands run at the client. Someone builds a new command that invokes split-screen web search results (from Yahoo! and Google) during the session.

3.  I dropped into O'Reilly's Web 2.0 meme mapping.  He's having the crowd list what's different about the new web.  People are talking about cost-effective scalability, collective intelligence, components, data ownership remixing, addressable data, differences in how products are built.  It's a lively discussion.

4.  Scott Gray (ex-LearningLab) has a couple of things to talk about.  (I'm sure he has many things to talk about -- he's irrepressible and superlative by nature.)  First, he wants to tell us about what he thinks is the BEST TECHNOLOGY EVER. 

What is it?  It's using spectrum that we have trouble generating (terahertz gap spectrum, between microwave and infra red) that can bounce through materials safely and tell us what's inside.  He's telling us that organic materials resonate at these frequencies.  So you can point a reader (a tricorder) at yourself and see whether you have cancer, or a virus, or you can point at a road and see whether there's a bomb buried there.  The detector technology for this spectrum is very advanced, but it's expensive and difficult (right now) to generate the waves.  There's a company that is working hard on this, and Scott thinks there's a huge future here.

He notes that Star Trek gave us the communicator, and Get Smart the slamming doors -- this will be a Star Trek device that we'll carry around.

Then he switches gears and talks about online education.  He's into training people how to program by putting a lot of effort into technology (so they have a live terminal view of their environment) and not that much into teachers.  Teachers can be coaches, answering queued-up questions.  Students can be exploring, education can be cheap, and it can all be constructive.  No simulations, no self-grading, and lots of interaction between teacher and student.  No one-sided lectures (he got some reaction here from people who pointed out that we got interested in his first topic because he told us about the Star Trek link; context and scaffolding helps).  He's working hard on how to  educate asynchronously.

It's an enormous group.  98% build things, invent things, do things.  Then there are a few of us who just write things.  David Weinberger captured the sense of the introductions here.  I'll try to blog sessions tomorrow - but it's likely to be hard due to all the activity.

So far, I've had some great talks about 3D printers (in 20 years, we'll all have printers in our homes, like dishwashers, that will print out new cellphones, new stuff we need), online identity formation, opening a university in a virtual world, and aggregating event data from all over the world.  What I'm interested in finding out is how realistic new forms of online connection are, and hearing  about great new things.

I tried to persuade a couple of people to come with me to put up my new tent, but everyone was busy or out of town.  So I went to Washington Square by myself to practice with my tent.

But "by myself" doesn't really work in Washington Square.  I surveyed the territory when I got there, and there was:

+ a full theatrical production

+ a large crowd watching (and imitating) a dancer

+ an amazing bass player

plus, of course, the chess players, the bench-sitters, the hot dog people, the playing fountain, and all kinds of other things going on.  I was not by myself.

I found a patch of lawn and started to take the tent parts out of their bag.  I found the directions--good news! I was moving pretty slowly.  I had figured out which was the bottom part of the tent (the part with the tent floor) and which was the top part of the tent, and I had started trying to figure out the poles, when a friendly woman in a hiking shirt ("Women Trek the Himalayas") came bounding up to me. 

"Going camping?" she said.

Well, thank goodness she showed up.  She showed me how to clip the poles into the clippy-things and manage the moment when the tent transforms from a heap into A TENT. 

A couple of other people stood around with their hands on their hips, watching.  One guy said, "I thought you were a hippy."  No, I was just practicing.  With the help of my new Himalayan-trek friend, I figured out the tent-fly-thingie and admired my creation. 

Then I began to take the tent down.  The I-thought-you-were-a-hippy guy told me about a book he had just read by a venture capitalist who retired and traveled around the world for three years with a tent.  He told me about some rich people he had known who seemed to camp out all the time.  He told me he was from Florida.  Meanwhile, I just kept taking the tent apart. When I was done, he said, "Have a good time.  It's good to camp."  

We said goodbye and I walked back across the park.   

Reuters reports that scientists are suggesting the re-wilding of America.  Large animals, elephants, lions, cheetahs, you name it.  Bring on the Late Pleistocene losers!

Speaking of large animals, Verizon has posted this ad.  (The system isn't compatible with Macs.)

