Tech Policy

On Monday, I'll be participating in a press conference where the City of Austin will be announcing the 2008 selections for the Grant for Technology Opportunities program.

Here is the press release:

Austin City Council Member Brewster McCracken and members of the Austin Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission will present the 2008 Grant for Technology Opportunities Program Awards at an announcement ceremony on Monday, April 21, at Austin City Hall, 301 W. Second St.

Ten winning projects will receive GTOPs funding for connecting citizens with information technology, computers and the Internet.

"GTOPs enables local organizations to leverage technology in novel ways," said Commission Chair Chip Rosenthal. "Its achievements are remarkable, and a tribute to the innovation and community spirit of Austin."

According to a Network World article posted today:

Telecommunication companies need to go beyond just providing bandwidth and look into acquiring Internet destination sites that are heavily trafficked, Sun Chairman Scott McNealy said on Friday.

McNealy gets it precisely backwards. What the net needs is a complete separation between bandwidth and application.

When the bandwidth provider is also the service provider, they don't have an incentive to make the network work well for anything but their applications. Want to watch a movie on Comcast cable television service? No problem! Want to watch the same movie on a peer-to-peer service across your Comcast broadband connection? Whups, that's being throttled.

McNealy's vision is good for Sun: it would boost demand for their equipment. But it's very bad telecom policy.

Read the full article here: McNealy: Telcos falling behind in Internet race

The FCC held a recent public hearing on network neutrality, and a lot of scrutiny was placed on Comcast's degredation of peer-to-peer applications on their broadband network. This, for instance, hampers video applications and discourages Comcast subscribers from using alternatives to their cable TV services.

The Save the Internet Coalition discovered that Comcast (or one of their supporters) bussed in people to fill chairs, so the public would be blocked from participating.

Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part.

This is despicable. Comcast really needs a lesson in open communication.

Full article here: Comcast Blocking: First the Internet — Now the Public

The "Protect America Act" has expired.

This was a law passed in haste last year, as an addendum to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It authorized the previously illegal (and I would hope unconstitutional) act of spying on Americans without a warrant or court order.

Now that PAA has expired, no further warrantless wiretaps can be initiated. Existing surveillance continues, and new surveillance can be initiated with the rubber stamp of a FISA court. As the conservative Washington Times explains there will be little practical effect from the lapse.

The administration is claiming this is a severe blow to our intelligence gathering capability. Their actions, however, prove otherwise. If PAA was so necessary, the administration would have supported reauthorization without the poison pill of phone company amnesty.

Today, the US Senate passed a version of FISA that contains retroactive immunity for phone companies that performed illegal wiretapping. There was an amendment to strip the immunity clause from the bill, but it failed.

The three leading presidential candidates are all sitting Senators, so how they voted on this issue provides an important litmus test. The results are:

• Sen. McCain - voted for retroactive immunity
• Sen. Obama - voted against retroactive immunity
• Sen. Clinton - didn't show up to vote

So there you have it. Three candidates, three different positions on the issue. Which position best aligns with yours?

Complete vote data on the retroactive immunity amendment here.

Last October, I was elected chair of the Austin Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission, an advisory body to the Austin City Council. One of my duties is to present periodic updates to the Council Committee for Emerging Technology and Telecommunications.

On January 23, I appeared before the council committee and presented a summary of the commission actions over the previous quarter.

One important item was the impending contract renewal with Austin Free-Net, because that was due for council action. AFN is the City's primary partner in its digital inclusion initiatives. The contract is about $53K/year and was up for renewal. The Commission passed a resolution in support of renewal.

On January 31, the Council did approve the contract, and that's good news.

The slides from my presentation, as well as the commission resolution on the Free-Net contract, are attached below.

A year from now, your television is going to break.

Over-the-air broadcast television is changing from the current NTSC analog broadcast standard to a new digital transmission mechanism. There are several significant reasons why this is a good idea. Broadcast television will become HD quality, with improved video and audio. Television stations will be able to transmit additional information, even multiple channels, in their allotted space. Also, this will release a large piece of valuable radio frequency spectrum, which will be used to raise money for the Federal government and open up the airwaves to exciting new services.

You've probably heard about all the lawsuits the recording industry has been using against music sharing and downloading. Sometimes it seems like the recording industry is on the warpath against their own best potential customers.

Now, imagine the dumbest thing the recording industry could possibly do—that you know even they wouldn't be stupid enough to try. Something, say, like suing somebody for buying music and ripping their own CDs to their computer. They couldn't possibly be that dumb and greedy to try that, right?

Ha, silly you! The Washington Post wrote last week:

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

There has been a remarkable turn of events today in the saga of granting phone companies amnesty for illegal wiretapping.

Senator Chris Dodd had placed a hold on the FISA bill to keep it from reaching the Senate floor. Today, as expected, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tossed the hold to bring up the bill. Sen. Reid then handily got the 60% vote he needed to shut down Dodd's threatened filibuster.

That seemed like game over, at least in the Senate. This afternoon, the New York Times was reporting the events as a big victory for the phone companies and Bush administration.

However, later in the day, due to the extraordinary pushback, Reid announced that the FISA bill would be put off, rather than rammed through before recess.

The Times pulled the earlier story and replaced it with one now saying:

In a setback for the White House, Senate Democrats on Monday put off until at least next month any decision on whether to give legal protection to the phone carriers that helped with the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program.

You can read the entire article here: Democrats Delay a Vote on Immunity for Wiretaps

Also, be sure to check out Glenn Greenwald's analysis of Reid's inconsistent handling of legislative holds, with periodic updates with the day's events: Harry Reid -- compare and contrast

I posted yesterday about the effort to give phone companies amnesty for illegal wiretapping. Today, the New York Times carries a front page report on the issue.

For months, the Bush administration has waged a high-profile campaign, including personal lobbying by President Bush and closed-door briefings by top officials, to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program.

But the battle is really about something much bigger. At stake is the federal government’s extensive but uneasy partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime.