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February 29, 2004
New photo album
I finally had a chance to upload the last two months of photos. Album 10 has pictures of both Eli and Esther. It looks different from the prior albums because I'm trying a different application.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The End of Spectrum Scarcity
That's the title of an article I
co-wrote with Greg Staple, a Washington telecom lawyer, in the new
issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine. We explain how "open spectrum"
technologies could, with the right regulatory decisions, massively
increase the usable capacity for wireless communication. More
spectrum is also coming from conventional sources like FCC
reallocation.
It's hard to overstate how big a deal this could be. Cingular
just spent $41 billion for AT&T Wireless, allegedly because it
desparately needed more spectrum. And we're not even imagining
the applications and usage scenarios that will develop when wireless
capacity goes from being expensive and scarce to virtually free like
computer cycles.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 27, 2004
David Isenberg's WTF
My friend David Isenberg, the (justly) famous author of "Rise of the Stupid Network," is holding a workshop called WTF for
provoacteurs, dreamers, and other cool folks on April 2-4 outside of
New York City. Looks to be a fantastic event. I can't make
it because of family obligations around Passover, but I encourage you
to check it out.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 26, 2004
Technical difficulties
For some reason, Radio Userland stopped uploading my blog posts last
weekend. Lawrence Lee of Userland has been working diligently to
fix the problem.
I think things are finally working again. Apologies for the hiatus!
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 24, 2004
My Senate testimony on VOIP
The Senate Commerce Committee website has my written statement from today's VOIP hearing.
Overall, the hearing went very well. I'm on the train back right now. I'll post more notes from the hearing when I can.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 21, 2004
Senate VOIP Hearing to Be Webcast
The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on voice over IP will be Webcast
live, starting at 9:30am Eastern Time on Tuesday. The RealAudio
stream will be located here. I'll be testifying on the second panel, following the initial testimony of FCC Chairman Powell.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Verizon follies
Things are really humming here at the Supernova Group. So were're
moving into a new office. I need to establish phone service, so I
went to the Verizon Website. After filling out about 10 screens
of information, I get to the final confirmation page, click on the
"submit" button, and... nothing happens. Probably a Javascript
problem. I use Mozilla as my primary browser, and some sites
simply don't work for no apparent reason.
OK, so I'll switch over to Internet Explorer. But my session
information is saved over in the other window. There is a "save"
button on all the Verizon screens, but no mechanism for retrieving what
you've "saved." In other words, I can't get back to the
information I previously filled out. Perhaps if I log into my
account? Wait, I don't have an account.
OK, I'll start from scratch. I get about halfway through the
process on IE, when I have to log off due to an outside
interruption. When I come back, the session has of course timed
out. It's saying that I need to log into my account in order to
get back to where I was. But I don't have an account!
OK, I'll create an account. I put in a username, password, email
addresses, challenge question, etc. Then I need to input my
Verizon phone number. But wait, I don't have one for my
office. That's why I'm here -- to get a phone number! So
I'm totally stuck.
To get an account, you need a phone number. But to get a phone number, you should have an account. Oy.
Update: I just went through the
whole process again, got to the last screen and... I was redirected to
a customer survey page before I could confirm my order. When I clicked
"Next" after the survey, I was redirected back to the Verizon home
page. No order confirmation. In other words, it is
impossible for me to sign up for phone service through the Verizon
Website.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 20, 2004
FCC releases Free World Dialup order
The text of the FCC's order declaring
Pulver.com's Free World Dialup an unregulated information service has
been released. Haven't had time to read it yet. The devil
is often in the details with these decisions.
We're still waiting for the text of the companion notice of proposed
rulemaking seeking comment on regulatory treatment of VOIP more
generally.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
VOIP is more than just arbitrage
Stuart Henshall describes the potential implications of Skype's ridiculously easy conference calling capability.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 19, 2004
Old wireless thinking
This Washington Post story
about new wireless services is a great example of old telecom
thinking. Everything depends on the carriers, and when they
upgrade their networks. WiFi hotspots and other forms of
unlicensed connectivity remove that bottleneck -- along with the
additional charges the carriers want to load on for the whizbang new
services. That's why incorporating WiFi (and ultimately software
radios) into mobile handsets is such a significant development.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 18, 2004
Mr. Werbach Goes to Washington
I've been invited to testify next Tuesday before the Senate Commerce Committee on voice over IP. I'll post more details when I get the formal invitation.