Nuvio has filed an appeal [pdf] from the FCC's E911 order directed at "interconnected VoIP" services.  I'm glad that someone is taking on the E911 order, and Nuvio has done a good job.  Their argument:  "It's a good idea to implement E911, but we can't possibly do this in four months--no one can. The wireless industry has been working on this for years and years, and they're still not finished.  But you're forcing us to cut off our customers if we don't comply on this unreasonable schedule."  A more internet-minded approach may animate attacks by others on the E911 order -- after all, getting away from the legacy physical infrastructure now used for E911 might lead to services that were much more flexible and information-rich.  But Nuvio has started us off on the "it's impossible" front.

In June 2005, the FCC issued an order mandating that, within four months, a particular category of online voice services (which it called “interconnected VoIP”) supply “enhanced 911” (or “E911”) capabilities to their customers. The E911 Order, in a nutshell, requires "interconnected VoIP" providers to deliver their customers' 911 calls to a "local" emergency operator, and to provide that operator with the callback number and location information of the customer. (The ability to provide location information and a callback number is the difference between ordinary 911 services and “enhanced” 911 services.)

There were many many problems with the FCC's E911 Order.  The E911 Order did not set rates or otherwise control what the essential facility provider—the incumbent local telephone company, access to whose lines would be needed for such emergency services to function—could do to hold up a VoIP provider seeking access to the special emergency communications equipment whose use the E911 Order mandated.  The FCC said it would not shield "interconnected VoIP" providers from liability under state laws for mistakes occurring in connection with provision of emergency services.  (Telephony providers, both wired and wireless, do have such liability protections by statute.)  Not surprisingly, the E911 Order moves a social policy designed for telephony directly into the internet context, with very few efforts at customization.

Mandating that VoIP providers make available E911 services to consumers within four months was impossible (or nearly impossible) to do for most of the entities that make such voice services available, for several reasons.   The existing 911 infrastructure in the US (which is connected to but largely separate from the traditional phone network) is extremely antiquated, to the point where even wireless companies have had great difficulty implementing 911. The 911 network has not fundamentally changed since the 1970s. The E911 Order gives “interconnected VoIP” providers no new rights that will help them comply, and does not obligate local telephone companies to allow them to connect. VoIP service providers have no right to access emergency call centers, and most of these centers are owned by local telephone companies.   And the complexities of nomadic VoIP services (usable from any net connection anywhere in the world, using any area code, over any form of transport) make connection to the legacy E911 system difficult.

The complexities associated with requiring voice services running over the internet to provide E911 are mind-boggling.  To be sure, the FCC has issued this requirement only with respect to services that (1) enable real-time, two-way voice communications; (2) require a broadband connection from the user’s location; (3) require Internet Protocol-compatible equipment (a PC); and  (4) permit users generally to receive calls that originate on the traditional telephone network and to make calls to the traditional telephone network.   So a voice application that only sent data to the traditional telephone network, but did not receive data (was not itself accessed through a telephone number) would not be subject to this rule.  (At least for the moment – the FCC has said it will examine whether the scope of this mandate should broaden, and it is very likely that a broader category of online voice services will soon be subject to this rule.)  

But a free voice service that makes it possible for users to “call” traditional telephone numbers and receive “calls” from the network must find ways to get “location” and “callback” information to a “local” emergency center through a centrally-located and customized piece of hardware—the selective router.

The requirement of emergency services for online “voice” services fits perfectly with the telephony mindset.  From the very beginning of the history of telephony in the US, the essence of telephone service has been that it makes emergency help available from a central source.  Telephones are there to watch over us in our sleep.  Telephones are vigilant, centrally-controlled, located in an identifiable terrestrial place, and set up with services that the telephone company believes (or the government believes) are good ideas.  Those who are steeped in telephony strongly believe that any communications service offered to the public must provide access to emergency officials and that technological developments must not be allowed to avoid this regulatory requirement.

Even if it's impossible to comply.  Even if you end up with a service that doesn't work as well as a more technologically-sophisticated service would. 

[I've posted a draft paper about this here.]

If this is true, help is on the way.  BPL, wifi, all open, all available, with plenty of bright colors.

I can go back to being optimistic.

You can make public actors accountable just by reporting on what they've said.  If there's too much going on, collaborate on taking the notes. 

But notes alone may produce too much text for anyone to handle efficiently.  What if there were ways for groups to collaborate on creating visualizations of the notes, and a graphical language that was commonly used to share the output?  Like a radar screen -- "this issue is big and coming towards us, click through to read the details."  Or "These are outlying issues."  Some kind of graphical outliner that would actually add water/meaning rather than taking it away.

If only someone would throw a lot of money at graphical groupware.

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.  As a UPI story noted last year:

The real-world practicality of having members of Congress figure [technology policy] out by making phone calls is questionable. Even if everyone could find the time to sit down with experts on spectrum interference -- or virology or computer systems or other complicated topics -- would they realistically be able to sort through all the conflicting information on all the topics Congress covers to find what is needed to make fast decisions? Not likely.

The OTA's job was not to make policy recommendations.  Instead, they tried to advise Congress about the implications of various paths.  Congress is not doing very well on other scientific and technical fronts, and some advice might be useful.

On the other hand, the communications industry spent $1.1 billion between 1998 and 2004 to lobby Congress and the FCC, so I'm sure everyone is well informed.

In honor of EFF's 15th anniversary, EFF ran a blog contest -- and the winners have been announced.  Take a look at the entries:

Most Inspirational

IO Error, In Defense of Freedom: "As I said in an Independence Day posting a few weeks ago, the fight for liberty is not only conducted by the armed forces, it is conducted every day by ordinary citizens like you and me. We cannot protect freedom by curtailing it. Enemies of freedom, both foreign and domestic, threaten us every day, and we must be prepared to stand up to anyone who would take away the liberty which has made this country unique among nations."

Most Humorous

Memoirs of a Guardian Vampire, Fair use ... what use is it? (Harry Potter Woke Up Goth): "'Moribund is the core of my consciousness. Half-Heartedly I crawl through the strange forest until insecurities strip me of my fears. Suicide, Suicide, Suicide. Thou art my obsession.'

Thus were the thoughts that greeted Harry Potter as he woke that morning."

Best Overall

The ramblings of Laura Crossett, The Medium is Not the Message: "As I read news reports now, five years later, about bloggers getting in trouble for their writing, I'm reminded of that moment in the basement of Jessup and of the inability, or unwillingness, of the woman at the end of the hall to see electronic communication as equal to oral communication. The attempts to say that bloggers don't have the same rights as journalists stem, in part, from a belief that electronic print is not equal to hard copy print. "

Congratulations to the winners and all of the participants.

Today and tomorrow:  Cardozo is host to the 5th annual Intellectual Property Scholars' Conference.  Justin Hughes put an enormous amount of work into this.  Free (and well-attended).

The FCC's argument extending CALEA to information services (like broadband internet access and "interconnected VoIP") [doc] is less than weak. Congress specifically elected to leave information services (like internet access and internet applications) out of CALEA's reach, and the DC Circuit and the FCC itself have confirmed this understanding in the past.

FCC is likely to argue now that "interconnected VoIP" services, as defined in the E911 order from earlier this summer, are replacements for a substantial portion of the local telephone exchange service, and thus now covered by CALEA. But FCC can't trump the exclusion of information services from CALEA.

FCC here is legislating, not interpreting. FCC simply doesn't have the power to do what it wants to do, but evidently it has promised law enforcement to do its best. On CALEA, not having jurisdiction isn't a good enough reason -- apparently -- not to act.

This decision is important because it will hand DOJ authority to negotiate with application providers before the launch of a new product or service. DOJ will be mandating what kinds of data will be collected and how that data will be presented to law enforcement. We know they would like this authority from the comments they have filed in the CALEA proceeding.

The internet hasn't worked this way in the past. Before, anyone using the right protocols could launch a new product or device without asking permission. Now, the default setting will be "anything not permitted is prohibited." That's a change that has tremendous implications for innovation.

It's also important because there are no principled limits to the scope of this mandate. FCC has already said that it will be considering broadening the scope of services defined as "interconnected VoIP." From law enforcement's perspective, any application or device that allows the exchange of information should be equally easily tappable -- which means designed with law enforcement's interests in mind.

It's important to emphasize here that no one questions law enforcement's right to surveil the internet. That's not the issue presented here. The problem here is whether law enforcement should have the right to participate in the design of applications and devices in advance so that they are easily tappable.

The issue is whether "you have to ask permission" is the right default setting for manufacturers and innovators. The tremendous economic growth that has accompanied the internet's rise would not have happened if everything had been forced to get the approval of a government agency.

There's no evidence I'm aware of that law enforcement is having trouble enforcing its warrants. People are quite cooperative. There are better ways to get data to law enforcement than to give them the power to approve new applications.  We have time to work on those better ways.

