December 2009

Network Neutrality and Quality of Services Divisive Topics at FCC Workshop

The importance of quality of service and the divisive effect of Net neutrality rules were key topics at the Federal Communication Commission's Technical Advisory Process Workshop on Tuesday. "The fundamental issue," said Paul Sanchirico of Cisco Systems, "is 'is my behavior affecting your experience?' When it's congested, I want to make sure I'm protecting everyone's experience. There's a greater good." Sanchirico suggested methods for improving network performance. Fundamental to maintaining quality of service (QoS) is establishing the prioritization of information packets. By marking the packets and then queuing them in certain parts of the bandwidth - based upon their priority - performance can be improved, Sanchirico said. The risk associated with this method, however, is that elimination of queued packets will be concurrent across the network, and create dangerous instability. He discussed a system, called Weighted Random Early Detection, that helps resolve this problem by dropping packets, again based upon their priority level, before destabilizing waves of network traffic appear.

Network Neutrality and the 21st Century First Amendment

[Commentary] Network neutrality is just one of the many important free speech questions being decided not in Supreme Court decisions but in laws yielding a "legislated First Amendment." Congress and the FCC enact these telecommunications, media, copyright, and privacy laws shaping our speech networks. These laws, effectively, make tweeting or posting on Balkinization more or less possible. Network neutrality, for example, ensures the Internet remains place where, in the Supreme Court's words, "any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox." But both sides of the network neutrality debate invoke the First Amendment. On the one hand, network neutrality advocates argue that the policy advances First Amendment values through freedom of speech for all—democratic participation, autonomy, a marketplace of ideas, checking power, speech diversity. Network neutrality, in short, translates the First Amendment for the 21st Century. On the other hand, opponents claim that network neutrality violates the First Amendment rights of phone and cable companies. If the FCC gets it right, a network neutrality rule would preserve the practical freedom of speech Americans experience every day. The FCC's policy likely will have far greater effect on how Americans speak with one another and participate in our democracy than many Supreme Court cases anthologized in First Amendment textbooks. The FCC hearing next week will help highlight that point—and hopefully put a nail in the coffin of arguments around the First Amendment rights of cable and phone companies to block speech.

Net Neutrality, "TV Everywhere," and Other Cable Industry Assaults on Open Television

[Commentary] Internet TV could actually inject much-needed competition in a TV market long dominated by cable companies. Having more competitors in the game would lower prices, increase innovation, and create new job opportunities for entrepreneurs in the businesses they build. More importantly, with Americans watching Internet TV on their living-room TV television, TV becomes more democratic. Users would have more choice for speech and news. They could more easily share and tag video, and even produce their own channels without having to negotiate with and get a special deal from a cable operator. The cable operator would no longer be the gatekeeper of television. Cable companies (of course) don't want this threat of competition. They won't go down without a fight. In fact, cable companies have spent many years fighting the emergence of Internet TV. Let's review the three previous tactics, all of which have resulted in consumer outrage, draft legislation, and/or Federal Communications Commission proceedings.

AT&T's Network Neutrality doublethink

[Commentary] George Orwell would be proud of AT&T's latest series of ads. The company is attempting to convince us that it favors Net neutrality and an open Internet, when in fact it is lobbying hard for the opposite result. More than semantics are at stake here. The new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is moving to put teeth into a series of rules that would do much to guarantee real Net neutrality. Naturally, the big carriers oppose this. But given the political climate in the country and their companies' record of alienating consumers and businesses that need an open Internet, AT&T's spinmeisters know that it can't just come out and say what it really means. Instead, the company cleverly disguises its real intent with a campaign aimed at convincing the public that, as Orwell put it in "1984," ignorance is strength. OK, that's a bit harsh. But there is going to be a big fight about this in 2010, and whether we are IT professionals, consumers, or both, we need to know exactly what's going on.

Our technology is new, our democratic challenge is the same

Speaking at the Practising Law Institute, Federal Communications Commission member Michael Copps said, "Folks are beginning to realize that all this talk about broadband is not just techno-speak from broadband geeks. More and more of us now understand that broadband-accessible, affordable, open broadband-is the Great Enabler of our time." He noted that broadband is a critical component to many of the great challenges the nation faces. He evoked the famous quote from Thomas Jefferson who when talking about newspapers said that, if given the choice, he would prefer newspapers without government over a government without newspapers. But offered the rest of the quote, too: "But I should mean that every man should receive those papers, and be capable of reading them." Commissioner Copps said, "Isn't that something? Jefferson is talking about deployment-getting those newspapers out ubiquitously. And he's talking about adoption-people knowing how to read, recognizing the value, and making use of the information infrastructure. Our technology is new -- our democratic challenge is exactly the same."