I expect a more challenging environment than the FCC hearing in
December. Some members of Congress are worried that, unless VOIP is
subject to legacy telecom regulation, grave damage will be done to
universal service, public safety, and national security. This is
simply not the case, but the concerns raise legitimate issues. We
need to separate fact from fiction, and social policy from the demands
of special interests.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The fundamental business challenge of our times
Eli Noam of Columbia Business School has an important Financial Times column pointing out the fundamental business challenge facing the tech sector: commoditization.
Eli is by nature a cynic, so what he has to say is often not pleasant. But he has the unfortunate habit of being right much of the time, and ahead of the curve virtually all the time. I've disagreed with some of his conclusions, but I'm with him on the core insight: there is a basic structural disconnect in the economics of information industries, with painful consequences. We saw it first in telecom, where VOIP is now bringing the issue to a boil, but it's broader than that.
Jeff Jarvis and Ross Mayfield
would like to think we can make it up on volume. I'm as excited
as they are about new bottom-up markets and content forms like
blogs. The problem is simply that you can't get there from
here. A hundred Nick Dentons wouldn't pay for one floor of the
Conde Nast headquarters building where Jeff works. (Jeff knows
that, and is working both sides of the equation, but Gawker will never
be Entertainment Weekly.) There's no scenario that doesn't take a
substantial amount of money from the traditional media sector -- and
telecom, and IT -- and replace with with a smaller amount of money in
distributed alternatives.
One answer, which Noam thinks may be inevitable, is consolidation to
the point of monopolization. Ma Bell held back the tide of
commoditization in an industry characterized by high fixed and low
variable costs, and Microsoft is doing the same thing in the PC business. That outcome isn't all bad... but it's far from good. And, I believe, far from assured.
Is there another answer? I think there is. I proposed it
four years ago in the Harvard Business Review (and a year earlier in
Release 1.0): syndication.
At the time, the idea may have sounded like new economy hype. In
reality, syndication is a roadmap for pulling out of the
commoditization death spiral. It won't be simple and it won't be
painless, but syndication will provide a foundation for new growth in
the information sector. Just look at the performance of the two
Web-based companies most heavily built on the syndication model: Google
and Amazon. Another useful test case for syndication will be the
development of the RSS/RDF/Atom ecosystem around Weblogs.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 17, 2004
A conference whose time has come?
Following up on the Digital Democracy Teach-In at O'Reilly's ETech, Jeff Jarvis has proposed a ground-breaking bottom-up conference on "the impact of Internet technology on our lives." Several people expressed their support in the comments on his blog. I agree with Tim Oren that the time has come to do an event like this.
So I've offered to
collocate the event before or after Supernova in Silicon Valley in late
June. Assuming the space is available at the hotel, I can provide
a venue and an excuse for many of the key people to be there
anyway.
Any interest in making this happen?
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Oh, so that's what we're doing
Dave Sifry: "[B]ehind every link, behind every post, behind every weblog is a person
(sometimes more than one), and that person is making decisions on what
to post and who to link to, and the linking process itself is not just
a proxy for attention (as the Google guys understood) but it is a new
form of social gesture"
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 16, 2004
Why storage is sexy
The Feature has posted my piece on how advances in storage technology are transforming mobile devices.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Another step toward the Daily Me
At Demo today, Feedster introduced Feedpapers, auto-generated headline feeds on particular topics.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
No Moore's Law for Software?
Dana Blankenhorn sees a tipping point in the fact that the basic Microsoft software (Windows and Office) for a new PC costs more than all the hardware.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Let media consolidation fight itself
Dan Gillmor finds himself reluctantly supporting a Comcast-Disney merger:
Whether Comcast or someone else buys Disney, it will provoke a debate about the implications of media consolidation and the marriage of content and conduit. If the merger partners say (as they surely will) that they won't discriminate against unaffiliated content and applications, they should have no objection to a public commitment to that effect.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 12:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Always social
I just noticed that Tony Perkins' AlwaysOn has its own social networking service, called the AlwaysOn Zaibatsu. It will be interesting to see if they can pull this off.
