This is comic relief at it’s best. The suits at Comcast have worked up a new clown suit to put around a new batch of network management policies that sound both ambiguous and theatening at the same time.

“We’re going to formally create a DCIA working group and it will be open to any peer-to-peer technology provider, any ISP, and any content owner or representative,” Pando CEO Robert Levitan told us. “And at some point, we’re all going to sit down and say ‘OK. What can we agree are good principles for peer-to-peer applications?’ And companies will be able to stand up and say ‘We adhere to these.’

“You don’t want peer-to-peer technology providers who aren’t playing nicely with consumers. And that goes for content owners and ISPs too,” he continued. “We want to ask questions like: Does an ISP block peer-to-peer just because its peer-to-peer? Or are there ISPs who are willing to say ‘We’re not going to block P2P if we know it’s good P2P’?”

Levitan and Lafferty also plan to include longtime P2P opponents like the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA). According to Lafferty, the MPAA has already approached him about the project and will be represented at Monday’s meeting.

And to balance things out, the DCIA may invite public advocates like Free Press, one of the organizations that encouraged the FCC to probe Comcast’s BitTorrent busting. “We want to get the voice of the consumer in this as well,” Lafferty said. “After all, we’re couching this a bill of rights and responsibilities, and the end user is really critical.”(The Register)

It’s kind of like saying: “Dear customer, we’ve formed a committee to determine if the P2P file you want download or share is acceptable. The committee will be comprised of all interested parties other than yourself. We will decide what is good for you and what you will be allowed to do. We realize that this policy may prevent you from accessing intellectual property that you have a right to download or share. As always you are welcome to try to obtain service elsewhere. We realize that many of you have no other option and that’s just fine with us. You see that’s why we can get away with doing this”.

We really need an open Third Pipe so these guys can go blissfully out of business.

Remember this story that we covered about Middle East cable cuts? All 5 of them? Well it appears that there were 2 ships involved in the incidents.

Dubai authorities have impounded two ships suspected of damaging undersea telecom cables in the Middle East earlier this year. One of the ships has reportedly been released after paying for the damage. The cable cuts, which disrupted Internet traffic in much of the Middle East, India and Pakistan, sparked a flurry of conspiracy theories that the series of outages in the region were not a coincidence.

Reliance Globalcom, whose FLAG Telecom unit maintains the cables, contacted authorities after studying the satellite images of the ship movements around the area of undersea cable damage. The Hindu reports that Dubai Port Trust officials believe the two ships, MV Hounslow and MT Ann, improperly dropped anchor in the area. The cables then were damaged by “jerks and force of the ship(s)” the port said.

Nabbed via satellite. Novel approach. Next thing you know they will be putting red light signs up in the Straits of Hormuz. The story did not say as to where the vessels were doing this deliberately or simply acts of stupidity. You would think there would no anchor zones marked on charts. Or maybe there was. Mystery solved.

Linky.

A state that will never be known fro low taxes or careful government spending may also be known for the state that killed the internet tax free zone. Most states require sales tax to be collected if the etailer has a physical presence in the state. As it is proposed, not in New York. If successful, other states will soon follow suit.

Governor David Paterson is expected to approve it. The new bill is called the “Amazon Tax” and it closes a loophole for online retailers who get sales through affiliate programs. A lobbying group representing local retailers argued that the previous exemption created an unfair advantage for online retailers.

“This is a first step—but a critical one—in our ongoing battle to level the sales tax playing field between New York retailers and the out-of-state Internet giants that have, for years, capitalized on an unfair and unintended competitive advantage driven solely by tax policy,” James Sherin, president CEO of the Retail Council New York, said in a statement reacting to the bill’s passage. (Gadgetell)

What the New York legislators are too stupid to realize is that large states like New York actually benefit from the sales tax moratorium, as sales are also made to buyers in other states by New York etailers, creating a tax free balance , and most likely a gain in New York’s case. We live in an era where the reach of government from the feds to local extends too far into our lives, along with the taxes to support it. While I contend New York has experienced a net gain in revenue from on line sales, any opportunity to de-fund the monster should not be passed on. I hope New Yorkers will see the light and cry foul before a small tax free zone disappears for them. Any complaining retailers can fix their alleged problems by developing an online presence. Failure to keep up with changes in the marketplace has nothing to do with an unfair tax advantage.