EFF voices concerns about Facebook privacy changes

Facebook's revamped privacy settings will push more user data onto the Internet and, in some cases, make privacy protection harder for Facebook users, digital civil liberties experts said. While acknowledging that many of the changes unveiled Wednesday will be good for privacy, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Attorney Kevin Bankston said the social-networking giant is also removing some important privacy controls that it should have kept. "I think you're better off in some ways and worse off in some ways," he said. "It's really a mixed bag." Ari Schwartz, chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, offered a similarly mixed review. According to him, giving people more control over who sees their individual posts is a good thing, but the new default privacy settings will push a lot more information into the public realm. That "actually has a negative effect on privacy," he said.

New Staff at FCC

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the appointment of Joel Gurin as Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and Thomas Wyatt as Chief of the Office of Workplace Diversity. Stuart Benjamin will be joining the Commission as the agency's first Distinguished Scholar in Residence. He will reside in the Office of Strategic Planning and will work on spectrum reform, First Amendment issues, and long-term strategy.

1) Gurin has a diverse background combining nonprofit leadership, print and Web publishing, and expertise in consumer issues. He most recently served as Acting President of NARSAD; as Acting Editor-in-Chief for State of the USA; and as Senior Vice President of Rodale Interactive. Prior to that, Mr. Gurin was Executive Vice President of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, for almost a decade. He launched and grew Consumer Reports' Web site, the world's largest information-based paid subscription site.

2) Wyatt has spent much of his career at the FCC extensively involved in complaint and other consumer-related activities. Most recently, he served as Deputy Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. Mr. Wyatt also served in that Bureau's predecessor, the Consumer Information Bureau, as Associate Bureau Chief for Operations and was Senior Counsel for Disabilities Enforcement in the Enforcement Bureau. He began his career at the FCC in 1984 as a staff attorney in the former Mass Media Bureau. He joined the Common Carrier Bureau in 1986 where he served as Chief of the Formal Complaints and Investigations Branch and, later, Associate Chief of the Enforcement Division.

3) Professor Benjamin is on leave from Duke Law School, where he is the Douglas B. Maggs Professor of Law. He specializes in telecommunications law, the First Amendment, and administrative law. Before teaching law, Professor Benjamin clerked for Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court; worked as an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice; worked as an associate with Professor Laurence Tribe; and served as a staff attorney for the Legal Resources Centre in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Advocate Alleges 'Racial Labeling' in Targeted Online Ads

The ubiquity of online advertising is a product of its importance to the Internet economy, said a group of consumer advocates Wednesday during a debate on the future of online advertising. But the impact of new targeted advertising methods on consumer privacy and its potential to manipulate online experiences was the subject of heated argument at the event, sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Elected Officials Say Broadband Plan Must Give Role to States and Localities

Mayors and state elected officials emphasized the value and importance of local engagement in initiatives designed to promote high-speed Internet access at a Wednesday morning workshop at the Federal Communications Commission. Three Commissioners plus Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd gathered to discuss the particular role that local and state governments have in promoting broadband for under-served communities. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn reminded the audience that that the local officials play a key role in recognizing where there are broadband gaps - and in bridging the disconnect in trust between the communities and the federal policy makers. Eugene Grant, mayor of Seat Pleasant (MD) and vice president of the National Conference of Black Mayors, echoed Clyburn's words. He said mayors and city governments are in the best positions to assess needs of their communities, and to be the most proactive.

Cost estimate for Local Community Radio Act of 2009 (S.592)

Based on information from the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cost $1 million to implement the Local Community Radio Act of 2009 between 2010 and 2014 as the number of applications for low-power licenses will increase as a result of the bill. There would be no change in the FCC's offsetting collections, however, because noncommercial entities do not pay fees for such licenses. Provisions affecting the allocation of spectrum between low-power FM stations and FM translators could affect offsetting receipts from future spectrum auctions, but CBO estimates that those changes are unlikely to affect proceeds from the auctions that will be held before the FCC's authority to auction the spectrum expires at the end of 2013.

Benton

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