AlwaysOn is trying to be a lot of things that are traditionally
separate -- an advertiser-funded content site, a blog, and a
community. Will the members (many of whom are doubtless already
on LinkedIn, Ryze, and Orkut) see AlwaysOn as their business networking
"home" online? And how will the site balance the interests of
advertisers with the interests of members, if those things come into
conflict? Tony has a track record of pioneering new models based
around tech-oriented content, so he's we'll suited to conduct the
experiment.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 12:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Linked Out?
Interesting summary of LinkedIn requests
from Auren Hoffman. My experience is broadly similar. I
seem to be link 2, 3, or 4 in a great many 5-link chains. If I
don't know the originator or the recipient, I'm not sure what
reputational value I add to the equation.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 15, 2004
The Last Internet Campaign?
Clay's coda for the Dean campaign hits the nail on the head:
The interesting question, though, is what a successful Internet campaign would look like. Dean showed how the Net can take an obscure candidate and vault him to the head of the pack. What would a real Internet campaign by an establishment figure like John Kerry -- or George W. Bush -- look like? We'll see beta versions this fall, but they will almost certainly be copies of Dean's techniques rather than real innovations.
I have a hunch that the first Internet campaign to truly mobilize
voters on a mass scale (as opposed to fundraising and core supporters)
won't start around a candidate. One of the key, and
under-appreciated, elements of Dean's early success was MoveOn.org.
MoveOn never actually endorsed Dean, but its tactics and worldview were
aligned with the Dean campaign. Its early online poll was the first
demonstration of Dean's "front-runner" status. MoveOn, thanks to
help from friends like George Soros, will be significant player in the
Fall campaign. Yet MoveOn wasn't started to elect a President; it
was started to defend a President (Clinton) against impeachment efforts.
What mot people really support are causes, not candidates. The
cause many Dean supporters were passionate about was defeating
President Bush, and that ultimately came back to haunt Howard Dean in
the form of "electability." The power of the Net in politics, as
Clay and others have eloquently written, is its ability to lower
coordination barriers among large numbers of people. Thus, it's
most effective where people already support a cause.
It's hard to remember now, but back in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
there were two such causes: health care reform and deficit
reduction. The health care debate was co-opted by the traditional
players, but on the deficit side, the Concord Coalition did an amazing
job of mobilizing popular anger, largely among young people, about the
ruinous course of our fiscal policies. And they did it without
any of the Internet-based tools groups like MoveOn are exploiting
today.
So yes, we've seen the last Internet campaign, but not the first
Internet President. That will have to wait for a movement that
starts outside the existing political boxes, and a candidate able to
make the most of it.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 13, 2004
The headline says it all
Stephen Labaton (or his editors!) has it right when he describes the FCC VOIP proceeding thusly:
F.C.C. Begins Rewriting Rules on Delivery of the Internet
This isn't just about Vonage or Free World Dialup. As I've noted
in several recent items, the FCC understands full-well that in tackling
VOIP, it's really defining the rules for the next-generation layered
communications infrastructure.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 12, 2004
The moguls' last hurrah?
I'm convinced there will be more bids for Disney, now that the company
is in play. And I suspect at least one will come from a big-name
media mogul in some way, shape, or form. Barry Diller and Jeff
Katzenberg are ex-Disney guys who would love nothing more than to wrest
control of the Mouse from Michael Eisner. They have to be looking
at marshalling bids.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
FCC Action on VOIP
Today, the FCC declared Pulver.com's Free World Dialup service an
unregulated information service, and launched a proceeding seeking
comment on the treatment of voice over IP more broadly.