We’re big fans of Steve Gibson’s weekly security net cast. It’s good to see one of the most popular tech shows on the net take on Third Pipe subject matter. In the program Steve discussed the issues of net neutrality, congestion and more. Our own expert, Dr. Dog, has already chimed in on the subject matter. We welcome Steve’s unique perspective to this uniquely Third Pipe discussion.

Security Now show 139

Mr. Malone of the WSJ lays out aspects of societal and business change that the US faces in say the next 50 years. He throws terms out like ‘fat pipe’, ‘process patents’, ‘free internet’, etc. Our loyal Thridpipe readers already know all this because we have this electronic pulpit on high. We have been laying this prescription down since this blog was created. —

- Build up Brand America. Government agencies, including the USAID and United States Commercial Service, need to promote American brands, via the Web, hardware and software, to everywhere in the world where they are currently unknown or disliked. Voice of America needs to become a massive Internet portal to the American economy and media.

The U.S. International Trade Commission must actively pursue illegal international threats to our e-economy from hackers to scammers — such as bringing serious economic sanctions against nations that look the other way (or even support) these activities. We need to capture the dominant share of the minds of the next two billion, enforce an honest Web, and make America again synonymous with the best.

- Create a Fat Pipe. Many of the great fiber optic lines entering and leaving the U.S. were almost dark a decade ago, and that abundance created an opportunity that helped propel the creation of companies like Google. But Google’s recent announcement that it was going to install its own cable across the Pacific to Japan suggests that the age of cheap bandwidth is almost over. Late last year, a report by Nemertes Research predicted a bandwidth shortage by 2011.

The U.S. needs to have the fastest, cheapest and most reliable Internet access on the planet, both inside our borders and in our connections to the rest of the world. Like the railroads and the interstate highway system before it, we need a program of direct investment, subsidies and tax breaks to assure that Americans always have the world’s best Web access – and the rest of the world has the best access to us.

- Revamp Nafta. While the Democratic candidates are calling for the abolition, or crippling of the North American Free Trade Agreement, what we should be discussing is how to revamp it and other trade accords to reflect the newly emerging world of people-to-people, not just business-to-business, trade. We need to be prepared for a world where knowledge workers around the world are hired online by the minute – in other words, radically simplified employee contracts, payroll tax documentation and W-2s, and improved tax laws on home offices, part-time work, and self-employment.

But most of all, we must not impede this inevitable transformation by doing anything to limit free trade – even if that means reaching individual trade accords with countries regarding buying and selling on eBay, MySpace, Facebook and the like.

- Promote a Free Internet. The lights of intellectual freedom that have been created by the Internet are slowly going out all over the world – look at China’s recent blackout of Web videos of events in Tibet. We need to fight to keep the Internet open and accessible to everyone on the planet, and keep tyrants from censoring their people.

Short of that, we need to keep the U.S. an island of Web freedom, open to anyone who can reach our servers and sites. A good start would be to require U.S.-based companies to maintain free speech in all their international subsidiaries – no more Yahoos helping foreign governments locate dissidents.

- Reform patent laws. In an era characterized by “free” downloads as well as the proliferation of pirate content sites, the overly broad U.S. patent and copyright laws need to be reformed to reflect these new sensibilities. Today they stifle innovation. A good place to start would be a revamping, if the not the elimination, of “business method” patents, which even Justice Anthony Kennedy has suggested can suffer from “potential vagueness and suspect validity.” Meanwhile, patent approvals need to be made faster, tougher and cheaper.