What would duopoly providers of internet access really like to have?  They'd really like to be paid for providing non-commodity services.  They'd really like to be rewarded for running the network, top to bottom.

"But that's not possible," you say.  No provider can tell one packet from another.  Providers can only block the ports used by applications they don't like, and that's a clumsy, unwinnable arms race.  The applications can always switch to common and useful ports, and no provider wants to alienate its subscriber base.

But what if providers could inspect the contents of packets, without using too much computational power, and discriminate among applications?  "Naah," you say.  "They can't possibly do that."

This article suggests that providers hope to monetize the internet someday, through "deep packet inspection" that would make mammoth walled gardens possible.  In a nutshell, the described set of standards (called "IMS," or "IP Multimedia Subsystem") would make circuit-switched-like control possible for packet-switched networks.  It's been under development since 1998, and it makes billing and signaling possible for IP networks -- it makes it possible to monetize the internet.

IMS is being inserted (somehow, the article isn't clear how) into ITU's overarching plans for the Next Generation Network (NGN).  "Hah," you say.  "That means it will never happen."

But if you're feeling particularly bleak following the FCC's moves late last week, the idea of the IMS should make you feel even bleaker.  If all telecom agencies around the world read their broad statutes to allow for (and, indeed, encourage) customized internet access, and vendors of things like outsourced emergency services and CALEA compliance keep pushing along, then (as the author of the article says) you can see IMS as "part of a huge 3G gamble by the mobile telephony operators around the world, with assistance from traditional telephony vendors, to obtain control of the vast new Internet medium and monetize it."

The author concludes:

This is the emerging, consensus view: That IMS will let broadband industry vendors and operators put a control layer and a cash register over the Internet and creatively charge for it. It is this monetization of the Internet that makes IMS extremely appealing to all communications operators and all but guarantees that it, and its numerous derivatives, are likely to spread.

Audacious.  Maybe impossible.  But getting incrementally more likely by the day.

Notice what UBS said about the extremely weak and watery network neutrality principles the FCC plans to believe in:

When the FCC met in open session late last Friday morning, everyone on camera seemed exhausted.  Commissioner after commissioner thanked staff for their tireless, late-night efforts, and at least one Commissioner said his staffer would need to reacquaint himself with the family at the beach this weekend.

Late-night regulation is always risky (remember the DMCA?), and vacation schedules may have driven the deal-making for this series of items.  The FCC both substantially undermined existing U.S. internet policy and got everyone to Rehoboth on time. 

I hope they all had a pleasant weekend.  We won't have the operative texts (the actual Order and NPRMs and policy statement) until later this month, so perhaps we should reserve judgment.  But let's review what happened Friday:

1.  The FCC pounced on Justice Thomas's dicta in BrandX, and declared that it has authority to make whatever rules it wants to about Title I information services.  (Any online application or IP-enabled anything is an information service, if you take the FCC's perspective.)  Title I, in turn, says nothing about the subjects that are appropriate for FCC action. 

So we are now in a world in which, notwithstanding Congress's instruction in the Telecom Act that it is the "policy of the United States" that development and use of the internet be "unfettered by federal or state regulation," the FCC is applying whatever "social policies" it believes are appropriate to internet services.  To whom is the Commission accountable?  It's not clear.

2.  The Commission adopted a policy statement which seems to embrace the "everything not permitted is prohibited" view of traditional proprietary network providers when it comes to the internet.  I'm confident that Yahoo! and Google and eBay and others tried hard to get stronger language on network neutrality (and maybe even an enforceable rule), but what we got isn't very persuasive.  Indeed, the language we have so far is Janus-faced:

a.  "consumers" (not creators!) are "entitled to access lawful internet content."  Entitled?  Access?  Lawful? Content?  Who decides what's lawful?  As I've said in the past, providers' terms of service may set the bounds of what's lawful.

b.  "consumers" can run applications and services "subject to the needs of law enforcement" -- which means only permitted, CALEA-compliant applications will be allowed.  Can we hope that "consumers" will rise up and object if their every click is surveilled?  Unfortunately, we can't.

c.  "consumers" can connect "legal" devices that "don't harm the network."  What happened to Carterphone?  A network provider can claim that anything unauthorized harms its network.  Any open PC can be claimed to harm a network because it makes unlawful activities possible.  Remember the broadcast flag?  Part of the rationale for that order was "protecting the broadcast signal."  Those same rationales will come up again.

d.  "consumers" are entitled to competition among network providers.  Whoop-ti-doo.  Chairman Martin views the current access situation as "characterized by multiple platforms that are vigorously competing for customers."  So "you have two choices" is competition.  

