Tales of the Sausage Factory

An insider’s view of the media hegemony

Duck Dynasty Prompts Conservatives To Rediscover The Fairness Doctrine.

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Apparently, I am one of 9 people in the United States that had never heard of “Duck Dynasty” prior to last week.  Even I however, could not miss the furor over remarks by Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson and his remarks that homosexuality is “degrading to the human soul” and that African Americans were “better off under Jim Crow.” As one might expect, A&E, which owns Duck Dynasty, promptly suspended Robertson. Also predictably, conservative raised much hue and cry over this, calling it the worst sort of censorship and intolerance.

Normally, I limit my response to this to four words: “Dixie Chicks. Pot. Kettle.”

But to my surprise and delight, I now see conservatives such as Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), and Senators David Vitter (R-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) invoking the concepts of the First Amendment embodied in the Fairness Doctrine in defense of Mr. Robertson. Given that Conservatives have decided to revive their perennial boogeyman about the “Return of The Fairness Doctrine,” this staunch defense of the principles of the Fairness Doctrine could not be more timely.

 

Some more irony savoring worm turning goodness below . . .

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Celebrate 100th Anniversary Of the Kingsbury Commitment With A Telecom Steel Cage Death Match and A Copy of Our Home Game!

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Tomorrow, Thursday December 19, marks the 100th Anniversary of the “Kingsbury Commitment.” As just about no one outside the wonky world of telecom policy knows, the “Kingsbury Commitment” was the resolution of the anti-trust case between American Telephone & Telegraph (as AT&T was known then) and the Department of Justice wherein AT&T agreed to provide phone service to everyone (either directly or by providing interconnection to other local monopoly providers) and interconnect with its rivals in exchange for natural monopoly in most of its markets. You can see the text here.

 

 

Put another way, tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of when we mandated interconnection and universal phone service as the fundamental values/defining responsibilities of the phone system. For those following my endless blather about the “transformation of the phone system” the Kingsbury Commitment provides the cornerstone of those 5 Fundamental Values I’m always going on about (see exciting white paper here).

 

With a Steel Cage Policy Deathmatch and with release of copies of our home game!

 

See details below . . .

 

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Ten Years Of Tales of the Sausage Factory — What Snarky Trip It’s Been

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December 2013 brings two important anniversaries for the world of telecom policy. First, December 19 marks the 100th anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment, the letter from American Telephone and Telegraph Vice President Nathan Kingsbury to to the U.S. Attorney General offering to settle the antitrust action against AT&T by allowing interconnection for all surviving rival phone companies (which by that time mostly meant companies in rural areas AT&T did not want to buy) and supporting the concept of universal service. (text here)

 

Second, December 10 marks the tenth anniversary of when I started doing this blog, Tales of the Sausage Factory.

 

Stipulated the first has had much greater impact on telecom policy, but I like to think we here at Wetmachine have done our bit as best we can.   For those curious, here is a link to my first ever post, although I actually think this over here (which quickly follows) remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever written about telecom policy (mind you, this is not a hard bar to meet).

 

A few nostalgic reflections and links to my favorite posts below, as well as seeking reader advice on what to do going forward . . .

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Free Event on IP Transition In Boston Next Tuesday. Come Hear Me Preach.

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Next Tuesday, December 3, the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable will hold a free event open to the public about the whole “transition of the telephone system thing” I keep going on about. As you can see from this flyer here, the event will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Suffolk University Law School. I’ll be speaking on the last panel — which is generally where the “consumer stuff” gets stuck.

 

As you can also note from the flyer, the list of speakers is practically indistinguishable from a similar event here in D.C., except the moderators are local. So if you have attended any of the various events on this subject here in D.C. in the last 6 months, you are unlikely to miss anything. On the flip side, if you are local to Boston, then you bloody well ought to show up. We’re talking about the future of your phone service.

 

Stay tuned . . .

Cell Phones On A Plane Do Not Deserve The Same Freak Out As Snakes On A Plane

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So it appears people like the idea of using their tablets on planes, but not using cell phones on planes.Or, to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, a lot of people do not want mother——ing cellphones on these mother—–ing planes.

 

Whatever the merits of this position, however, we should not ask the FCC to use interference rules for what is plainly a social policy. To the contrary, as the Washington Post Editorial Board rightly points out, the FCC ought to have rules that acknowledge reality. Bluntly, do we really want agencies to lie to us about technology rather than simply own the social policy?