- Make education more open. It is time for the rest of us to accept the reality that education in the U.S. is now a multi-platform (public, private, home) experience, and begin building Web-based curricular support for all three. It is in our national interest to make all schoolchildren well-educated and competitive in the modern economy.

Now we are not Malone clones. There have been articles we have vehemently disagreed with. But for once he is firing all the cylinders. Most definitely get rid of the ‘business process’ patents. They are a scourge. But we ought to go further. First roll back patent use to 17 years as was originally fostered. If you can’t turn a profit in that period of time you don’t deserve to keep the patent anyway. Patents and copyrights should also have innovation and sunset provisions. If a patent holder does not utilize the patent or license it for deployment within the first 4 years then the patent is invalidated. As well if a copyright is not longer a published work available for first release purchase or the death of the author then it becomes public domain. I love Elvis Presley recordings, but something is wrong when the estate is still in force collecting royalties.

There is also one that Malone missed. ‘Promote the Everyman’. Foster an environment that anyone who wants to compete can do so. The function of government should be to build that stadium of equal opportunity. The place to start is in revamping small claims court to include all the provisions of superior court as to court directed remedies. Today most small claims are only available for remedy of monetary damages. The problem is in many cases the damage stems from systemic abuse by corporations. The little guy has to be able to have their day in court. Abolish one way contracts and forced arbitration as a manner to receiving products & services. Eliminate legal extortion by making it a penalty of disbarment for a lawyer to blindly issue legal threats without ascertaing that there has been actual damages to his client.

Mr. Malone is to be commended for this piece.

Read the whole article here.

Before I get to the news item, I offer a short history lesson on the big music industry. The industry’s business model has always been about acquiring the rights to material cheaply and reselling the product eternally. They have never been interested in paying the typical artist anything. Sure there are exceptions, usually the most popular artists, but by in large artists not getting paid much by big music has been going on since the days of the Victorola. With increasing regularity, artists are not assigning rights to the labels. Of course, the labels also consider this to be piracy.

Quoting Wired:

An invitation-only meeting on the subject drew about 50 people, including representatives of IFPI, Sony BMG, T-Mobile, the giant European ISP and mobile-carrier Orange, and performing-rights organizations like BMI. The response, according to Jenner, “ranged from ‘What do we do now?’ to ‘It sounds good, but can it possibly work?’ A lot of people are like rabbits in the headlights: They’re terrified they’re going to lose their jobs. No one dares to feel that this might be the solution.”

Even so, notes Shira Perlmutter, IFPI’s head of legal policy, “none of our members are ruling anything out. These companies are all very open to creative new ideas that would allow customers to do things they want — including using file sharing technologies.”

More on Clueless Big Label Music seeks protection money from ISP’s

Just watch it –

Granted it is a pitch by Lockheed for a new UAV multi role vehicle. But if you step back, the very telecommunications technology that makes this possible is ThirdPipe in nature. High bandwidth, wireless, satellite supported, GPS enabled with the intelligence forward placed in the end node (the plane…). I am not advocating a UAV airstrike to bust up the congestion on I35. But what I might be suggesting is that the ability of your car to suggest alternate routes on the Tom-Tom enabled GPS viewer would be a wonderful civilian role for such technologies.

But folks its not going to happen unless we get serious about a wireless infrastructure in this country. Nice idea for the guns, now how about something for butter?

It’s time to take off the gloves and deal with the meddling politicians who want to “help” us with “net neutrality”. What they really want is the power to micro manage the internet, preserve the status quo and ration bandwidth. They long for the sound of pleading taxpayers begging “may I have a little more please, sir”? Having more power over us gives them more influence to peddle to the highest bidder.

The recently introduced net neutrality bill is a new clown suit on the same old pile of stuff from the barnyard we’ve been getting from Congress for decades: Pass a law that looks like it’s doing something, while protecting the duopoly interests. In turn the duopoly makes life just a little nicer for our elected reps with generous contributions, perks, travel and more. Superbowl tickets anyone?

