ReasonedResponse.com

I'm dropping my subscription to Consumer Reports.

There was a time when Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, was a pretty decent outfit.  They performed unbiased testing on products and reported the results in a way that made it easier to make informed choices about purchases.  Their strength was that they had no ax to grind, and did not push a particular viewpoint.  Just the facts.

But a few years ago I noticed that the Consumers Union I used to know wasn't acting the same.  I don't know if they fell asleep next to a giant seed pod, or just swallowed the Kool-Aid, but they were suddenly pushing a very decided political agenda.  A "progressive" agenda that seemed to be about hating businesses and championing the causes of the left. Opposing mergers that eventually proved good for consumers.  Engaging in petty name calling, and endorsing "studies" that seemed to have been slanted and biased.

This anti-business theme struck again last week when Consumers Union sent inflammatory emails to its online subscriber base asking us to write members of Congress and make wild allegations against our cell phone companies.  It was signed by something called "Consumers Union Advocacy."

The joy of America is that you can believe in any old thing you want.  You can be an anarchist, a socialist, a violinist, a Methodist, a ventrilquist or a Rotarian.  You can believe in no God, any God, the way of Buddha, or the way of L Ron Hubbard.  And as long as you leave me alone and let me live my life as I wish, you are free to do so.

But if you intrude your wacky beliefs into my life, I have the right to choose not to participate.  I did that a few years ago, when the American Association of Retired Persons decided to use my dues money to lobby for some left-wing causes that seemed to have little to do with seniors -- like network neutrality. I dropped my membership and never looked back.

And so I am doing the same with Consumers Union.  CU has the right to abandon their neutrality and advocate their own political causes.  They have the right to encourage others to join them.  But they don't have the right to use my subscription money to help fund that effort.  That's where I draw the line.

As a kid, I watched the TV series "I Led Three Lives," very loosely based on the book by Boston ad executive Herbert Philbrick, who in the Forties infiltrated the American Communist Party and later helped send leading members of that party to prison.  He led the lives of citizen, communist, and counter-spy for the FBI.

I also led three lives.  In the Nineties, I was marketing director for a software development company, major software pirate on the Zero-Day Warez Boards (systems that specialized in putting pirated copies of software online on the day of their release, thus making them "Zero Days"), and a paid consultant to the Software Publishers Association.  I tracked the handful of major software theft rings, collected evidence, and at the end turned our files over to the FBI.  I think those files are in a government warehouse somewhere, right beside the Arc of the Covenant from "Indiana Jones."

The point is that I spent several years working with the folks who estimated the losses of content to online piracy in order to lobby Congress and the White House, and I learned this critical fact:  they make it up.

I don't mean that they are not well intentioned, or that they are reprehensible criminals.  It's just that after they add up all the possible losses if every single person online downloaded a copy of their copyrighted work, then calculate the value of that work at full Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price, they then round it upwards as high as possible, throw in whatever is missing from the petty cash account, add a bat's wing and eye of newt, and then add a zero or two at the end for good measure.  And viola!  Billions of dollars of losses to the software/music/film/fill-in-the-blank industry each year.  Yegads!  Congress must act!  Trade Agreements must force other countries to adopt US copyright laws!  Technologies must die!

So I was a little more than amused when the Motion Picture Association of America admitted this week that it had inadvertantly overstated their losses to downloads by college students.  My first reaction was to giggle hysterically.  My second was to wonder who finally took a close look at their numbers and called them nonsense.

I do credit the MPAA with 'fessing up to the error, though their "revised" esitmate is still what I would label "Bovine Excrement."  But the larger story here is what should happen next.

Here's my advice.  The Congress, before it passes one more draconian and unnecessary copyright act; the Office of the US Trade Representative, before it forces one more country to adopt our laws; and the US department of Justice, before they allow themselves to become the private enforcement police for the entertainment industry; should demand that all online piracy figures be audited by an independent outside accounting firm for accuracy.  Make them show that the losses are real.

Okay.  That won't happen.  If it ever did, we might be inclined to start questioning the other wildly inflated claims about high crimes and misdemeanors that allegedly occur online.  Or asking why we keep flogging network neutrality as an issue when there is no evidence that a neutrality violation has ever taken place.  Or why...oh, heck, we might just look at Congress and ask, "Why?"

But it's fun to conjecture.

I've largely ignored the flap about Comcast and its "network management" policies.  It sent the crazies in the "network neutrality" movement off howling for blood, but you have to expect that -- it's been more than two years with no evidence that any consumer has ever been harmed by a real neutrality violation, and they're getting pretty desperate.

Now, though, the FCC has decided to take a look at the issue.  On November 14, 2007, Vuze, Inc. filed a Petition for Rulemaking requesting that the Commission initiate a rulemaking proceeding to clarify what constitutes "'reasonable network management,' by broadband network operators and to establish that such network management does not permit network operators to block, degrade or unreasonably discriminate against lawful Internet applications, content or technologies" as used in the Commission's Internet Policy Statement.  Comments are due at the FCC in February, and I expect to file along with others.

That's a good thing.  WIth the FCC and the US Department of Justice already on record as saying new regulations are not needed, it's time for the FCC to help differentiate between what is helpful to consumers and what is harmful.

To understand what the fuss is all about, you have to look at the entrance ramps on Interstate 395, one of the major arteries feeding traffic into and out of Washington, DC.  Along I-395 are ramps that allow residents to feed onto the highway getting to our from the city, and on some of the major ramps there are traffic lights.  These lights flash red or green, allowing one care or truck at a time to proceed into the flow.  That way, traffic already on I-395 has room to move into the right-hand lane to exit, with entering traffic not clogging the system and creating gridlock.  The lights are only used during peak traffic periods -- mid-days and nights they are not needed.

That's pretty much the way Comcast's network management system operates.  Traffic is allowed to exit the network (download) without interruption, but new entrants (uploads) are spaced slightly so they do not jam up the system.  None are blocked.  None are substantially degraded.  They are just appropriately spaced so that everyone can reach their destination safely and on time.

I don't know if that constitutes a network neutrality violation, but it does seem uncommon good sense in an era in which networks are uncertain, network traffic is growing and civil discourse on the issue has been cast to the winds.

And I do know that it's time to bring to a fitting end the wrangling and whining over network neutrality and figure out how we are going to manage the global networks we call the Internet in a manner that allows them to play well together.  The final result is unlikely to be the "I get all the bandwidth I want for next to nothing and get to do anything I want with it" solution that the crazies are demanding, but neither will it allow discrimination in content, devices or applications.

The FCC is the right place for this to happen.  Just as they set the foundation for the discussion by adopting the first core principles of consumer and network rights a few years ago, they are the ones best equipped to help shape a rational discussion of how best to balance the needs of all consumers while simultaneously addressing the need for network growth.  They alone, of the federal entities, have the ability to do this.

It is the right time, the right place, and the right discussion.  Kudos to the FCC for stepping up to the plate. 

Over on the GigaOm blog today is a teriific piece by Martin Geddes, chief analyst at STL Partners, which is responsible for the Telco 2.0 Initiative.  In it he lays out some basics of the future of broadband.

He touches on the problems of network management, and how a minority of users can utilize a disproportionate amount of bandwidth.  He notes how demand is shifting with the requirements of today's more-connected consumer -- the shift to services in which issues such as copyright become moot because the cost of online services and applications is all-inclusive.  And he spends a fair amount of ink talking about the changing business model for Internet Service Providers as they evolve to meet consumer requirements.

It is, all in all, one of the more thoughtful posts on the future of broadband I have seen in a long time, and one that today's generation of ISPs should be paying close attention to.

Heck, it's so well done I wish I had written it.

I'm what my dentist cheerfully calls a "grinder."  That is, I tend to grind my teeth, which inevitably results in a cracked tooth that requires about $1,500 worth of porcelain to remedy.  Hence my dentist's cheerful disposition.

The point is that with a propensity for grinding teeth I try to avoid reading some types of blogs.  Those of left-wing idealogues, celebrities who have been through rehab more than once, and people who make sweeping judgments about technology that are based on uninformed and uneducated speculation, for example.

But I happened across a post on the Ariana Huffington blog that caught my attention.  In it, Matt Stoller lambasts presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her support of ConnectAmerica, the effort to take the success of ConnectKentucky in bringing broadband to households in that state nationwide.  Specifically, he attacks ConnectAmerica, calling it:

"...basically a fraudulent front group funded by government grants set up by telecom interests to advance their legislatve agenda and lie about internet access."

Yikes!

Powerful stuff.  So I read on, despite the reflexive tightening of my jaw and the slight discomfort in my teeth, in order to see what evidence Mr. Stoller might present to support his charges.  His "evidence" consists of selected quotes from Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge.  Brodsky, in turn, cited an unamed "knowledgeable source" who claimed the results were not as good as reported.  And he notes a study by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation that ranked Kentucky as 45th in the nation.

The problem is, the actual study isn't about broadband adoption, but rather the progress of individual states in transitioning to the "new economy."   It does mention Internet access as one of the twenty-plus indicators used for the rankings, but uses data from 2005 -- before ConnectKentucky even kicked in -- because that was the data available at the time the study was conducted.  The study seems more than anything else to bear out the conclusion that ConnectKentucky was an appropriate effort to move the state closer to the new economy.

So the "evidence" Stoller presents is one person quoting another anonymous person and a study that doesn't say what he claims it says?