Chairman Powell said something to the effect that this is the most
important proceeding in the history of communications regulation, and
he's right. There has been intense political back-and-forth on
these issues behind the scenes, with Congressional leaders and the FBI
pushing hard on the FCC. The Commissioners and the staffers
drafting today's items worked through the night to reach
compromises. The meeting was pushed back from 9:30 to 11am and
the VOIP items were moved the the end of the agenda, no doubt to allow
time for final rewriting.
It is vitally important that the tech community participate in the VOIP
proceeding. The decisions the FCC makes will determine not just
how new VOIP providers like Vonage and Packet8 are treated, but the
rules of the road for the broadband superhighway. As I said at
the FCC VOIP hearing in December, voice is now an application.
It's one of many applications that will be delivered through
interconnected broadband networks. The FCC's actions will
determine the business environment for network operators, application
providers, and content creators. This is the whole enchilada.
When the text of the notice is released, we'll know the exact comment
deadlines and questions being asked. FCC proceedings are open to
anyone -- you don't have to be a lawyer or a company in the space, and
you can file via a Web form. (One of my proudest accomplishments
from my time at the Commission.)
I'll have more thoughts on this issue soon.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Good news, bad news
Anna-Maria Kovacs has long been one of the few Wall Street analysts to
really understand the FCC regulatory process and its implications for
the telecom industry. In today's note ahead of the FCC meeting
expected to take up VOIP issues, she nails the crucial business
implications of the VOIP regulation debate:
- If the application vendors can ride free and
the telco and cable network providers are not allowed to block them, then the
application vendors will have a huge cost advantage vis-à-vis the carriers they
ride. The carriers will have both
network and marketing costs, while the pure application vendors will only have
marketing costs. In such an environment,
the guest’s end-user rates can be much lower than those of the host. The problem would be most extreme for the
telcos, who have an existing revenue base at risk and who lack video revenues to
help support at least a portion of their network. But even the cable-network
providers would be at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the pure application
vendors.
- The good news would be lots more end-user
choices and lower prices. The bad news
would be the threat to the financial viability of the underlying carriers who
make that competition possible.
What Anna-Maria has realized is that the VOIP debate is about two
visions for the future of the Internet. It's the same point
captured in James Seng's layers diagram,
and has been a recurring theme in my writings over the past few
years. Vision 1 presumes that applications will be tied to
connectivity platforms. Vision 2 innovation and economic activity
booming when those layers are de-linked. (In case you're unclear,
I believe in Vision 2.)
Naive expressions of Vision 1, like yesterday's Wall Street Journal editorial,
simply ignore the lessons of the Internet and telecom competition over
the past two decades. The best case that can be made for tying
applications to network infrastructure is the one Kovacs lays out: it's
the only way to pay for the network. The critical question is the
one raised in her last sentence: whether the network is financial
viable based on connectivity revenues alone. (Anna-Maria is just
setting out the possibilities; I don't know whether or not she believes
this viewpoint is accurate.)
I'm convinced that network operators can do quite well based on their
access revenues alone, without any need to suck value out of the
application and content layers. The hard part will be replacing
legacy infrastructure and shifting to a new cost structure. The
Bells spend tens of billions of dollars each year on capital
expenditures, and turning that oil tanker around won't be easy.
Yesterday, in his New America Foundation speech, AT&T CEO Dave
Dorman described some of the pain AT&T has gone through over the
past five years in migrating from five separate networks to one massive
IP network. It's a multi-billion dollar annual project, which is
still ongoing. But AT&T believes that pain is necessary to
position itself for the emerging all-IP, converged telecom world.
I think they are dead on.
The incumbent local phone companies haven't yet made the same
commitment AT&T has. Instead, they are pushing a vision that
removes the pressure for change.
UPDATE: Right after I posted this, I read Ted Shelton's analysis
of the economics of starting a VOIP telco. He pegs the initial
capital costs at just $8,000. This illustrates the discontinuity
I'm talking about.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 11, 2004
Ma Broadband
Two random tidbits from AT&T CEO Dave Dorman's presentation today at the New America Foundation:
"AT&T is investing across the spectrum in
last-mile technologies." In particular, Dorman mentioned a
combination of fiber to the neighborhood and some variant of WiFi from
there into the home.