Watch for this language to be used by network providers to mean "consumers' ability to choose our customized services means competition exists."  Choice is such an easy concept to abuse.  For example, the RIAA has long said that mandated DRM will make many more consumer choices available.  Remember that the controlled ability to offer many choices carries with it the ability to offer just one.

[David Isenberg compares this statement to Powell's famous "four freedoms" here.]

3.  The FCC is requiring application providers who happen to use the telephone namespace to get pre-approval from law enforcement -- to make sure that their applications are easily tappable. This is the CALEA part of the order.  At the moment, it appears that the FCC has only said "this new category of things is covered," and hasn't said exactly what procedures or standards will apply.  But this is a huge step that is not bounded by any particular principles.  The Commission has already indicated (in its E911 order adopted earlier this summer) that it wants to expand the definition of "interconnected VoIP," and that it wants to ensure that all VoIP-capable devices -- including PCs -- automatically report their location by next summer.  So now we have an unknown set of law enforcement pre-approval requirements that will apply to an ever-expanding set of devices and applications.

More generally, law enforcement and homeland security (these last two words are beginning to sound too familiar -- what happened to the frightening chill they initially triggered?) are driving the Commission's plans.  Like the Coast Guard, the FCC will someday be part of DHS. 

We can talk about "lines in the sand" that are drawn by the open access principles adopted by the Commission; we can talk about burgeoning competition that will be encouraged by broadband providers; but it's all talk.  There are no limits here.  We are racing towards a new controlled online future, and the network providers will be implementing packet inspection technologies that will make blocking all unapproved activities a reality.

But thank goodness the staff will be on vacation for a while. 

The NPRM isn't out yet, the policy statement hasn't been issued, but Chairman Martin gives us these ringing words:

I have long believed that consumers should be able to use their broadband internet access service to access any content on the internet.[FOOTNOTE ONE]

[FOOTNOTE ONE]:  Subject, of course, to the bandwidth limits and quality of service terms of the particular Internet access service plan that they have chosen to purchase.

Watch how this works.  Martin first states an article of faith (beliefs as policy?), and then completely eviscerates its importance.  If no DSL provider is required to make basic access (unconditioned, uncustomized) available to consumers, and if service plans say "don't use any unapproved applications or devices," then it is meaningless to say that as a matter of policy users should have the right to access any content they want to. Because they won't be able to.  The cable/telco duopolists will treat them as passive recipients of packaged services, as they are with respect to the telephone and cable services these providers are used to selling.

Watch, also, for the meaninglessness of whatever policy is stated.  As Martin says:  "While policy statements do not establish rules nor are they enforceable documents, today’s statement does reflect core beliefs that each member of this Commission holds regarding how broadband internet access should function."

More faith-based policymaking.  We'll need more than principles for the open internet to survive.

Tomorrow will be a big FCC day.  The rumor is that the Commission will act on CALEA (as it has already acted on E911) and will change the rules for DSL.

So we should all take today off to get ready. 

So we had our little concert here tonight.  Peggy Radin practiced in the wine cellar.

I'm at a cyberprof retreat, and Peggy Radin brought her flute.  And you can download sheet music off the internet.  Paul Hoffert rented a keyboard.  Which means we can play the Bach double and Haydn London Trios.

When I get off this cloud I'll write again about how to reform the FCC.  Perhaps if netheads and bellheads played chamber music together we'd make progress.

Light blogging, obviously.

Three months ago, I was talking about the dangers inherent in asking for "network neutrality" from Congress and the FCC.  The power to remove blocks implies the power to impose conditions, I said.  So why do you want to put the FCC in the position of being able to impose conditions (like using location-aware devices, or other driver-license-like things) on internet usage?

But now the push by the Commission to have ad hoc power over all internet services, taken together with the telco/cable push to vertically integrate their "customized" offerings (watch for FCC item on Thursday leveling the telco/cable playing field), makes me think that online companies and device manufacturers have to push for some form of very broadly and simply stated network neutrality. But, oh, the opportunity for mischief this provides.

If only there were enough competing ways to get online! if only WiMax community meshes were real! Someone tell me they're real.  Then I can go back to talking about the risks of asking for network neutrality.