 

For those freaking out over the possibility of adding “Loud Cell Phone Talker” to the airline bestiary along with “Crying Baby Beast,” “Barfy Neighbor” and “Snoring Person That Drops The Seat In My Lap,” I discuss a few things to give you hope before you start shooting out windows to pull cell phones out of planes.

 

More below . . . .

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Wheeler Blog Post Shifts Phone Transition Into Second Gear.

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First a belated welcome Chairman Wheeler. I must warn you that, after Chairwoman Clyburn’s short but extremely productive tenure, you have a very tough act to follow. Mind you, I give kudos for your shrewd opening move of poaching my (now former) boss Gigi B. Sohn for your front office.

 

I will add I am delighted to see another wonky telecom blogger on the scene. Which awkward segue brings me to  Chairman Tom Wheeler’s recent blog post announcing his intent to get an Order out on the transition of the phone system by January.

 

We could characterize the time since AT&T filed their application to “begin a dialog” last year as chugging along in first gear, and this blog post definitely kicks things up into second gear. I outline what I think this means, and where I think we’re going in the next few months, below . . . .

 

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Intellectual Property, Jewish Ethics, and Aaron Swartz

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Last night, I participated in a panel discussion sponsored by the Jewish Study Center and the National Museum of Jewish Military History. Inspired by Aaron Swartz’s death, the panel was to discuss intellectual property in Jewish Law and Jewish Ethics.

 

I’m copying my speech below. I have elaborated a bit in this version for those not familiar with Jewish traditional sources. In particular, I need to emphasize that Jewish tradition does not regard “the sin of Sodom” as relating to sexual immorality. The “sin of Sodom” and therefore “the way of Sodom” disparaged by the Rabbis, refers to excessive love of wealth that causes cruelty and oppression (see this summary piece here). As Netaneal and Nimmer note in this article, the prohibition against behavior considered “the way of Sodom” acts to limit excessive copyright enforcement even for those who regard copyright as creating a form of property right in Jewish law. In my remarks reproduced below, I focused on the moral and ethical dimension of the prohibition on “the way of Sodom” rather than any practical application in Jewish copyright law.

 

Text below . . . .

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AT&T/CIA Deal Violates Telemarketing Rules — So I’d Like to Opt Out.

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It’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion.

 

The CIA and AT&T figured out how to get around legal restrictions on giving the CIA access to domestic phone call information, but in doing so they violated a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule that protects you against telemarketing.

 

According to this story in the New York Times, the CIA paid AT&T to provide them with information on calls passing through its international telephone system. Because federal law prevents the CIA from spying inside the United States, the CIA could not legally get info on calls terminating in the U.S. because they are not eligible for any of the mammoth sized loopholes Congress has already punched in the fabric of our civil liberties. But, of course, calls from suspected foreign terrorists (aka “anyone outside the United States”) that terminate in the United States are the most interesting to the CIA.

 

So what’s a poor spy agency and a patriotic mega-Corp who understand that sometimes you have to break few privacy eggs to make a freedom omelet gonna do? According to the article, when a call originated or terminated in the United States, AT&T would “mask” the identity by revealing only some of the digits of the phone number and not the identity. The CIA could then refer this information to the FBI, which can use all those mammoth sized loopholes Congress punched in our civil liberties to get a court order and require AT&T to provide the rest of the phone number and all other relevant identifying information. Then the FBI can kick that back that information to the CIA.

 

Unfortunately for AT&T, this pretty clearly violates the Customer Proprietary Network Information rule (CPNI).  Fortunately for AT&T, it can solve this problem fairly easily by notifying customers of the possibility the CIA might ask for their phone number if they get a call from outside the country and asking customers who don’t want this exciting new service to opt out. Please start with Senator Feinstien and ask her if she wants to opt out of having her international calls monitored by the CIA. Given her legislative track record on this, I’m sure she won’t mind.

 

Some analysis of why this violates the CPNI rules below . . .

 

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Will The Fed Shutdown Screw Up This Season’s Xmas Tech Toys?

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No one outside the small world of telecom policy cared much that the Federal Shutdown would close the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Other than the hope that closing the FCC would open the door for Joss Whedon to slip in some full frontal nudity and cussing on the next episode of Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D., most people don’t think of the FCC as having much impact on their lives.