- AT&T has the largest Internet protocol network in the world, carrying 1.2 petabytes (that's a million gigabytes) of traffic per day.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Telecom/media consolidation: Hold on to your seat!
Get ready for the next wave of big telecom and media
consolidation. Not just the normal accretion deals, but the
potential game changers. AOL/Time Warner and Comcast/AT&T
Broadband were among the highlights the last merger wave.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Vodaphone was
considering a bid for Verizon, as a way to take control of Verizon
Wireless. That deal likely won't happen -- expect Vodaphone to
unwind its interest in Verizon Wireless in connection with a purchase
of AT&T Wireless -- but when a >$150 billion company like
Verizon is in play, watch out.
The next shoe dropped today: Comcast is proposing to acquire Disney.
There is logic to the deal, though it's 1980s logic: combine content
and conduit at scale to squeeze more profits from the entertainment
bundle. That's not going to work in the emerging broadband media
ecosystem, where platforms, applications, and content are different
layers of the stack. Comcast-Disney would also have the same
challenge as AOL-Time Warner: a national content footprint mismatched
with a regional broadband infrastructure footprint. Nonetheless,
it's striking that Comcast, so soon after digesting AT&T broadband
to become the largest cable operator, is ready to return to the merger
trough.
This won't be the last huge deal proposed in the current wave. Everyone is in play.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Layers and telecom
James Seng succinctly captures what I've been trying to say for a while about business models in telecom. His diagram is particularly good for boiling down the key shift.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Free Culture debate
James DeLong responds to
my post about the Free Culture Movement (FCM) and property
rights. He steps back from his earlier statements and
acknowledges that, yes, there are elements of the movement, such as
Creative Commons, that work within the property rights system.
For that I give him credit.
I don't agree with his stark division of the FCM into "BSD Licence"
activities that respect property rights and "GPL" activities that seek
to overthrow them, but I won't be ungrateful. It's a much more
nuanced and accurate view that what he started with. If we can
spend our energy debating the substance of the issues -- which sets of
rules better promote economic efficiency, freedom, and innovation -- we
may make some progress.
To my mind, the genius of people like Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler
is that, unlike the prior "copyleft" generation represented by GPL
creator Richard Stallman, they are able to engage on their opponents'
own turf as well as from the outside. What set me off about
DeLong's original post was the unwillingness to accept that fact, by
labeling the whole movement as opposed to property rights.
DeLong takes umbrage at my use of the term "copyright
maximalists." First of all, I didn't apply that label to him -- I
was thinking more of Jack Valenti. As DeLong makes clear in his
followup post, he appreciates that property rights have limits:
Unfortunately, many of the business and political interests in the digital content debates fail to acknowledge this point. The movie industry, for example, has voiciferously promoted its conception of its intellectual property rights as morally sacrosanct, now and forever. One key rhetorical move they make in doing so is to label anyone who questions their viewpoint as a communist and/or a pirate. (I'm not sure which is the greater insult.) You either support the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act... or you're in the dustbin of history with Lenin and Trotsky. In a political battle, demonizing the opposition can be very effective.
I'm sure this wasn't what motivated DeLong's original post. But
to a reader, his sweeping generalization had that ring.
De Long succinctly (if inadvertantly) shows the core problem:
to the process of redefinition, but so far what we hear from it is why
property rights are bad, in whatever context happens to be under
discussion at the moment, except, perhaps, for the spectrum problem
mentioned by Werbach."
I see a similar problem on the other side: property rights defenders
reflexively attacking alternative production models and
technology-necessitated limitations on rights. Does that describe
all opponents of the FCM? Of course not. But the thoughtful
ones such as DeLong are letting themselves become intellectual cover
for the extremists.
That's why this meta-debate matters. In the confines of the
academy, we all trust each other's intellectual honesty and can have a
nice conversation. DeLong points to Polk Wagner, who has done
excellent work attacking the point of view that I support. I see
Polk once a month at a Philly-area gathering of cyberlaw
afficionados. We find common ground on some substantive points
and disagree on others, but I always respect his perspective. In
my forthcoming spectrum paper,
I engage with other brilliant scholars like Howard Shelanski and Stuart
Benjamin who have written in the area. That's the nature of
intellectual debate -- different sides advance claims and challenge one
another.
