Tales of the Sausage Factory:
McDowell Forgets He Already Voted That FCC Has Authority To Enforce NN Rules.

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I recently complained that no one else ever seems to follow the record on the network neutrality stuff. But Commissioner McDowell took the prize for failure to remember what he had previously voted for in this very proceeding back in March 2007 when the Commission voted out the Notice of Inquiry that started this whole thing. Mind you, McDowell should not feel too bad, given that nobody else at the FCC seems to remember this stuff either. Not when they wrote the Comcast/BitTorrent Order, nor even when they wrote the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking last week. Despite the fact that both items are actually in the same blasted docket. Because good God almighty, how hard is it for the staff at the FCC to actually know the friggin’ docket? It’s just the basis for this entire proceeding. And the entire collective agency cannot remember that it voted as settled law by 5-0 that it has authority to regulate and enforce network neutrality rules. And that McDowell not only voted in favor, he explicitly concurred!

I swear, it’s enough to make a poor obsessed policy wonk tear out what’s left of his hair and beard.

More below . . . .

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My Thoughts Exactly:
Only You Can Save Creation Science

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Listen, I know that there’s a pretty good chance that you (yes, you!) are some kind of policy wonk who only reads Wetmachine for the insight & analysis of all things FCC/Net Neutrality/media hegemony/First Amendment provided by the inimitable Harold Feld.

And there’s also a pretty good chance that you don’t give a care about Harold Feld’s wonky analysis, because you read Wetmachine for Howard Stearns’s stunning and out-of-nowhere insights into software development in general and 3-d collaborative virtual-world software in particular.

Or maybe you’re a Gary Gray groupie. Stranger things have happened. Maybe you even come here to see what I might have to say.

Or maybe, like those men who were busted at the suburban New Jersey bordello a few years ago, you just happened to be here because you pulled your car into the driveway to make a U-turn & got trapped when the fuzz showed up. Maybe you were googling for “Ted Williams’ Frozen Head” and wound up reading this instead.

I don’t care.

Wetmachine readers come in all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life, even non-policywonk walks of life. Whatever. All is cool here. One love.

But you all should click on the above video, dammit. And you should chip in at least a buck to support Creation Science, the nifty new novel by moi, the Ur-Wetmechanic. I’ve been bringing you this site for 8 years now. Ain’t that worth nothin? Show me your love! At least watch the flippin video! It’s short!

N.B. Even if this is your first visit to Wetmachine, you can still show me your love. Click on the video! Join the family!

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
More Good News From Canada, This Time On Copyright

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Via Techdirt. When comedy shows start mocking your insistence that you need more copyright controls, you are losing the propaganda war big time.

Happily for the MPAA, such things will never appear on American shows like Saturday Night Live (owned by NBC Universal) or Colbert (owned by Viacom).

Stay tuned . . . .

Neutrino:
Going to court against the mini-robots

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If John Sundman and John Grisham were to collaborate, this court case (which is summarized here) would be the main feature. A man, faced with an evil chemical spewing tree-climbing army of mini-robots, runs to his fax machine and files a lawsuit to save humanity. It’s sorta like The Terminator meets Erin Brockovich.

Hmm… wait, forget I said that… anyone have a phone number for someone in Hollywood? I do believe I have a movie idea to pitch…

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Canada Adopts Comcast/Bitorrent Standard For Network Management

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On the eve of the FCC’s upcoming Network Neutrality rulemaking, Canada has now settled its definition of “reasonable network management” and set rules for traffic throttling. Amazingly, the rules the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) settled on for “reasonable network management” look a lot like the standard our own FCC settled on in the Comcast/BitTorrent Order, but even stronger on the notice and transparency side. Hopefully, the FCC is paying attention here as it considers its own rulemaking on the definition of “reasonable network management.”

You can read the CRTC press release here and the detailed order here. The CRTC also says that it will sue this new framework “to review practices that raise concerns or generate complaints.” i.e., it will treat this as the equivalent of the Internet Policy Statement and entertain complaints like the Comcast/BitTorrent complaint.

While this means I will no longer have my realtime experiment to see if unrestricted traffic shaping screws up broadband, it does make the FCC look less like whacked out nutbars who don’t understand engineering and threaten the entire internet and more like foresighted regulators who are ready now to move on to a formal rulemaking rather than merely rely on a framework.

Moe below . . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Why Don’t Broadcasters Become “Spectrum Innovators?” Because They Like Being Broadcasters.

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Can’t help but take a brief break from the Net Neutrality craziness to be mildly amused at Adam Thierer over at Tech Liberation Front. We have an increasing number of reports that Blair Levin wants to bribe broadcasters to get off their spectrum as part of the national broadband plan. Adam is very excited by this and, of course, brings up the usual Libertarian argument that because property solves all problems, we should just make the broadcast licenses property of the broadcasters and let the endless innovation begin.

The problem with argument is that broadcasters could already do this. Under 47 USC 336(b), broadcasters can use their digital spectrum to provide “ancillary and supplementary services.” In a series of orders, the FCC has said that as long as full-power broadcasters provide one free over the air digital channel, they can do whatever they want with the remaining spectrum — including lease it out in the secondary markets to someone else. Under the statute, broadcasters need to pay a fee for any such ancillary services that would be the functional equivalent of what the broadcasters would have paid for the spectrum at auction (47 USC 336(e)), which the FCC has fixed at 5% of any annual revenue from the ancillary services.