If the buffoons in DC had “managed” the internet from the beginning, we’d still be choosing between Compuserve and AOL over dial up. What we really need is a totally open market with a lot of very disorderly and impossible to manage competition. The only way we will lead the world in broadband again is to create a wild west style access market, much like the internet itself.

Here’s an exceprt from an Andy Kessler post that boldly illustrates the problem comparing broadband to gasoline:

…new layers of regulation just mean long gas lines/slow bandwidth. We have faux competition, cable monopolies versus phone monopolies. Cable modems work by taking away a TV channel or two and using them for data, at $59 per month for 4.5 megabits per second and $69 for 8 meg (while 100 meg in Japan is $30/month).

I have no problem with Comcast cutting back BitTorrent or anything else, as long as I know about it and I have a choice to go elsewhere with my business. But I don’t. I might like Comcast service without BitTorrent because my Web pages will come up faster. Others won’t. But there is no elsewhere. Antiquated franchise rules mean there’s only one cable provider in most towns, and AT&T’s DSL service over creaky phone lines is way too slow.

We need policy to help cut a path for more competition, rather than protecting incumbents — a Bandwidth Competition Act of 2008, not bogus net neutrality. All takers should be allowed access to poles or underground conduits. This is where neutrality should be enforced, instead of being a choke point. -andykessler.com

If you are a regular reader, you’ve seen a number of rants from all parties here on Third Pipe demanding change at the FCC. We’re skeptical of “net neutrality” legislation that keeps resurfacing in Congress because it always extends the reach of the feds who are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Broadband needs to become an ecosystem rather than the heavily regulated and by virtue of regulation protected duopoly that exists today. In an ecosystem, the customer choses the winners and losers. In the regulated environment, the nanny state makes the selection for us. We prefer to make our own choices thank you.

In a post on Cnet today, the Free State Foundation’s Randolph May goes a step further than the usual Third Pipe position, convincingly arguing that regulation of all electronic media needs to end:

So what to do? The existing Communications Act, which ties regulatory activity to outmoded techno-functional regulatory constructs, should be replaced by a statute tying regulation firmly to marketplace realities. What would then matter would not be whether a service is classified as “telecommunications,” “cable,” “broadcasting,” “mobile,” and so forth, but whether services face marketplace competition.

At the very least, I’m now convinced that the regulation debate does need to extend to all electronic media. It’s a good read, worthy of your consideration. I’ll be spending time contemplating Mr. May’s position, you should too.

Well a commentator over at Public Knowledge says –

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Monday hearing in Cambridge, Mass., will be a reality check about how control of the Internet can be accomplished, by whom, and what the consequences will be.

Commissioners will have the chance to question, in public, representatives of businesses that could be affected by Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent and to make Comcast defend itself in the face of live criticism from those who know the Internet best. Comcast and the FCC will have to tell David Reed, who originated the “end to end” architecture idea for the Internet why it’s better to have Comcast and other network operators take control, rather than users and content suppliers. BitTorrent will note how the technology is going mainstream, used by such respectable customers as NASA.

We can certainly hope that it is the case. A little blood letting is always good for the tyrant(s). But I suspect that this will be more of a talking head kind of affair. Why? Well consider two facts –

1) The two antagonists Comcast vs Bittorret are on two seperate panels between 2 time intervals. You would really want the have those two representative on the panel at the same time.

2) Bittorrent is not a carrier but a tool. So how does that fit in a discussion from the FCC view as it relates to network management. Bittorrent is not a practice but the cause for having one. Bittorrent will not manage the network. Also keep in mind that Bittorrent is already making moves to defeat the current network mgt tools deployed by Comcast.

Mr. Brodsky, wish this was going to be an a ‘effective’ meeting but I am afraid it is going to be a droll CYA type discussion. The speaker alignment swages against it.

Linky.