Digital Thought

Axel Spies, a friend and a brilliant Washington-based high-tech lawyer just sent me this paper on Net Neutrality in the US. A must reading.

Net neutrality continues to be fiercely debated in the United States. The new Democratic FCC leadership has committed to expanding and enhancing existing net neutrality restrictions. The current FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, recently announced that he will initiate a rulemaking to codify the FCC’s existing network neutrality principles. Those principles, originally set forth in a 2005 “Internet Policy Statement,” declared that to “encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to:”

* access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
* run applications and use services of their choice (subject to the needs of law enforcement).
* connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
* competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

The Chairman has publicly stated that he plans to propose a fifth nondiscrimination principle that would prohibit broadband providers from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications. However, providers would be able to offer “managed services” in some limited contexts. A sixth principle of “transparency” is also debated to require broadband Internet access providers to disclose network management practices.

The FCC’s informal announcement stirred the ongoing debate over the extent to which broadband and other network providers will maintain control over their networks, free from government restrictions, to “manage” their networks, including the ability to block or slow certain traffic, for the benefit of all users. Proponents of a “neutral” network, including Google, Yahoo!, eBay, consumer rights, free speech advocacy groups, and generally the three Democratic FCC commissioners (Chairman Genachowski, Copps and Clyburn), are concerned that without government rules, service providers will act anticompetitively by restricting content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached to the network, and on the modes of communication allowed. In contrast, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), including AT&T and Verizon, some cable providers, such as Comcast, free market advocacy groups and generally the two Republican FCC Commissioners (McDowell and Baker) oppose net neutrality obligations.

Earlier legal rulings regarding net neutrality fell short of setting forth a comprehensive policy. The FCC embedded some net neutrality policies in conditions placed on the Verizon/MCI and SBC/AT&T merger approvals. In 2008, the FCC, then led by Republican Kevin Martin, sought to enforce the Internet Policy Statement principles on cable TV provider Comcast when allegations arose that Comcast had blocked consumers from using several peer-to-peer applications. That decision is currently being debated in a federal court appeal. In addition, the FCC principles are currently being imposed on recipients of broadband stimulus funds. “

There is a disturbing trend in Italy. Every now and then, for the most various reasons, a politician feels compelled to propose a bill  ”regulating” the Internet. 

In a previous post I addressed the issues arisen by Cassinelli and D’Alia bills in re: Internet censorship. A few weeks after, more colleagues followed their lead. 

Former showpersons – now MPs of Berlusconi’s party – proposes free speech and anonimity regulation “to protect minors” (but fact shows that they’re mostly concerned of copyright.) 

Between January and March 2009 Luca Barbareschi (actor) and Gabriella Carlucci (anchor woman), proposed two draft laws whose declared intent was to enforce copyright protection by shutting down civil liberties. 

Mr. Barbareschi proposal creates a “single point of cultural control” by granting the Italian State backed royalty collecting agency, the role of exclusive gateway between artists and market. Furthermore, Mr. Barbareschi’s draft law contains so loose statements about ISPs liability that the Government is allowed to do basically whatever he wants. 

More dangerous, if possible, is Mrs. Carlucci draft law that wants to ban anonymity from the Net, refusing even to consider intermediate forms such as “protected anonymity” (where the ISP act as trusted third party). Mrs. Carlucci want to establish a committee under the Communication Authority with power of interpreting Internet-related law (in Italy, only magistrates and the Parliament is supposed to), receiving “confidential notice” of infringement, acting as Alternative Dispute Resolution provider, counseling magistrates about the enforcement of preemptive activities ruled under rule of evidence code, like searches and seizure, termporary jail restriction etc.)

Again, on March 19 2009, MP’s Beatrice Lorenzin, Manlio Contento e Enrico Costa (all belonging to Mr. Berlusconi’s party) proposed a bill to filter minor’s access to websites suggesting though weight-loss techniques. Of course this was done to “protect minors”.

On the other (political) side, on March, 27 2009 Vincenzo Vita and Luigi Vimercati (both belonging to the Democratic Party),  proposed a bill to respect network neutrality and use open source in public administration. Oddly enough, this proposal comes too late, since both Mr. Vita and Mt. Vimercati ran institutional offices under the centre-left central Government and local administrations. When both Mr. Vita and Mr. Vimercati had the actual chance to do something effective, they did nothing, while their colleagues promoted proprietary software (Mr. Mussi as Minister of university and Mr. Nicolais as  Minister of innovation) and severely injured human rights by forcing Italian ISPs to block access to controversial websites, without a court order (Mr. Gentiloni, now Democratic Party, Minister of communication.)

