Mashups of various kinds
With OneWebDay about a month from now, I’m hearing from a lot of different people. Here are three sites I didn’t know about until this week:
Spot.us - helping communities support journalists doing reporting. “Spot Us is a nonprofit that allows an individual or group to take control of news by sharing the cost (crowdfunding) to commission freelance journalists.”
TuneRooms - online music collaboration. “Record your music to MP3 (using GarageBand, Pro Tools, or your favorite app). Upload your music to the Tune Rooms mixer and collaborate with friends, or with musicians you’ve never met before.”
Computers For Youth - “As a nation, we are failing to provide low-income children the support they need during the critical middle school years. As a result, test scores are dropping sharply between the fifth and sixth grades. School-based efforts to address this challenge have fallen short. Children spend only 13% of their waking hours in the classroom. CFY offers an innovative solution with proven results. We improve student achievement by enhancing the educational resources available in children’s homes, by improving parent-child interaction around learning, and by helping teachers make powerful links between the classroom and the home.”
And, of course, YearbookYourself, which Eszter Hargittai used to great effect recently.
Great.
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one more note for today: congratulations to Jim Dempsey of CDT.
Two possibly related developments
A filing about the first Android device, scheduled for release in November.
A new group lobbying for freer use of the white spaces, sponsored by Google: FreeTheAirwaves.
One of America’s most valuable natural resources is our “white spaces” — the radio airwaves, or spectrum, that have long carried analog TV signals. Three-fourths of the white spaces are completely unused today, and — especially once TV is broadcast in digital only starting in 2009 — could be used to kick-start a revolution in wireless technology, including universal wireless online access and numerous new products and services that can’t even be imagined today.
This fall, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will decide whether to make this spectrum available for anyone to use. At Google, we think more open access to the white spaces is essential, not only for companies like ours, but for society in general. But this outcome is far from certain, so we’ve joined a broad coalition of public interest groups and industry peers who are working to convince the FCC to free the airwaves and unleash the next generation of Internet innovation. We hope you’ll add your voice to the debate by signing our petition and helping spread the word about this campaign.
HT: Stephen Schulze
[Plug: I wrote a paper called The Radio and the Internet about the 700 MHz auction and the promise of the white spaces.]
The only vision is backward-looking
So I’ve spent more time with the McCain tech plan today.
At a time when this country is suffering economically and looking for fundamental change, it looks as if Sen. McCain is in the back office having lunch with a bunch of accountants.
The heavy emphasis in the policy on tax cuts seems designed to appeal to people who equate lower taxes with progress. Haven’t we already had years of that kind of approach?
Where’s the vision? There’s no protection for *new* businesses from the depredations of the increasingly-powerful carriers who control internet access in this country. The policy is all about deal-making with the major forces the Senator is used to - “rewarding companies that offer high-speed Internet access services to low income customers by allowing these companies to offset their tax liability for the cost of this service,” “encourage private investment to facilitate the build-out of infrastructure.”
We tried this deal-making for years, and it’s been a disaster. We need leadership to get ourselves out of this mess, and as far as I can tell John McCain isn’t offering that.
There’s almost too much to say about the back-of-the-handedness of this policy, so I’ll stop here. This isn’t vision. It’s more like a wistful memoir about times gone by.
The McCain tech plan
Disclosure: I am not affiliated with either candidate. If you’re commenting here, please let us know whether you’re working for a campaign.
The McCain tech plan is out. A few things leap out.
First, here’s the fact: We don’t have a functioning “free market” in online access. John McCain thinks we do. That kind of magical thinking takes real practice.
Instead, we’ve got four or so enormous companies that control most of the country’s access, and they’re probably delighted that McCain is promising not to regulate them.
The “net neutrality” movement is not about “regulating the internet.” That’s twisted.
You can think of the internet as a conversation being had by more than a billion people walking along a sidewalk. Big sidewalk. Net neutrality would require that the sidewalk keep out of the conversation - not limit it, shape it, charge it based on how interesting it is, or butt in. Right now, our sidewalks are in the business of deciding what kinds of conversations can happen, and they’re no longer required by law to just lie down and act like sidewalks. That’s a problem. We’d like the sidewalks, those basic transport elements, to be separate from the conversation.
Just as the power companies can’t dictate what kinds of purposes people use electricity for, the providers of basic general-purpose communications transport shouldn’t be able to dictate how we communicate.
We used to have thousands of independent ISPs in this country. If that was still the case, we’d have the market McCain seems to believe in - the ISPs would be competing, and some of those ISPs would choose to be non-discriminatory. We don’t have that any more, because the sidewalk (back to that image) has been freed to rise up and become a set of channels, stepping-stones, and other traffic-shaping capacities that affect the conversation - it’s “vertically integrated.” And all of the ISPs have been killed off or absorbed into a few large companies.
Not having basic, general purpose transport in place (to which lots of independent ISPs can connect) means no predictability for businesses or their investors. It also means we’re empowering a few large gatekeepers to decide which companies will be effective. That kind of private control over communications is something we’ve always cared about avoiding - until very recently.
Restoring basic, general-purpose, nondiscriminatory transport is not “regulating the Internet.” It’s making the Internet - the conversation, remember, not the sidewalk - possible.
We can’t deal with all the sidewalk shenanigans on a case-by-case basis. That just helps people who are good at hiring lawyers and delaying. Instead, we need a rule and a separation of function, in my view. You’re either a sidewalk or you’re not.
Second, the tax credit idea, under which McCain suggests there should be a credit of 10 percent of wages for each research & development employee, seems to be sort of a handout without real substance. Don’t we want to encourage new investment and new jobs? Why reward just the status quo? I’m all for research, but this doesn’t seem very visionary.
Civil rights and communication rights
Nondiscrimination rules are on my mind right now, because I’m in the middle of a paper about the subversion of the communications law “constitution” over the last few years. Through some regulatory gymnastics and helped by a credulous Supreme Court, we’re now in the strange position of having entirely private general-purpose communications networks that can treat communications like their own dinner parties. That wasn’t the structure we set up as a country for the post, the telegraph, or the telephone.
Someone asked me tonight whether the ability to communicate should be re-framed as a right. I’m wondering about that. We often frame the right to clean water as a human right, and we are beginning to do the same thing with the right to communicate online. (2003 article here has useful references.) I know this has been an IGF subject. It does seem that a clear nondiscrimination rule, structural separation of transport from content, and a commitment to government investment in universal access would do the trick and would have the added benefit of being clearer than a vague “right.” Also - right against whom? Right against the communication companies? Interested in views and sources on this.
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Congratulations to Joi Ito, Larry Lessig, and everyone else at Creative Commons for the big win today - described here at the Lessig blog.
Forty days left
It’s really fun to work on OneWebDay. This is the crucial buildup time, because t’s only 40 days away. A couple of new kinds of OWD projects are bubbling up - I wish I could announce the details, but it’s too soon to do that.
So consider this a cross-promotion post: What would you like to do to help the Internet of the future? For ideas, go to OneWebDay In A Box. Many thanks to Matthew Burton for thinking hard about Ten Ways To Help the Web.
1. If you’re a Web user, use a standards-compliant Web browser like Firefox or Opera. They’re free, faster, and more protective of your privacy. And because they conform to Web development standards, they make things easier for people who make Web sites. If you’re a Web developer, test your sites with the w3c’s Markup Validation Service.
2. Edit a Wikipedia article. Teach people what you know, and in so doing, help create free universal knowledge.
3. Learn about an internet policy issue from the Center for Democracy and Technology, and teach five other people about it. There are real legal threats that could drastically change the way the Internet works. We should all be aware of them.
4. Take steps to ensure that your computer can’t be treated like a zombie. Computer viruses can steal your personal information. They can also cause major network outages on the Web, slowing things down and making sites inaccessible. Vint Cerf estimates that more than 150 million PCs have already been zombified, and are now awaiting their next order. To learn more about the threat of zombie computers, read this article.
5. Join an Internet rights advocacy group:
- Become a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights, from privacy to free speech to Internet service.
- Join the Internet Society. ISOC is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world, particularly by establishing Internet infrastructure standards.
- Support Creative Commons by donating and by using their licenses to copyright your work. If you’re outside the U.S., help support their counterpart, iCommons.
6. Help promote public Internet access. If you live in a city, there is likely an organization dedicated to providing free wireless access in public spaces.
7. Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation supports not only Wikipedia, but several other projects to create free knowledge: textbooks, news, learning tools, and more.
8. Donate a computer. You can donate a new $100 laptop to children in impoverished countries, or donate your used computer to Goodwill or a school.
9. Write your OneWebDay story. Talk about what the Internet means to you and why One WebDay matters at http://onewebday.org/stories
10. If your city is hosting a OneWebDay event, show up on September 22 and participate.
==revised 8/13 per emails and online comments - thanks!
Law online
Last week’s announcement about the Stanford IP Litigation Clearinghouse really was exciting. A little more information about it:
The IPLC, which will open to the public this fall, is a comprehensive collection of information about IP cases. The patent module has over 23,000 cases filed in the U.S. district courts since 2000. We report a variety of information about each case, and give scholars access to the key documents in each case. We are also posting a variety of statistical data about these patent cases on an ongoing basis. Future modules will expand our coverage to include copyright, trademark, and ultimately trade secret cases.
I wonder how they did it. Each court makes docket sheets available (and documents) online, but the documents are expensive (if you’re getting a lot of them) and the interface is clumsy (the PACER service). PACER says:
Each court maintains its own databases with case information. Because PACER database systems are maintained within each court, each jurisdiction will have a different URL. Accessing and querying information from each service is comparable; however, the format and content of information provided may differ slightly.
Somehow those clever people at Stanford found a way to pull all of those different databases together. That’s quite a development - a huge contribution.
