Here's an uplifting thought that has nothing to do with internet policy:

For the essence of humanism is that belief of which [Pico della Mirandola] seems never to have doubted, that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality -- no language they have spoken, nor oracle beside which they have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been entertained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have ever been passionate, or expended time and zeal.

That's coming to you from Walter Pater, in 1871.  If you're ever feeling rattled or rushed, just read that through a few times.

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But back to E911.  Back in March 2004, the FCC started the "IP Enabled Services" rulemaking, saying that it wanted to consider what "social policies" should apply to "services" that use the internet protocol.  It's worth pausing to remember just how broadly the Commission stated its jurisdiction:  "[T]he 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."  In other words, everything online. 

One of the first "social policies" the Commission took up was consumers' ability to "call" emergency services and have automated location information provided to the call center.  (People can't always give their location coherently in an emergency.)

In its 2005 E911 Order, the Commission mandated that "interconnected VoIP" providers be able to route all 911 calls (accompanied by a call-back number and the caller’s location) through the traditional telephone 911 network to appropriate local emergency authorities.   The Commission defined "interconnected VoIP" as those services that (1) allowed for real-time, two-way voice communications, (2) required a broadband connection, (3) required end-user equipment to process and receive Internet Protocol packets, and (4) allowed users to both receive calls from traditional telephone networks and make calls to telephone numbers.

The Commission set an unrealistic timetable for this (but that's another story), and effectively required all VoIP providers to negotiate without leverage with the incumbents who control access to the public safety answering points (but that's also another story).  All of this was very hard for VoIP, which doesn't necessarily tie to physical location without the active involvement of the user ("I'm over here!").  Basically, the entire 911 system was built for the telephone era, not the internet era.

The FCC also hinted that it might broaden the definition of "interconnected VoIP" at a later time and might require automatic location information to be provided by devices:

Should the Commission require all terminal adapters or other equipment used in the provision of interconnected VoIP service sold as of June 1, 2006 to be capable of providing location information automatically, whether embedded in other equipment or sold to customers as a separate device?

This was a big deal, this suggestion, because we don't usually require location information to be provided as a condition of marketing or using a device or application.  In fact, many people worry about the privacy implications of constantly being forced to say "I'm over here!"  (Your cellphone, at this point anyway, probably gives you the option of reporting location only when you actually make a 911 call.)

Earlier this summer, in May, these other shoes began to drop.  The Commission issued a notice saying that it was interested in requiring wireless providers and "interconnected VoIP" providers to provide better/more constant location information at all times.  They said that they had tentatively decided to require "interconnected VoIP" providers to automatically report location to the existing public safety answering points (take a look at p.7, para 18).

This is a big deal.  I realize I keep blogging that these proceedings are big deals, but that's because they're so hard to follow and yet so important that I need to find some simple way of putting across the message that this needs attention.  It needs attention because optimizing all VoIP applications on location-reporting-in-legacy-ways would be destructive to innovation, destructive to privacy, and extremely helpful to the incumbents who control the legacy 911 system.  It's always going to be easier to "phone home" to an old-fashioned system when you haven't left home in the first place - when you're an application that is tightly tied to the existing phone network.  A large swath of VoIP services would be effectively wiped out.  As I've argued in the past, this also cuts off all kinds of interesting, richer ways to allow competing providers to connect users to emergency services with better data.

What would Walter Pater do?  He'd write something beautiful about the human spirit.  That won't help us here, unfortunately.  We've got a Commission that seems to be interested in forcing online services into old regulatory bottles, all in the name of public safety.  There are some excellent CDT comments here from May 2007.  If you're interested, take a look.