Stoller concludes by noting that he has been critical of both ConnectKentucky and Clinton for some time.  Fair enough.  But unless he can produce better data than he and Brodsky have concocted, I still tend to believe that the program has been good for Kentucky and should prove viable for other states as well.  As for Senator Clinton, her tech platform may not be perfect, but she at least has some ideas and isn't just another vapid network neutrality bunny.  That in itself is a good thing.

As for me,  I need to call my dentist.  I think I've cracked another tooth. 

Essential reading for those thinking about the Network Neutrality "debate" should be a new position paper by California PUC Commissioner Rachelle Chong.  Writing for the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Instittue at the New York Law School, Chong does an excellent job of summarizing what she calls the "Baskin-Robbins flavors" of Network Neutrality.

Her conclusion about the real intent of "network neutrality" is spot-on:

"I conclude that it may be a Trojan horse for increased government regulation of the Internet, seeking to layer monopoly common-carrier concepts onto a lightly-regulated Internet environment."

Chong's piece is one of the better evaluations of the bewildering array of different definitions, claims and suppositions advanced in support of Network neutrality.  It's relatively short as these documents go -- 15 pages from opening page to final footnote. 

Highly recommended reading.

I grew up overseas in a military family, watched my father go to war and return, and learned firsthand the sacrifice of US service members and their families.I later served in the US Air Force as a pilot during the Vietnam years and after. 

So I have a warm spot for companies that go out of their way to support service people in time of war.  A number of companies are engaged in such programs from the tech industry, and one of them is AT&T.

AT&T has just announced it will provide support for the USO's Operation Phone Home, which provides free calling cards to service people overseas so they can call home to their families.  The company is working to encourage its millions of cellular subscribers to donate $2 to help fund the cards.

We're often so busy tilting at windmills and working the issues that we forget to take note of the positive news from our industry.  Before that happens with this news, here's a tip o' the hat to AT&T for caring about the people whose lives are on the line.

This time of year I'm seeing a flurry of news reports that take Congress to task for not paying attention to tech issues (like this one from Infoworld).  They invariably lead to a wishful statement that in 2008 Congress will bring more tech bills forward and do more on technology issues.

I hope they don't.

The worst thing that can happen to the tech industry right now is for a rudderless Congress to launch an effort to appeal to voters by passing what they believe to be effective technology policy.  There are just too many things that can go horribly wrong with such efforts.  And so my wish is that the Congress will extend to the industry a year of benign neglect in 2008.  And maybe 2009 as well.

Here are the problems:

The Congressional leadership is in disarray.  They are relatively new to the job, because much of their seasoned leadership departed after the elections of 1996.  And most of the seasoned leadership of the Republican Party, which could provide some stability as the loyal opposition, is also in the process of leaving.  What's left are people who need a lot more time to get down how they plan to lead and where they wish to go.

There is no OTA.  The Office of Technology Assessment was a Congressional department that was created in 1972 in order to give Congressional members and committees an objective and authoritative analysis of complex scientific and technical issues.  Widely criticised as too political and an unnecessary cost to taxpayers, its destruction was one of the few things that actually got accomplished by the 1995 Republican "Contract with America."  But the fact is, it is needed.  Perhaps not in the form it was then.  Perhaps under a different branch of government.  But if ever there was a time when Congressmen and committees needed objective and authoritative information, this is surely it. 

This is an election year.  That means that all of the members of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are struggling to pass legislation that will make them look good to the electorate -- at precisely the same time they are too busy campaigning in their home districts to pay close attention to the language of the bills they are voting on.The result, every four years, is a slew of legislation that will take the courts a decade to reverse or straighten out.  Tech doesn't need to be caught up in that array.

The sad reality is that this is a time of great bewilderment, when even the candidates for major government offices are uncertain what stand to take on some critical tech issues, from a national broadband policy to the digital divide and even network neutrality, however we may be defining that term this week.  And the real heavy lifting -- passage of an extension to the moratorium on Internet access taxes -- has already been done. 

The best thing Congress could do for technology in 2008 is to give it a break.  By the time there is a new resident in the White House and the rest of the election process has played itself out, time will have resolved some of the issues without federal intervention -- and whatever problems remain will be clearer.  With each passing day, issues like network neutrality and municipal networking look more like some elaborate hoax and less like real issues of interest to consumers.  States are figuring out on their own how to work with industry in public/private partnership to cover the gaps in their broadband coverage.  Private companies are moving forward with investments and innovations.  Time is healing all wounds and wounding all heels.

So my advice to Congress is this:  get your act together.  Figure out where you are going to get good, unbiased tech advice.  Resolve the bickering that keeps the government polarized and the Congress in gridlock.  Find a leader to rally behind in the White House -- preferably one that actually has a technology platform that makes sense.  Get your best people re-elected.  Do no harm.

The tech industry can survive the coming year with a policy of benign neglect.  Honest.