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My Thoughts Exactly:
Creation Science has been Kickstarted

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So there’s this site called Kickstarter, and it’s supposed to be used by artists and writers to raise money to support specific artistic endeavors. Because I am out of my mind and don’t have a brain in my head, I have undertaken to write another novel, this one another thriller along the lines of Acts of the Apostles. It’s called “Creation Science”. So, today I launched a Kickstarter project to try to raise some $$ to support me as I do it.

As I documented in my kickstarter project blog, I’ve already had a near encounter with Murphy’s Law, but for the moment, (with some help from Wetmechanic in chief Gary Gray), things seem to be back on track. (Thanks, Gary!)

Below, my project description. But please do go to the kickstarter site, and if you have any love at all for me or even for Wetmachine, chip in a dollar or two. Even better, chip in a dollar or two & help me spread the word.


Creation Science, already about 1/4 written, is a technothriller about scary science– like designer DNA, brain hacking & mind control, computer viruses and biological viruses. It’s about the phony politics of the so-called war on terror, it’s about fundamentalism and anti-science, about transhumanism and hypercapitalism and other modern delusions, and it’s about decent people trying to save humanity from itself.

In it you’ll find the stuff of all great thrillers: conspiracy, duplicity, double-crosses, dispensational Christian fascism, misunderstandings, confusions, car crashes, megalomaniacal villains (in and out of government), explosions, gunplay, Russian Mafias, neuroscience, coincidence, mysterious islands not far from Cape Cod, information theory, disease cowboys in Central Africa looking for the cause of Lassa Fever in the 1970’s, Jane’s Addiction, Mission of Burma, love, regret, remorse, nostalgia and sex. So Creation Science is a thriller. But it’s not just a thriller. Like many writers of thrillers, I get the science right and I get the technology right. But unlike most writers of thrillers, I aspire to create literature.

This is what Andrew Leonard of Salon said about my book “Acts of the Apostles”: “it’s also a book infused with a sensibility that you don’t normally expect a ”hard science fiction“ novel to have: real emotions, real heartbreak and a real sense of the craziness at the core of the human condition.” And that’s exactly what I’m going to try to put into Creation Science too.

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Congrats to Adam Thierer! PFF to Get Needed New Blood and New Ideas (But Don't Worry, We'll Still Disagree On Most Things).

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Adam Thierer, long-time friend and opposite number in the Libertarian Camp, has just been named President of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, replacing Ken Ferree. Frankly, I hope Adam will bring a dose of new thinking tp PFF, since Ken Ferree has pretty much spent the last several years explaining at great length why everything the Powell FCC did was wonderful, rational, and the epitome of all that was right in public policy whereas Kevin Martin was a revisionist wanker and traitor to the Neocon Revolution. Much as I’m sure this was amusing for the participants, it did get old after a bit.

I expect Adam and I (and PFF) will continue to disagree on most things regulatory. But I have found in the past that Adam is an intelligent and engaging person willing to actually listen to what other people have to say before responding — and generally sticking to substance rather than the ad hominem or mindless talking points favored by too many here in DC. In other words, he is the sort of Free Market enthusiast/anti-regulatory advocate who makes me work for a living and is a necessary counterpoint to make any system work.

I wish him luck, but (if you will excuse me) not too much success.

Stay tuned . . . .

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Proposed Wireless NN Rule “No Block, But Not No Lock?”

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An interesting tidbit from Washington Post Reporter Celia Kang’s interview with Ruth Milkman, the FCC’s Wireless Bureau Chief. Of interest, Milkman states that the application of network neutrality to wireless would still allow cellular companies to lock cell phones to wireless providers.

How are the proposed rules different from conditions on the C block during the 700 MHZ auction? There, net neutrality rules were put in place that allow any device to attach to the network and prevent Verizon Wireless, who won the spectrum, from blocking Web content.

The difference between what we are thinking about in the general NPRM (notice of proposed rule-making) and the C Block is that we are not proposing a no-locking rule. So I guess it’s no block but not no-lock. If consumers can get an unlocked device and not harm the network, the consumer ought to be able to attach that device to a network. Does a service provider have to unlock the device it provides to the consumer? The draft doesn’t go that extra step.

This is an interesting twist on the application of the third principle of the 2005 Internet Policy Statement:

To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.

(emphasis in original). This is generally taken as the application of the “Carterfone” principle (and the Internet Policy Statement cites the Carterfone decision in case anyone misses this point). This is the decision that held that AT&T could not refuse to allow you to connect any device, like and answering machine or a phone you owned or a dial-up modem, to the phone network.

Milkman is right that the freedom to connect to a network is not necessarily the same thing as the freedom to move a device that comes locked from one network to another. In the old days, it wasn’t necessary to say it that way because there weren’t other networks to attach your device. The question was whether somebody other than Ma Bell could make something and attach it to the phone network. By the time we got to multiple wireline networks serving the same neighborhood, the consumer electronics market was so well developed that the idea of trying to lock particular laptops or wireless routers to specific network providers did not make much sense. Indeed, even in the never ending fight over set-top boxes and cablecard, the fight is over the ability to attach to an MVPD network, not the ability to unlock a device and move it from one MVPD network to another.

Most of us have always assumed that network neutrality applied to wireless would include both “no blocking” of content and applications and “no locking” devices to networks. But I suppose it doesn’t have to be that way. And, of course, this does not stop the FCC from dealing with handset exclusivity separately.

Still, it comes as a bit of a surprise. Nice to have the heads up, and tip ‘o the hat to Celia for doing this series of interviews with important folks at the FCC.

Stay tuned . . . .