The cold reality is that the Free Culture battle isn't just being
fought in the halls of academe. The scholarly discussion is part
of a larger debate taking place in Congress, the courts, corporate
board rooms, and the realm of public opinion. We simply can't
ignore the consequences of labeling opponents with too broad
brush.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 10, 2004
Lobbyist WiFi in the lobby (and the ballroom too!)
I'm sitting in a tech investor conference in Washington DC, put on by my friends at the Precursor Group.
Normally Washington is one of of the worst places for WiFi connectivity
at hotels, so I wasn't optimistic. But -- wonder of wonders --
the Williard Hotel now has a free hotspot in the ballroom. The
SSID is "lobbyist," which is a nice twist.
An old Washington story is that the term lobbyist originated right here
at the Willard, during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant.
Corrupt interest group representatives would meet with White House
figures in the lobby of the Willard. Hence, "lobbyists."
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Michael Powell on Internet openness
FCC Chairman Powell challenged broadband platform providers to ensure "Internet freedom" in a speech yesterday
at the University of Colorado.
Powell didn't advocate FCC action
to ensure broadband openness, but he made it clear that he took the
threat of closed networks seriously. This is important. If
there is consensus that the cableization of the Net is a real
possibility that would have terrible business and public interest
consequences, we're making progress. Then we can fight over
whether, in fact, that scenario is materializing.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 9, 2004
Free Culture and Property Rights
Over at the Progress and Freedom Foundation blog, James DeLong attempts to prove that the "Free Culture Movement" (FCM) led by people like Larry Lessig is part and parcel of the political left:
consumption of intellectual creations should be organized by property
rights and markets. Instead, it favors a mechanism of production based
on the open source software movement...."
This is a nice case of simply asserting
what the author is allegedly attempting to prove. In fact, Free
Culture is eminently consistent with markets and property rights.
Lessig's Creative Commons and successful open source projects are based
on well-defined software licenses. In other words, property
rights that function in a market. The network infrastructure
piece of Free Culture, open spectrum, is expressly built on the idea of
a market in wireless devices replacing a system of government spectrum
micro-management. And it was the Framers of the US Constitution,
hardly anti-property radicals, who decreed that copyrights be for a
limited period of time.
The property rights maximalists are the true radicals here. They
have defined any challenges to the status quo as a frontal attack on
property rights. As political propaganda, this effort may have
some success. But the ultimate strength of the Free Culture
Movement, or whatever one calls it, lies in this: It is an internal critique of the dominant ideology, not an external challenge to markets like communism.
The Free Culture proponents, who offer suggestions like returning to
the copyright terms of the 1790s, are the true conservatives in this
debate.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Virtually at ETech
A shout out to all my peeps at O'Reilly's ETech conference
this week. I'm disappointed I can't join you. Tim, Rael,
and company have done a marvelous job coralling the cool and the
mind-blowing -- and that applies to both the ideas and the
people. ETech is bigger and more geeky than Supernova, but sometimes it's fun to let your inner geek out.
I'll participate virtually via the blogs and other online tools.
As I've noted on the other side with Supernova, remote virtual
participation isn't nearly as rich as physical presence. But it's
something.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A defining week for VOIP
Two significant events this week will mark a turning point for voice over IP.
On Wednesday, AT&T CEO Dave Dorman will give a major speech in
Washington to the New America Foundation. Marking the 20th
anniversary of Ma Bell's divestiture, Dorman is expected to outline a
strategy that makes VOIP a central focus for the company.
The next day, the FCC will take up its long-awaited Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking (NPRM) on VOIP, as well as Jeff Pulver's petition to declare
his Free World Dialup service unregulated. The NPRM is just the
formal beginning of the proceeding -- it will ask questions and make
proposals, but not adopt any binding rules. That will come later,
almost certainly after Michael Powell leaves the Commission.
