John A. Craft - Part 3

Michael Noll on ‘network neutrality’

May 19th, 2010 09:33 UTC ·

Dr. Michael Noll has a succint column which puts the FCC’s recent decision in historical perspective:

Telecommunication networks are telecommunication services whether they carry voice, video, or data signals, and should be regulated and treated as common carriers. The information accessed over telecommunication networks are information, computing, or entertainment services and should not be regulated.

Back in the early 1970s, we struggled over where to draw the line between unregulated information service and regulated telecommunication service.

Today, local telecommunication service companies clamor to retain unregulated control over the last mile to homes and businesses. Since these companies provide lucrative video content over their facilities they want to protect this content from bypass by direct consumer access over the Internet. Such practices are clearly anticompetitive even though in theory the traditional telephone company now competes with the traditional cable company.

AT&T was broken up over 25 years ago because of issues created by bypass. And bypass again is creating problems this time over video entertainment which can be accessed directly over the Internet.

It has always been about content versus carriage. Decades ago, AT&T and Knight-Ridder Newspapers jointly investigated the market for access to information in the home through a service called videotex. The newspaper industry went into a tizzy and lobbied successfully for legislation forbidding AT&T from providing content over its telecommunication facilities. Today, the cable industry packages and even owns some of the video content provided over its coaxial cable to homes.

The issues, just like decades ago, are unnecessarily made to appear complicated. Lawyers and lobbyists make a fortune, and politicians scratch their heads in delay and confusion. But being neither a lawyer, lobbyist, nor politician, the issues are as clear today in my mind as they were decades ago. If it looks like telecommunication involving transmission and switching, it is telecommunication and should be treated as common carriage. And clearly in my opinion, content should be separated from carriage.

Dr. Noll is presumably referring to Comcast’s blocking Bittorrent, and isn’t buying Comcast’s network management defense. Given the nature of Bittorrent traffic, I think the worst that Comcast can be accused of is acting from a mix of pure (network protection) and impure (blocking movie downloads) motives. They went too far, but the threat of Bittorrent traffic to a network is real.

That said, the comparison to bypass is an apt one. Consider a world in which Comcast owns NBC or develops a Comcast-exclusive series, and the resulting temptation to inspect packets and throw away packets containing copyright violations.

In addition, the cable industry is facing a big change. Cable’s current business model looks a lot like broadcast – it’s based on channels, and many content providers pay for their channel. But its future business model is on-demand, and looks a lot like . . . Bittorrent. Getting from here to there while growing revenues (and without becoming the dreaded ‘dumb pipe’) presents a lot of unknowns and challenges.

May 13th, 2010 16:10 UTC ·

Update: Today isn’t any better:

This may seem like a bad way to treat customers, but the whole point about Facebook is that users aren’t customers. Anyone who supposes that Facebook’s users are its customer has got the business model precisely backwards. Users pay nothing, because we aren’t customers, but product. The customers are the advertisers to whom Facebook sells the information users hand over, knowingly or not.

Which may be unfair, if Paul Bucheit is to be believed:

I doubt that you’ll believe me, but I contrary to popular opinion, it’s not about monetization.

And danah boyd:

For example, he states that “The older you are, the more likely you are to find Facebook’s exposure of personal information intrusive and excessive.” Interestingly, rock solid non-marketing data is about to be released to refute this point. Youth are actually much more concerned about exposure than adults these days. Why? Probably because they get it.
. . .
The battle that is underway is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It’s a battle over choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being duped, tricked, coerced, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely unfair. It gives users the illusion of choice and hides the details away from them “for their own good.”

Original Post: It’s just a guess – the headline, I mean – but putting this and this and this together with this, I feel comfortable making the prediction.

Facebook’s having a run of bad PR. But that PR is driven in part by business decisions made by Facebook.

Not all that long ago, Facebook was a “walled garden” that blocked search engine spiders and required you to have a “dot edu” email address to register an account. Now, its technology actively shares your information with search engines and businesses. Browse Yelp or Pandora, and Facebook tells them who you are.

Facebook has repeatedly made significant changes to its technology that made their activity more public than it was, and only notified its users after the fact (if at all). Users that trusted Facebook to keep their activity on Facebook private feel betrayed. (Whether they should have ever trusted Facebook in the first place is another issue – they did.)

The company has talented employees, who could have easily implemented solutions that left your past activity private, and your future activity public. It chose not to do that.

Facebook has committed the error of not respecting its users. The impression, right or wrong, is that Facebook sees its users as assets to monetize.

The bad PR is earned, and it’s about trust, not technology. It won’t just blow over.

jac

"Pete, it's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." – U. E. McGill

Michael Noll on ‘network neutrality’

May 19th, 2010 09:33 UTC ·

Mark Zuckerberg’s having a bad day

May 13th, 2010 16:10 UTC ·

John @

Interesting

Inner child stuff