The Web Difference

6:31 More Questions.

Why not a pledge for lobbyist? Pledge to give information but not money. This is a good idea and Larry seems to like it as well.

How do you protect this organization from abuse and give it trust? Ummm… Larry doesn’t know. I think the key is to try and keep it bipartisan and out of the ugly political trenches. Is that doable, I don’t know, but it should be a goal.

What is the future? What about gerrymandering? Who knows.

What is the real problem with PACs? They aggregate small donors into real donations. But the problem is the lack of transparency that ends with one entity have amplified power.

6:12 Questions.

Why don’t incumbents support public financing? I think that equal dollars being spent would make incumbents even harder to out.

What do we need? Some victories. That is true. But which issues should be first?

6:10 Congressman Cooper:

The system is hopelessly broken. We have to make change happen. (and he is done, wow that was quick).

6:07 – Is this destined to fail? Can we Change Congress? Perhaps, but nonetheless we need to try. </end>

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There’s a terrific piece in the Washington Post by Jose Antonio Vargas about the Net’s effect on politics. He’s hopeful. (I blogged about it here.)

It’s not clear exactly who, but someone on the pro-China side of the China-Tibet fracas is taking an unusual approach to the wave of demonstrations against the conduct of the Chinese government. According the UK Register and Slashdot, pro-Tibet NGOs are receiving attack e-mails that appear to be internal e-mails, but actually contain viruses or other malware.

I really liked the Rolling Stone article on how Obama is using the Web. It makes the case that the campaign has figured out how to break the traditional top-down command structure of campaigns.  FWIW, the article accords well with the problems I saw in the Dean campaign: Lots of online enthusiasm but no consistent way to turn it into feet on the street that can reach beyond the online enthusiasts. (The Dean campaign was working on that issue — it also viewed itself as a “mouse and shoe leather” campaign — but it came to an end before it made enough progress.)

I thought this was relevant to our earlier discussions about blocking of YouTube. China is currently blocking YouTube after videos of foreign media reports about the crackdown in Tibet appeared on the site. The AP’s story is available here.

In somewhat of a tangent, this is similar to something Tom Clancy wrote about in one of his novels. In The Bear and the Dragon, Clancy suggested in 2000 that the CIA should broadcast CNN’s coverage of a war against China on a website available to the Chinese public to try to stir them into action. See the Wikipedia article here.

Aside from Kevin’s video, did anyone else submit testimony to the FCC? I tried submitting some written comments and got the following e-mail response. If you want to see what I submitted, you can access it on the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System (”ECFS”) website by clicking here. The response is not exactly encouraging, but then again I wasn’t really expecting Chairman Martin to personally thank me for my submission.

The FCC Acknowledges Receipt of Comments From
Sean Kass
and Thank You for Your Comments

Date Received: Feb 25 2008
Docket: 07-52
Number of Files Transmitted: 1
DISCLOSURE

This confirmation verifies that ECFS has received and accepted your filing. However, your filing will be rejected by ECFS if it contains macros, passwords, redlining, read-only formatting, a virus or automated links to source documents that is not included with your filing.
Filers are encouraged to retrieve and view their filing within 24 hours of receipt of this confirmation. For any problems contact the Help Desk at 202-418-0193.

I assume most of you have read online today about the picture of Barack Obama in traditional Somali dress.  Most of the news reporting about the picture credits The Drudge Report with driving the story. See here (The Politico) and here (AP). The picture itself seems to have been passed around by e-mail before arriving on Drudge’s doorstep. How much of a web difference do you think there is in a story like this? Would this story have still emerged? What about in how both campaigns reacted?

4:39 - P. Clark: This isn’t a short term problem. The last mile to the home is always going to be expensive.

C. Adelstein: Where is the line between good and bad discrimination?

BT: I know it when I see it, and Comcast is bad.

P. Bennett: There wasn’t any data from Comcast. But, discrimination might be ok when the network is crowded, but it isn’t ok when it isn’t crowded.

P. Clark: If the network is spoofing packets that look they come from somewhere else that seems particularly troublesome.

Smyers: When there is industry consensus on a solution we don’t need to look any deeper. But when solutions don’t comply with industry standards then it needs a deeper look.

4:22 – C. Cobb: We don’t even have the questions, so how can we have the answers?

C. Martin: If we do not have enough information, should we not take any action? P. Clark: Some disclosure might be good and start a dialog with industry. We also do know enough about the current actions to decide if they violate the IPS or not.

C. Adelstein: Are our network management practices having an impact on innovation here? A: There is a lot going on in Asia now.

P. Clark: The networks today contain ways of regulating traffic. The Comcast response is a very nuanced response to traffic. The network today allows me to go really fast when nobody else is there (this is good), but then when lots of people are there I need to slow down. The question is thus how should we slow down when we have to b/c it isn’t feasible to build a network where we can all always go at full speed.

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In case you came here from an outside link, I’ve continued after lunch in a second post.

2:18 - Really break for lunch.

2:13 - 15 minute break for lunch (which will make us only 15 mins behind schedule but also very hungy).

Oh wait, two more questions from C. Martin. Does the FCC have the authority to enforce network neutrality principles? Verizon: Yes, the FCC has asserted it. Comcast: IPS isn’t enforceable. FCC doesn’t have authority to impose a fine right now.

2:09 – Only network operator can provide VoIP in Korea for example. There are good stories and bad stories about Asia. P. Yoo: They do network management in Europe and Asia even though they have more bandwidth.

1:51 – Justice Scalia’s Pizza Delivery Model? Ok that sounds cool but what is it? Help please!

P. Wu: We can have non-discrimination system, it is just going to be expensive. Problem is that 500 people share a node that can’t handle 500 operating at max lawful speed. This becomes very expensive. Thus network management is a way to build out to rural areas more efficiently. The public safety solution at 700 MHz is similar.

P. Wu: There is some discrimination going on all the time. That is ok. But what is dangerous is having the carriers pick and choose certain applications. Anti-competitive discrimination is bad.

C. McDowell(aka the funny one apparently): Does the BT style of P2P cause customers to consume more bandwidth than they are paying for? Comcast: P2P during network congestion cause degradation that is a violation of our usage policy. We don’t sell a particular amount of bandwidth. We provide a service up to a certain amount subject to condition that customer doesn’t degrade other customers.

C. McDowell: If lots of people in my neighborhood want to use BT am I exceeding my limits? Comcast: You are exceeding what you contracted for.

C. McDowell: Discrimination is sometimes ok, but we need to be concerned about is anti-competitive discrimination. FP: This would be less of a concern if it wasn’t anti-competitive, but it would still have negative effects that are important.

C. Far SL: What would happen if you didn’t do what you do? Comcast: Everyone would feel a degradation in their service. BT users might not even see a difference b/c of the resulting congestion.

P. Benkler: Simple requirement of disclosure might not be enough…

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Last Monday, Rep. Tom Lantos, who represented the CA-12, passed away after a battle with cancer. Shortly after a special election to fill his seat was announced an online movement was already in motion to try and draft Larry Lessig to run for the vacant seat. A great story is currently up at Ars Technica about the effort which includes a shout out to our own JP (who created the Draft Lessig Facebook Group).

A few thoughts of mine and some more links after the jump.

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