Speaking of law online, here’s a link to the Independent Government Observers Task Force: IGOTF. Also very interesting and exciting, also making public information more public.
And I can’t leave this post without a nod to the OpenCRS project - if only a full set of these documents was routinely made available to all of us online.
McCain tech plan
It’s coming - next week some time.
From a wire report:
Having watched the FCC for years from the viewpoint of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain thinks the agency shouldn’t be drafting rules for new markets, [Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior domestic policy advisor for the McCain presidential campaign] said. Instead, McCain wants the FCC to function more like the Federal Trade Commission, which analyzes the impact of companies’ endeavors before it acts.
So as you enjoy your weekend, think for a moment about what an FCC without rulemaking authority would be able, or unable, to do. Feel free to fulminate in the comments here - in either direction.
Freesouls
IPSC 2
Don’t worry, I won’t blog all 99 talks. But this is the first plenary session so I thought I’d note what’s going on.
Chris Cotropia is up next, talking about the early filing doctrine in patent law. He’s saying that filing early amplifies the patent system’s problems. It creates more applications that are more underdeveloped (so hazy boundaries for patentability) and encourages “patent troll” activity - it may be more valuable to litigate than commercialize the right. So there should be a “reduction to practice” requirement. You’d have to have real implementation information in order to file. This would push the filing date later. It would be costly, true. Maybe we should also require more implementation information before renewal too.
Question: What about the value of ideas that never get commercialized? Do we benefit from being able to separate out invention (by tagging it with a patent) and buy it (even if not commercialized)? Good question!
Wendy Gordon is next. She’s working on gifts, and trying to organize the literature there. Thesis: for three kinds of intangible products, “gift” should be the the starting point for analysis. First, “high culture,” second, pure science, three, software programming. She’s including these (inexhaustible, imperfectly handled by markets) things because people inside these fields talk about gift relations all the time - desire to share, taking pleasure in the sharing of others. Second, these fields are areas where “doing the work” is the thing, not making money. Making a contribution by doing something wonderful. In these areas, direct payments can work harm for creativity. It can make a huge difference how rewards come in - if they come in in a way that feels like gift (non-tit-for-tat), artists have sense of community and a creative spark. Indeed, if things are commercially successful, the community may look down on it. The big problem with gift is reciprocity, the pressure to pay back. We need some of that (not to mention the wherewithal to eat). She’s interested in a model of soft reciprocity.
Jeanne Schroeder has written that gift is hierarchy/reciprocity and contract isn’t. But intangibles allow you to give and take simultaneously, because they’re inexhaustible. And through attribution and memory people will know about it. Should we eliminate patent and copyright and makes things compulsory gift? No, eliminating these things doesn’t fit the gift model. Whole point of the perfect gift is that it encourages soft reciprocity and voluntariness and longterm returns, and GPL has accomplished that. So she thinks a gift model is a useful place to start for these intangibles. A good place for a gift economy.
Question: what about the fact that gifts are usually personal? How does term “gift” work for commercial context? Answer: I’m just trying to create a context for creativity, and recognizing people as people; also trying to organize thinking and research agendas. Does this scale? Yes, just do it through recognition. If you’re in a truly commercial realm, then you’ll have gift failure. Question: what work does “gift” for you? What about community and sharing? Doesn’t “gift” assume that you have something in the first place?
Frank Pasquale is now up to talk about reputation regulation - he wants to “think about intermediaries from a broader policy perspective.” He thinks social interests of users aren’t being addressed. What if GoogleBooks starts charging? or Google manually chages ratings, or eliminates sites from its index? Should Google have to disclose what it’s up to? Should eBay be able to favor certain sellers legally? Should Facebook be able to kick members off without due process? Should Google be required to make AdSense data portable? Right now, the debate is between free market abolutism on the one hand and expanding the common law on the other - terms of use, antitrust, business torts. Maybe these things are natural monopolies!
These are very concentrated markets, Frank says. Lots of barriers to entry have been erected. It’s hard to compete. Litigation won’t have a broad enough effect, and the courts are clueless. Wants to apply stuff from the net neutrality movement to intermediaries. Wants to regulate intermediaries to the extent competition is unlikely to develop, and particularly auction platforms and portability for social networks; these things are becoming carriers (as an analogy). We’re all worried about NN, Frank says, because of worries about other layers. He is analogizing all the NN arguments to the intermediary level.
Wants no tiering for GoogleBooSearch, transparency, and a level commercial playing field. If we allow Google to get books together, they shouldn’t be allowed to make special deals.
Google, after all, Frank says, calls itself a neutral conduit. So it should have the same responsibilities. Points out that intermediaries don’t have absolute immunities. He thinks they’ll ask for immunity from lawsuits just like the carriers did.
So - Google shouldn’t be allowed to do any stealth marketing or denying access to copyrighted works once they are indexed. Google’s going to make the same arguments as the carriers are - we need to knock all those down, says Frank. He really wants to treat intermediaries as carriers.