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco is a book that might have been written in present times instead – as it was – of the ’90s. The well documented (and very well written) account of the biggest leveraged buy out Wall Street had dreamed ever is a detailed explanation of how the financial system started ruining the “real economy” after 1987 black monday crisis. Although this book is slightly out-of-the-scope for this blog, I nevertheless suggest to give it a try. A lot of things that happens in the ICT world might all of a sudden make sense…

On May, 8 2008 the Court of Modica (Sicily) ruled that a website identified by a “heading” and publishing contents on a periodic basis is subjected to the regulation of newspapers or magazines and – in general – or in  press.

The result is that an anti-mafia webmaster has been indicted for committing the crime of “clandestine publication” because he didn’t request the Tribunal’s authorisation to publish his site www.accadeinsicilia.net.

The “Catch 22″ comes because to obtain this authorisation, this webmaster should have been a journalist, member of the national journalist association or the permit wouldn’t be granted. Then, nobody but a journalist can run a website, because nobody but a journalist can obtain the Court registration.

The legal paradox is a consequence of the fact that, before the internet came, publisihing a newspaper meant investing huge money in equipment, people, distribution etc. Thus it was easy for  “power” to control the press with a series of adminstrative burdens. Now, with the free availability of content management system like WordPress, and the low cost of internet-based services,  publishing a magazine is absolutely affordable. So the “power” – namely, Law 62/01 – tried in a very messy way to reassert its control over the information flow.

It is simply a nonsense affirm that since a website has a “heading” and publishes daily information, then it is a newspaper. Following this line of reasoning, it is enough – to not infringe the law – to “restrain” from publishing on due dates… Killing free speech starts from here.

A few days ago Apple released a new “get-a-mac” ad titled “Misprint” where the characters argue about – a statement published by PC WORLD – Mac being the fastest notebook they tried to run Windows Vista. The PC guy call the publisher to complain about the statement claiming that it is not possible that a Mac would run Vista faster then a PC.

This ad seems misleading for a series of factors:

1. From an hardware standpoint, a Mac IS a PC,
2. The difference between a Mac and a PC is the operating system,
3. PC WORLD statement is relative (Mac is the fastes among the notebook we tested); thus no generalization can be inferred  (or suggested).

I don’t think Apple – or its advertising agency – should play this kind of tricks. A Mac is good enough to speak for himself.

During the Internet Governance Forum Italian meeting (Rome, Sept. 27 07) Stefano Rodotà (former Italian Data Protection Commissioner) and Fiorello Cortiana (former Senate member) strongly supported the need of an “Internet Bill of Rights” (IBR) as tool to protect netizen’s free speech, privacy and other human rights. Is this a good idea?

The answer – as ALCEI pointed out during the same meeting – is no.

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So, at the end of the day, Skype explained the reason for the outage that broke its P2P network. To make a long story short, the point is that Skype relies upon a closed source approach (that slows the bug finding process) and on Microsoft technologies that, in that specific case, create the problem. This reinforces my early assumption, that crash cause was Skype design instead of a unpredictable problem. It simply unacceptable that an outage of that dimension has been provoked by the inability of an operating system to patches itself without always rebooting. And who did that choice should account for it.

Right, Skype is very clear in repeating that Microsoft has nothing to do with the Big Crash. Nevertheless, it raises some suspect, to me, reading statement such as: “The Microsoft Update patches were merely a catalyst — a trigger — for a series of events that led to the disruption of Skype, not the root cause of it.” or “Microsoft has been very helpful and supportive throughout.” or, again,  “In short – there was nothing different about this set of Microsoft patches.”, “The Microsoft team was fantastic to work with”. But this PR stuff doesn’t change the basic stuff: Skype is the next component of a “vulnerable society”, where problems, risks and damages are created mainly by the ICT companies – instead of the “dangerous criminals” that fall under than unspecified label of  “hackers”.

A dslreports.com article – bounced by Arstechnica.com – quotes my Skype outage recent post as contributing to of the “list of the evil-doers who all had a chance to get blamed for Skype’s problems”.

The scope of my post was to raise a general issue – distributed vs centralize network design and legal consequences – and not blame Skype “per se”.

They just are an IT company, and they do their business as usual. Closed source software, hype and cheers to users but no “real” communication. To put it in other words: Microsoft might maybe “lead the way”, but – as Skype shows – there are a lot that can “perform” better than Redmond giant.

Skype denies that the outage is the result of an attack, but still failed both to demonstrate the lack of foundation for the attack announcement and clearly explain the reason that caused this sign-in problem. Standard Public Relation technique.

This is an interview I gave to connected.org that I casually re-discovered. It is an old text, while still up-to-date.

The following interview of the Italian lawyer Andrea Monti
took place in Prague during the APC Europe Internet Rights Workshop.
My thanks to Karen Banks and Chris Bailey of APC for inviting me to speak at the workshop. See also the other interview carried out in Prague of the philosopher, Giancarlo Livraghi entitled “Souls writing on the Net“.

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