 

It turns out, however, that the shut down of the FCC may very well delay the sale of new tech toys scheduled for release this Christmas season. And I don’t just mean the obviously FCC things like new cellphones. Every toy with a computer chip, every TV set, every microwave oven, and just about everything else that produces “radio frequency emissions” needs an FCC certification before it can get shipped to stores for sale.

 

Why? Because things that draw a lot of electric current that oscillates rapidly, like a computer chip, produces radio interference. If you have something that shoots short bursts of high powered radio waves, like your microwave oven (aka “radarrange oven” for you spectrum trivia buffs), you want to make sure the device won’t ‘leak’ into neighboring spectrum and cause interference with things like cordless phones. Also, if your cell phone or wifi chip gets the power jacked up too high, it can microwave your ear off or something.

 

So to keep your microwave from interfering with your cellphone, and to keep your cellphone from microwaving your face, federal law requires the FCC to certify all devices that produce radio waves (either intentionally for communication or just incident to use). Most of the actual testing is done by outside laboratories, and the process as a whole is fairly well streamlined. But with no one at the FCC to review the lab reports and process the paper work, the backlog is starting to mount and all the tech toys for this year’s Christmas season are stuck in Santa’s workshop, aka storehouses Singapore, waiting for certification so they can get to U.S. stores in time.

 

The FCC on average processes a little over 1000 applications for certification a month. They process them in the order they arrive. But not only is no one at home right now processing the ones that were already filed, you can’t file new ones. If you are a manufacturer, you now have absolutely no idea if your product will be on shelves on Black Friday. Worse, your competitor’s product could be there a week or two weeks ahead of yours, getting all the reviews and becoming The Hot Tech Toy of The Season while your product languishes on loading docks.

 

And it’s even worse for us Jewish people. Chanukah hits at Thanksgiving this year. Thousands of disappointed little Jewish boys and girls will be stuck with all the Uncool Last Year’s Models, while all their non-Jewish friends can still get the latest models on the 24th of December. Our last Thanksgivingukkah for the next millennium, ruined by the federal shutdown!

 

Will this be the Shutdown That Ruins Christmas? Or will the spirit of peace on Earth and goodwill to all men come back to Washington, and get those hardworking, lovable little federal elves back to the FCC branch office at Santa’s workshop in time?

 

Stay tuned . . . .

Why Does The Internet Innovation Association Hate The Rural Call Completion Order, Privacy, and Next Generation 9-1-1?

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The Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) became the latest trade association demanding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the states stop working to solve the Rural Call Completion problem. IIA also called for state and federal agencies to stop working on Next Generation 9-1-1 issues, apparently deciding the recent report by CalNena about the declining reliability of mobile 9-1-1 location information was nothing to worry about.  The new report preemptively called for an end to any effort to deal with the growing problem of caller i.d. spoofing and related vulnerabilities in voice-over-IP (VOIP) services. Finally, IIA demanded we eliminate the “legacy rules” that limit the ability of the government or companies to read your call records. You can read the report here..

 

Granted, the report didn’t say that explicitly. Instead, the IIA repeated what has become the standard industry refrain about how the key to transitioning our phone system from traditional technology to Internet protocol (IP) and wireless is to totally eliminate all federal or state authority over the new phone services. But it amounts to the same thing. A demand that we end the FCC’s authority under “legacy phone regulations” that allow it to address Rural Call Completion translates rather directly into consigning Rural America to telephone purgatory — especially when you give no indication of what should replace it.

 

The IIA Report is only the latest in what appears to be a never-ending series of white papers, opinion pieces and typical Washington blather on how the bestest thing we can do to transition the phone system is get rid of “legacy regulation.” Because although the market is apparently already so totally going there that we don’t need to worry about the 100 Million people and millions of small business that rely on copper (the one third of the market that still has a traditional copper line), pernicious legacy regulation is sadly holding things back so much we must eliminate it right away. Try not to think about this contradiction too hard.

 

If the IIA talking points sound familiar, it’s because they are exactly the same as those used by Verizon to explain why Voice Link was just the medicine Fire Island needed to recover from Sandy.  If we want the PSTN Transition to get the same reaction that Fire Island residents gave Voice Link, by all means let us continue down this path. If we would prefer to avoid a crash and burn that makes the opening days of the Affordable Care Act look like smooth sailing, I highly recommend industry groups like IIA stop trying to leverage this for regulatory arbitrage and start coming up with some real proposals on how to upgrade our policies while we upgrade our phone system.

 

More below . . . .

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