Nonetheless, the NPRM will set the agenda for the regulatory fight to
come.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 6, 2004
FCC moving forward on VOIP
The FCC will address two voice over IP items at its February meeting next Thursday:
1 WIRELINE COMPETITION TITLE: Petition for
Look closely at the summary of the second item, which is the kickoff of the long-awaited VOIP proceeding. The Commission is bending over backwards to emphasize that these are data applications, not another form of telephony as we know it.
The framing is clearly intended to set up a decision not to subject
VOIP to legacy regulation as a "telecommunications service."
We'll see if that's what happens; the Chairman controls what gets
proposed but needs three votes to adopt anything. The VOIP
proceeding is going to draw out a great deal of political activity on
both sides. There is a strong group of interests that will
advocate regulation in order to protect existing revenues and subsidy
flows.
This will be an important fight for the future of the Internet.
The tech community needs to realize what's at stake, and support
efforts to keep VOIP out of the legacy regulatory environment.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 5, 2004
Stupid hotspot connection processes
I tried to check my email during a stopover in Frankfurt from the
Luftansa lounge. Good news -- they have a Vodaphone WiFi
hotspot. But there's one problem. Signing up to connect to
the Hotspot requires that you receive a password on your mobile phone
via SMS. My Sprint PCS phone doesn't work in Europe. Adding
insult to injury, none of the landline phones here in the lounge allow
outgoing toll-free calls. So I can't even reach the Vodaphone
help line to see if there's another way to log in.
I can understand the convenience of SMS, but why should connecting your
laptop to a WiFi hotspot need to involve a text message to your mobile
phone? Doing the security over the Net via SSL seems perfectly
acceptable, as it is for virtually all online purchases. It's as
though a catalog retailer told me to go respond to an email in order to
accept my credit card over the phone.
Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait until I get to Helsinki to connect (and to upload this post!).
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 4, 2004
Across the Atlantic on one charge
For some reason, the power outlet in my airplane seat isn't
working. Thank goodness I brought along the IBM "extended life
battery" that clips onto the bottom of my laptop. I can get over
six hours of real-world juice, enough to get me to Europe without
shutting down.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Feeling just Finn
I'm off this afternoon to Helsinki for a quick business trip. It
will be my first time in Finland; I'm looking forward to
it. I should be able to check email, but my responses will
probably be slow through the beginning of next week.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 12:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Spam is EVIL!!!!!!
Some interesting results from the Transatlantic Consumer Dialog's survey on spam. 21,000 people responded, from 36 countries.
· 62% (13,029 people) said that they use a filter but only 17% (3,565 people) said that they generally worked very well. · 91% (19,235 people) said that they were concerned about children's exposure to spam.
Perhaps the scariest one is that 52% number. Spam is becoming a serious drag on the Internet economy. Not just the direct time and resources it sucks up, but its indirect effects in discouraging people from using email and the Web.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 3, 2004
Wireless Future conference
I'll be speaking March 13 at the Wireless Future conference in Austin, TX organized by Jon Lebkowsky
and the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas. I'm really
looking forward to this one. John has assembled a fabulous group
of Supernova regulars discussing the disruptive potential of emerging
wireless technologies, including Cory Doctorow, Joi Ito, Howard
Rheingold, David Isenberg, Dave Sifry, Dewayne Hendricks, and David
Weinberger. And to top it off, the event is collocated with South
By Southwest Interactive, the way-cool tech conference offshoot of
Austin's legendary music festival.
Register for Wireless Future ($225 now; $250 starting March 1) and you also get access to SXSWi. I hope to see some of you there.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Half a billion mobile phones
The Register reports that 2003 was a record year for mobile phone handsets:
It's hard to comprehend that number. Imagine if every man, woman, and child in America bought two cellphones last year! Or to put it another way, there were half as many mobile phones sold last year as there were wireline subscribers in the world.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A New Telecom Act?
An article yesterday
in Total Telecom confirms what I've been saying for some time: the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 is due for a rewrite.
I also seem to have guessed right on the likely time frame for the new Act: 2010 or so. With all the money at stake, it will take years for a bill to make it through Congress. Better late than never. The current legal framework in the US is so out of step with the real world that it must be reformed.
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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack