Michael's Insight

FCC releases milestones toward a national broadband plan

FCC broadband roadmap aims to bring order to stimulus chaos [ArsTechnica]

Last Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), released a set of milestones that it plans to accomplish before next year's deadline for its national broadband plan. In the economic stimulus bill that Congress passed earlier this year, it designated the FCC as the agency responsible for creating a national plan for broadband deployment and adoption and requested that the plan be delivered to Congress by February 17, 2010.

Under the leadership of new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the agency has announced several key dates for the broadband plan. On July 21, the period for public comments on the broadband plan closes. If you wish to submit your thoughts to the policy makers responsible for developing the plan, you can submit them through the FCC's web site here.

Starting this month, the process for awarding the broadband stimulus funds in the economic stimulus bill will begin, with the first checks being delivered around November 7. As this article notes, the awarding of several billion dollars for broadband infrastructure deployment will make writing a national broadband plan a bit of a moving target, but the Commission is expected to weigh in on the plan by December, after several months of public meetings on the plan. After the plan if finalized, expect it to be delivered to Congress by the February 17 deadline.

After the report is released, it will be up to the nation's policy makers to take note of the recommendations that the FCC makes with regard to our broadband infrastructure, deciding which policy measures will best increase Americans' access to and adoption of broadband.

Hackers steal $415,000 from one Kentucky county's bank account

$415,989 taken from Bullitt bank account [Louisville Courier-Journal]

While it's not clear yet exactly how it happened, it appears that hackers have absconded with over $400,000 from the county government's bank account in Bullitt County, Kentucky. According to this story from the Louisville Courier-Journal, hackers managed to infiltrate the email account of a county employee, and used the information within that account to impersonate the county employee to initiate several transfers of county funds out of the county's bank account.

The county was notified by its bank that a set of transactions was set to occur last month, which tipped them off that someone was using the account in an unauthorized fashion. Using that information, the county and the bank were able to determine that some money had already been stolen. Since some of the stolen funds were transferred to other banks in the U.S., some of the money has been recovered and returned to the county. This article indicates that prospects are dim for finding all the stolen cash.

Though this article doesn't indicate how the hackers gained access to the county's bank account, phishing scams are a popular method for hackers to steal funds out of bank accounts. These scams involve hackers sending an email that purports to be from a legitimate bank, and links within the email to resolve to a site that appears to be legitimate. But the site is hosted by the hacker, and if any user name or password information is entered into the site, it will be used by hackers to siphon funds out of the legitimate bank account. Microsoft has a good guide to identifying and protecting yourself from phishing fraud emails.

British spy chief's personal details revealed on Facebook

Wife exposes chief spy's personal life on Facebook [CNET News]

If you're the wife of the head of British spy agency MI6, it might be time to learn how to use Facebook's privacy features. In news from that country, it has been revealed that Lady Shelley Sawers, the wife of Sir John Sawers, who is the newest head of MI6, has posted personal information on her unprotected Facebook page. On the page, Sawers revealed the location of the family's apartment in London and posted several pictures from the family's latest vacation. The postings were available to any member of Facebook's London network - allowing several million Facebook users to view the information.

Though Lady Sawers Facebook page is no longer available to the general public, it's a good lesson to all Facebook users that the site's privacy features are useful in making sure you're only revealing the information you want to reveal about yourself to strangers. I consider myself fairly knowledgable when it comes to online technology, especially for a 50-something-year-old.  Setting up the Facebook privacy options is no picnic, believe me.  Recently, Facebook announced that it is upgrading several of its privacy features to make the more user-friendly. The details of that announcement is available here. For more information about enabling Facebook's privacy settings, check out this article.

The Pirate Bay site is sold with plans to go legitimate

The Pirate Bay Gets Sold [Broadband Reports]

Yesterday, the notorious BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay announced that it was being sold to a Swedish software company for $7.8 million. Global Gaming Factory X in partnership Swedish P2P technology provider Peerialism are purchasing the site in an attempt to make it a legitimate media distribution hub, paying royalties to content producers and respecting copyright holders' work.

The Pirate Bay's founders and operators were found guilty of copyright infringement in a joint civil and criminal trial in Sweden earlier this year. The defendants were ordered to prison for a year and ordered to pay $3.8 million to copyright holders, whose works they had infringed.  According to news reports, rather than apply the proceeds of the site's sale to the verdict (and potentially other civil copyright infringement suits), the site's operators will transfer the profits to a non-profit foundation geared toward promotion of online piracy awareness.

This appears to be a win, albeit temporary, for content creators. The Pirate Bay will shut down its torrent tracking features for illegally copied content. The spokesman for the venture that is purchasing the site has indicated that some third-party will attempt to fill the gap for P2P'ers, but that gap-filling measure has yet to be announced. It's estimated that around half of illegally traded P2P content is tracked by The Pirate Bay, so any shutdown might have a real effect on P2P'ers ability to find the pirated content they're searching for.

Already, P2P enthusiasts are bemoaning this state of affairs, rising to the level of a denial of service attack being launched against the site yesterday and the site's founders posting a warning to the new owners on The Pirate Bay blog that any attempts to shut down illegal file trading will result in the sites users abandoning it.

After the copyright infringement verdict against the site's operators, the ensuing result was just a matter of time. There's no economic model that can support the widespread piracy of copyrighted content that the site's operators espoused. As the chief executive of Global Gaming Factory X, Hans Pandeya, put it: “The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it.”

Calculating the effect of download caps on TV Everywhere

How Much 'TV Everywhere' Will Comcast's Caps Allow? [Bit Rate]

There's an ongoing conversation about the heavy use of bandwidth.  The question is how to create an economic model that supports both consumers who want to use a lot of bandwidth vs. how to create a heavy-usage business model that supports service providers' ability to get a return on their continued investment.  After last week's announcement by Comcast and Time Warner (the content company -- TW CEO Jeff Bewkes pictured here), some users questioned how much consumption is too much consumption when viewing video online.  Todd Spangler at Multichannel News has run the numbers, and online video enthusiasts should breathe a sigh of relief.

Spangler used existing high-quality streaming video episodes at ABC.com to calculate the consumption from an hour of online video.  His conclusion was that it came to roughly the equivalent of 500 megabytes of consumption. Assuming TV Everywhere video weighs in at about the same size, it would take 200 hours of video streaming viewing to consume 100 GB. That's between 6.5 and 7 hours of streaming video viewing, every single day of the month. It seems to me that that's a lot of usage and an amount that would be consumed by very few broadband users. 

This subject goes back to the heart of the usage debate that we've discussed in the past.  I have argued (and endured the subsequent scorn of the opponents of caps) that there was probably a set of limits that would be fair to everyone.  Very heavy users would pay a little more, light users would pay a little less and ISP's would be economically incented to invest in more and more capacity in their networks to support growing usage.

Don't get me wrong.  That's not to say that one package fits all.  Heavy users could have the option to choose a plan that gives them a huge or even unlimited package of bandwidth while light users could opt for a lesser plan that reduces their base monthly rate from today's flat rate billing plan.  Not a new concept -- think cell phones but with much higher consumption levels.

For the time being, Comcast has said that they are not implementing consumption-based billing.  Instead, it simply has set a limit of 250 GB per month on all users.  That's a huge amount of consumption and according to Spangler, it's somewhere around 20 days of watching video, morning, noon and night. I'd say that's certainly more than enough to keep most users entertained, while leaving plenty of room within the cap for other Internet activities.

Comcast has stated that only a tiny fraction of its customers ever surpass the 250 GB download cap, which it instituted to allow a level of reasonable management of its network.  They do this to ensure that all customers have an enjoyable online experience. And even in the age of streaming long-form video, it appears that Comcast's cap allows an enormous amount of online video viewing.

AT&T: Our network can't handle video streaming

If AT&T Mobile Broadband Banned TV Streaming, Why Does It Allow MLB Streaming? [Techdirt]

I've written recently about AT&T's double standard when it comes to allowing video streaming applications on the iPhone. AT&T is the sole provider for the iPhone in the U.S., and while it allows users to stream Major League Baseball games on the iPhone via the AT&T wireless network, it prohibits users from using the SlingCatcher application to stream video content from their cable provider to the iPhone via the wireless network.

Yesterday, after several blogs asked the company about the policy, AT&T decided to issue an explanation for the double standard. According to AT&T's statement, their wireless network just can't meet their customers' expectations when it comes to streaming video:

AT&T said the MLB app streams video from MLB's website, while SlingPlayer streams from the TV set-top box Slingbox. AT&T also said the company is only trying to ensure all users on its network get the best possible service.

"We're certainly not crippling any apps," an AT&T spokesman said. "This is an issue of fairness.... While we would like to support all video services across our network, the reality is that wireless networks simply lack the capacity to support customers streaming hours of cable, satellite or IPTV video programming to individual users."

Even though there's no technical difference between the MLB streaming video and SlingPlayer's streaming video, AT&T claims that, since it's network can't handle streaming video, it has the right to choose between one video application and another. And this explanation apparently only covers the iPhone, since BlackBerry and Windows Mobile device users on AT&T's network can still stream SlingPlayer content on those devices.

Many of you may remember that I have written extensively about the need of a network manager to manage their network.  Cable operators have been (and continue to be confronted) with similar issues.  There are several methods that cable operators accomplish keeping our networks running smoothly but none of them include discriminating between two applications with similar protocols -- in this case, video streaming.  That puts AT&T in the position of choosing winners and losers.

AT&T recently announced an iPhone application that integrates the iPhone with its own multichannel video product, U-Verse. I wonder if AT&T's decision to block SlingPlayer video, which allows cable customers to watch their cable channels remotely, has anything to do with AT&T's U-Verse service.

Comcast launches 4G mobile broadband

Comcast Wireless Broadband Ready For Liftoff [Multichannel News]

Comcast customers will soon have the option of taking their broadband connection with them when they leave their home after yesterday's announcement that the nation's largest cable provider is launching a mobile broadband service called High-Speed 2Go. Comcast's mobile broadband service rides on Clearwire's 4G WiMAX network and Sprint's 3G network, providing customers with broadband speeds up to 4 Mbps in WiMAX coverage and speeds up to 1.4 Mbps in 3G coverage.

While the service will only be available in a limited number of cities upon launch, Comcast and Clearwire plan to offer the service in several more metropolitan areas by the end of this year. In an effort to encourage customers to take their current broadband connections mobile, Comcast is offering the service in a bundle with existing cable broadband service for an additional $30. Clearwire's terms of service apply for mobile broadband usage, and the company currently offers its own service in 200 MB, 2 GB and unlimited monthly download tiers. Comcast has not yet indicated which tier that High-Speed 2Go will operate under.

According to this article, Clearwire has plans on the drawing board to offer mobile voice in addition to its current mobile data offerings at some point in 2010, and the company could partner with cable operators like Comcast to offer handsets and mobile phone service.

Cable TV star hit by $11K in AT&T mobile data charges

Mythbusters' Savage The Latest Socked With Huge 3G Bill [Broadband Reports]

Discovery Channel's Mythbusters star Adam Savage has become the latest victim of AT&T's exorbitant data roaming charges, running up an $11,000 bill for mobile data use in Canada. On Friday, Savage let the world know about his billing predicament via Twitter.

Turns out that AT&T is attempting to collect for 9 gigabytes of data downloaded via an AT&T mobile data card during a trip that Savage took to Canada, thus incurring roaming charges for data usage. Savage contends he didn't download anywhere near 9 GB of data during the trip. AT&T turned off Savage's account after the bill hit $11,000.

It seems that every couple of months a new horror story regarding AT&T mobile data usage charges emerges. I can't believe that the policies that lead to these types of charges are so important to the bottom line that AT&T doesn't see fit to change them -- especially after they have to expend such energy repairing their public relations whenever one of these makes headlines. 

The post at Broadband Reports links to a number of the five figure bills that AT&T has sent customers that had the misfortune of downloading a significant amount of data via the mobile network. And while the article credits AT&T for suspending Savage's account before his bill become "truly extraterrestrial," I would challenge anyone that thinks an $11,000 mobile phone bill already is anything but extraterrestrial.

Until AT&T gets some controls on its mobile data billing practices, it's surf at your wallet's risk if you're an AT&T customer.

Jackson's death creates web traffic jam in search of news

Can the Internet handle big breaking news? [CNET News]

Last Thursday afternoon, in the wake of Michael Jackson's death, millions of Americans started up their web browsers to get the latest information about the pop star's untimely death. Based on reports from content server Akamai, Internet traffic between 6pm and 7pm Eastern time on Thursday increased by 11 percent. Many people were able to get more current information about Jackson via Twitter, Facebook friends and online news sites than they were able to find -- even with non-stop coverage -- on cable news channels. But with so many logging on for their information, many sites slowed to a crawl.

And Google started treating searches about Jackson as a bot attack, due to their large number in so short a period of time.

CNET has a good article featuring a debate between two of their top reporters about the Internet's reliability when it comes to serving up a significant breaking news event to everyone that's looking for information online. Was the slowdown of news sites a significant impediment to finding news about Jackson for you? Or was the more current, more detailed information worth the wait? And what might happen if another news event spiked traffic even more than the 11 percent reported by Akamai? Would the Internet's ability to disseminate information simple melt down?

The spike also highlights the public's desire for immediate information, even at the potential expense of accuracy.  Conventional news organizations like cable news networks and newspapers hold news, as a matter of policy, until reports can be confirmed.  No such safety levers are present on alternative information sources like Twitter and Facebook.

These are great questions to ponder as we head toward a day when a majority of Americans get their news from online sources, rather than a daily newspaper.

Comcast and Time Warner CEOs talk TV Everywhere

If you've been following the Comcast and Time Warner announcement of TV Everywhere this week, then you're no doubt looking forward to the results of the trial run of their authentication system that will allow cable customers to watch TBS and TNT shows online for free via a broadband connection. Over at Comcast Voices, there's a YouTube video of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes discussing the TV Everywhere concept and an anticipated national rollout of TV Everywhere for Comcast customers in the fourth quarter of this year.

More on the TV Everywhere announcement

Why the Comcast-Time Warner Deal Blasts Open TV [NYT Bits Blog]

Yesterday, Comcast and Time Warner (the content company, not the cable company) announced the first trial run of TV Everywhere, the cable industry's first experiment to bring cable television content to computer and mobile screens of cable customers. The deal between two companies will put shows from Time Warner's TBS and TNT networks onto the Comcast OnDemand Online platform starting next month. OnDemand Online is Comcast's portal for authenticated streaming video content. The trial is set to include 5,000 customers.

On a conference call yesterday, Comcast and Time Warner representatives also discussed the general principles of TV Everywhere. Those include bringing more cable programming content to more customers across more platforms, allowing existing customers to watch programming online without an additional subscription cost, putting the highest quality programming and programming with the highest ratings online, and allowing authenticated customers to view the content from any broadband connection,

As the Bits post indicates, the new distribution model created by TV Everywhere creates more choices for cable customers when it comes to how and where they watch their favorite programming. And it creates the potential for new content distribution models. The day may not be far off when many cable customers stream HD content to their television screens via their cable broadband connection. It's not part of the initial TV Everywhere model, but it's not difficult to predict how customers may want to use this new platform.

Since both companies are anticipating additional announcements of new content over the next few weeks, stay tuned here for more details about TV Everywhere -- we're watching the developments closely.

Comcast and Time Warner announcing TV Everywhere today

Here Comes 'TV Everywhere' [Light Reading: The Bauminator]

Today the wraps come off TV Everywhere, the first entry for cable television's plans to bring content from the television to consumers' broadband connected computers and their mobile devices. Comcast and Time Warner are jointly announcing today a trial run of TV Everywhere for 5,000 customers.

Earlier today, I reported that this announcement was between Comcast and Time Warner Cable.  However, my good friend, Ellen East at Time Warner Cable sent me a note to inform me that the agreement is, in fact, between Comcast and Time Warner, the content company.  Someone's going to have to change their name!!

That said, this first test of TV Everywhere will involve a level of authentication - meaning that the customers in the trial will verify to TV Everywhere that they are already cable television customers. Once the authentication takes place, customers will be free to peruse and view a plethora of video content from their favorite shows to watch online.

For those of you who are fans of Hulu, you will want to check out this announcement today and the offerings that TV Everywhere will have. Instead of being mainly a destination to catch broadcast programming you missed, like Hulu, TV Everywhere looks to have a much more robust lineup of your favorite broadcast and cable programming.

I'll have more on today's TV Everywhere announcement after there are more details available. And while it's just an initial trial, it represents the first step into the future of cable television wherever and whenever you want to watch.

Telcos battle over special access rates

Fighting AT&T, Verizon's chokehold on "middle mile" [ArsTechnica]

Several wireline telcos and a few consumer groups have banded together to encourage policy makers to investigate the pricing that Ma Bell - AT&T and Verizon in this case - are charging for special access lines to the Internet. Yesterday, the coalition, which calls itself the No Choke Points Coalition, held a press conference in Washington D.C. to announce that they're fed up with the prices that AT&T and Verizon are charging them to connect their customers to the Internet.

Sprint, T-Mobile, TW-Telecom, Clearwire, cbeyond, and several other telephone companies joined with Public Knowledge, Media Access Project, and New America to create the coalition, which has launched a web site explaining the issue at nochokepoints.org. On Friday, the group sent a letter to interim FCC Chairman Michael Copps that read in part:

"We urge you to act now, in 2009, to provide relief from this high-capacity broadband chokepoint (referred to as 'special access' in the FCC’s rules)," they concluded. "The inflated rates many are forced to pay the entities that control this market are taking dollars away from already-struggling consumers, companies working hard to save jobs, and innovators that want to expand broadband service across America."

As this article explains, the roots of this issue run back to the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the deregulation of price caps for access to Internet middle mile connections in certain urban areas. According to the coalition pushing FCC intervention, in areas without the price caps, AT&T and Verizon are earning rates of return that are exorbitant in comparison to their costs from the companies that pay for access, who are in-turn passing higher Internet access rates on to their customers.

AT&T argues that the coalition is simply attempting to re-regulate the market to relieve some "short-term financial and business pressures," and isn't really interested in aiding consumers in achieving lower Internet access rates.

Report indicates need to upgrade undersea Internet cable bandwidth

The Coming Trans-Atlantic Bandwidth Crunch [GigaOM]

While our government debates the availability of broadband in local communities throughout the U. S., GigaOM reports on a bandwidth shortage in another cable industry - the undersea, trans-Atlantic cable industry. A new report from research firm TeleGeography has revealed that by 2014, all the existing bandwidth on trans-Atlantic cables will be consumed. The firm is predicting that between now and then, bandwidth requirements between the U.S. and Europe will grow by 33 percent, exhausting the current capacity of the connections.  The situation unfolding in Iran which, due to a crackdown on conventional media by the government, is a perfect example of why it is critical to maintain ample international broadband capacity.  Without it, the world would have no idea what was really going on there.

The report indicates how one part of the Internet's backbone is likely to suffer from a traffic crunch unless undersea cable construction ramps up in the next few years. Due to the potential for a bandwidth shortage, the possibility exists that wholesale data rates will increase as cable builders begin work to lay more cable. By the year 2015, TeleGeography estimates that trans-Atlantic bandwidth needs will eclipse 60 terrabits per second.

AT&T creates double standard for streaming video apps on iPhone

Is AT&T playing gatekeeper to the Wireless Web? [CNET News]

It's another case of "do as I say, not as I do" over at Ma Bell. Net neutrality advocate Free Press questioned AT&T's decision last week to allow one streaming video application for the iPhone via its wireless network, while continuing to enforce a ban on another similar streaming video application. With the release of the new iPhone 3.0 operating system, Apple greenlighted a streaming video option for subscribers to the popular MLB At Bat application. The At Bat application's video allows baseball fans to watch an entire game via AT&T's mobile network or on a wi-fi broadband connection. It's pretty neat, as you can see from the video below of the first streamed game between the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox.

But, earlier this year, AT&T blocked the streaming video SlingPlayer application from using AT&T's mobile network to stream video to the iPhone. SlingPlayer allows users with a SlingBox connected to their cable television and broadband connection to place shift their television viewing to a laptop or smartphone. AT&T blocked SlingPlayer for the iPhone from streaming on its mobile network, but allows it to stream video via a wi-fi connection.

AT&T's decision to block SlingPlayer on the iPhone has already revealed one double standard because it still allows the application to access the mobile network on other smartphone models, like the BlackBerry. Now, as Free Press has pointed out, we have another double standard when it comes to which applications are granted access to AT&T's network. If you're MLB At Bat, AT&T gives you the green light for streamed video. But, if you're a SlingPlayer user, you're going to be sitting at a red light. According to the SlingMedia representative interviewed for this article, AT&T indicated that it would not allow applications that involved the retransmission of television programming onto its mobile network when it explained the reason why SlingPlayer was blocked. Hmmm. Isn't that exactly what MLB At Bat is doing?

FCC Chairman-desingate indicates government should focus on unserved

Genachowksi: Focus On The Unserved [Multichannel News]

FCC Chairman-designate Julius Genachowsk is inching closer to confirmation as his nomination was given the thumbs-up in the Senate Commerce Committee last week.  He is expected to get quick approval from the entire Senate fairly soon. During his testimony to the committee Genachowski talked about the FCC's national broadband plan and how he would like to see the agency advise the federal agencies responsible for the broadband stimulus grants. Genachowski displayed a strong dose of common sense when he indicated a preference that the FCC focus on getting broadband service to those in unserved areas - those without access to any broadband Internet service.

Though the guidelines for the federal broadband stimulus haven't been released yet, the economic stimulus act contemplates grants being awarded to "underserved areas" in addition to unserved areas. While its easy to define what unserved means, "underserved" has a much more nebulous definition. I completely agree with Chairman-designate Genachowski who sees the wisdom in focusing spending the broadband stimulous money first for those without access to broadband service. Like the electrification of rural America nearly 100 years ago,money will be well spent in areas where there isn't a business case for broadband providers, where there is a natural role for the federal government to play in getting every American connected to the Internet via a fast connection.

The FCC is set to release a national broadband plan next February under Genachowski's leadership.

A new malware threat on Twitter

New Malware Threat in Twitter’s Trending Topics [Mashable]

Twitter was unexpectedly catapulted to becoming a critical link to the uprising in Iran over the past week or two and millions are following tweets from the streets of Tehran.  Unfortunately it also has been invaded by tweets with links to malware by Twitter spammers, according to this article. Because so many Twitter users like to watch the live feed of tweets on popular topics, spammers have decided to take advantage of all those watching. All a spammer has to do is include keywords within their tweet that relate to a popular topic on Twittter, and it will show up in the feed for that topic. Then, they simply include a link to a web page with malicious code. When a user following Twitter clicks on the link in the spammer's tweet, their computer becomes infected.

This post identifies some of the popular domains that Twitter spammers are using, and how to stay away from malicious tweets. Because so many of the URLs in tweets are shortened by URL shortening services, its important to remember that this list may not be comprehensive, and malicious links could be hiding in an otherwise safe looking link. It's important to remain vigilant when clicking on unknown links on sites like Twitter.

Court orders P2Per to pay $1.92 million for copyright infringement

Thomas verdict: willful infringement, $1.92 million penalty [Ars Technica]

Yikes!  I just caught this on Morning Joe on MSNBC this morning and looked it up on the web.  Talk about a disincentive to use peer-to-peer applications to pirate music. Word comes today from Minnesota about the retrial of the music industry's copyright infringement claims against a woman accused of sharing 24 songs via P2P. Jammie Thomas-Rasset was sued by music industry representatives in 2007. In a previous trial, in which the verdict was later thrown out, Thomas-Rasset was found liable for infringement and ordered to pay $222,000. The verdict in Thomas-Rasset's new trial: $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song shared on P2P.

The music industry presented evidence that linked Thomas-Rasset's cable modem and Ethernet card MAC address to the shared music. But even with convincing evidence that the songs were on her computer, Thomas-Rasset took the stand in her defense to claim that someone else downloaded the songs onto her computer. Though the suit only involved 24 songs, a total of over 1,700 stolen works were found on her computer.

It looks likely from the stories I've read about this verdict that the music industry will work to come up with a reasonable settlement with Thomas-Rasset rather than attempting to enforce the nearly $2 million judgment. The industry has been negotiating with Thomas-Rasset throughout the process in an attempt to come up with a settlement, but she opted to have the suit go to trial. The entire situation is a prime example of why it's not a good idea to trade copyright material via P2P networks. At the end of the day, it may just turn out to be a lot less expensive simply to purchase the music legitimately.

Congress holds hearings on behavioral based advertising

Congress Questions How Web Sites Use Personal Data [NYT Bits Blog]

Chairman Henry Waxman's (D-CA) Energy and Commerce Committee is conducting an ongoing investigation into behavioral based advertising and how web sites use personal information to serve advertising. Two subcommittees held a joint hearing yesterday to find out about how Google, Facebook and Yahoo track user data on their customers. The hearing involved the members of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection and the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet.

Several members of Congress are concerned about users' privacy as the surf the Internet, having information about their surfing habits retained and used to determine the most relevant online advertising to display to them. Each of the companies that testified indicated that they have procedures that protect the privacy of their users and make efforts to inform users about the data that is retained about them. In their presentations to the subcommittees, all three argued for a level of self-regulation in this space.

Contrary to some of its detractors' opinions, behavioral advertising isn't all bad. Whether on the television or on the web, advertising generally helps to keep direct consumer costs for cable and broadband lower.  And behavioral advertising provides great efficiencies to advertisers. It helps to filter out unwanted ads for TV viewers and web surfers by using computer intellegence to provide information on products that are more likely to be of interest to the consumer. Congress should carefully weigh the pros and cons of the concept. Protecting privacy is absolutely essential and should be reviewed by lawmakers and regulators but an outright prohibition of the practice, as suggested by some, is not the answer.

AT&T iPhone troubles threatens exclusivity

AT&T and Apple: A Failing Partnership? [Yahoo Technology News]

The relationship between Apple and AT&T, the exclusive wireless provider of Apple's iPhone in the U.S., may be fraying, according to this article and other reports circulating on the Internet. While the newest iPhone model, the iPhone 3G S, goes on sale across the nation today in AT&T and Apple retail stores, many of the phone's new features won't be available to AT&T customers. 

Both MMS and iPhone tethering, features that will be available on the iPhone 3G S in other countries on other providers, won't be available to AT&T iPhone customers for some time.  Without MMS, the iPhone is unable to live up to its rich graphical potential when sending and receiving messages.  When the device is "tethered" to a laptop or desktop computer, a user can surf the Web via the phone's wireless connection.  All of these problems come right on the heals of a fairly tough go for consumers downloading the new 3.0 operating system due to server capacity issues.

There has been quite a bit of speculation that Apple may opt to end AT&T's exclusivity with the iPhone when their current deal expires. The fact that the carrier has crippled two of the new features on iPhone 3G S at its unveiling cannot be encouraging to Apple, which has created a revolutionary mobile device in the new model. And if AT&T's troubles with the new iPhone weren't enough, word is coming from Washington D.C. that several senators are asking the FCC to look into carriers' exclusive handset deals with mobile manufacturers.

Rep. Eric Massa introduces bill to regualate metered billing

Massa Bill Would Review ISPs' Volume Usage Service Plans [Multichannel News]

Yesterday, U.S. Representative Eric Massa (D-New York) introduced a bill designed to create federal regulations for Internet providers who look to create new broadband pricing structures that charge customers based on their broadband usage. Massa's bill, a reaction to the metered billing trials announced but never carried out by Time Warner Cable earlier this year, would require Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approval for any Internet provider with more than 2 million customers that decides to create a metered billing system.

While several providers, including Time Warner and AT&T, have experimented in test markets with broadband billing systems designed to charge based on consumption, Rep. Massa's bill is designed to chill any provider's plan to attempt a similar experiment. The bill would require ISPs to submit any usage based billing proposal to the FTC for review and approval that the practice isn't "unfair and unconscionable." The FTC would consult with the FCC to make that determination. Only when both agencies green-lighted the test, could it proceed, should Rep. Massa's bill pass.

As I've said here before, ten years ago, when flat rate billing was decided upon, no one anticipated that video and other big bandwidth consumer apps (not to mention the insatiable appetite for bandwidth of high definition video) would become so prevalent on the Internet.  I know, in this day and age, it's fashionable to mistrust corporate America making it easier to accept the Federal government regulating almost everything that moves. But this level of regulation in a business that is changing so dynamically runs a huge risk of stifling innovation and investment by ISPs. 

I know I'm not popular with some people in my support of these experiments but I deeply understand the economic drivers of Time Warner's and AT&T's previously announced tests.  Unfortunately, the biggest mistake that occurred when they announced them was that no one made it extremely clear that their plans would also result in some customers paying less.  Instead, the only discussion was centered around huge bandwidth consumers who will likely pay more.

I call upon Congress to move with great care when they decide to plunge deeply into regulating industries that are functioning well.  Let's not forget that broadband has gone from serving virtually no one to nearly two-thirds of the population in a handful of years.  If we don't keep up with the changing nature of its usage, an obsoleted economic model inevitably will slow innovation and strangle critical new investment. 

And that's not good for anyone.

Broadband adoption increases to 63 percent in U.S.

Home Broadband Adoption 2009 [Pew Research Center]

The Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project has released new survey data that shows American's broadband adoption at its highest rate ever, despite the troubled economy. From May 2008 to April 2009, American homes with broadband Internet rose from 55 percent to 63 percent. During that period, the demographics with the greatest growth included seniors (19 percent to 33 percent), low-income Americans (25 percent to 35 percent), high school graduates (40 percent to 52 percent), older baby boomers (50 percent to 61 percent) and rural Americans (38 percent to 46 percent).

At the same time broadband adoption is increasing, the Pew Center's research discovered that dial-up customers have dropped to an all-time low since 2000, now at just 7 percent of all households.

Perhaps the most important note from the research are the number of choices that customers said they had when it came to broadband service providers. Seventy percent of all survey respondents indicated that they had at least two choices of broadband providers. Sixty percent said they had access to three or more providers. Broadband service is a competitive market in much of the country, and Pew's research underlines that point.

Apple's iPhone 3.0 OS released yesterday

Upgrading Your iPhone? Be Prepared for an iFail [NYT Bits Blog]

Apple released the much-anticipated iPhone 3.0 operating system for all iPhone users yesterday. Of course, with millions of iPhone users all downloading and installing the upgrade at the same time, some issues were bound to creep up. I was following iPhone users in Insight's footprint on Twitter yesterday describing their iPhone OS upgrade experience, and it appeared to be a mixed bag of success and problems. One frequently described issue was the fact that Apple's download servers were overwhelmed, and could not accommodate all the iPhone users wishing to download the update.

Once they got the download, many users were turning to other users to get the low-down on a successful iPhone 3.0 upgrade. This post includes upgrade experiences from users who were able to successfully update their iPhone.

Of course, if you're an iPhone user and would like to have the iPhone 3.0 experience without the need to install an upgrade, Apple's next generation iPhone 3G S will go on sale on Friday.

Twitter diplomacy becomes a tool for U.S. in Iran

Twitter Amplifies Obama’s Muted Iran Policy [GigaOM]

Twenty years ago, I addressed the freshman class at my alma mater, Boston University's School of Communications.  I stated, unequivocally that the cable industry brought down the Berlin Wall and ended Communism. 

After thinking I was certifiably nuts, the students heard me explain that small dishes (which were designed to intercept cable programming that was being beamed to cable systems all over Western Europe) were cropping up all over Eastern Europe.  My thesis was that people behind the Iron Curtain, who for decades thought it was normal to wait in line for hours simply to purchase a pair of jeans, were now seeing MTV Europe.  And on it they saw commercials advertising a multitude of brands of high quality clothing.  No lines to wait in.  Just bring your credit card to a store and buy them.

And they wondered what was really going on, on  the other side of that wall, in West Berlin and beyond.  They quickly figured out that they were not living in a place with the same standard of living as their Western counterparts, despite what their state-owned communications mediums reported.  They ultimately brought down failed economic system and the governments that created and supported it. 

This past week, I've been fascinated about how the 21st century's information revolution is affecting the protests in Iran. Even though the government there has shut down most Internet access and mobile SMS messaging, it appears that Twitter has become a critical communications medium in Iran and to the world beyond about the unfolding situation there.

Yesterday, it became more apparent that "Twitter diplomacy" is a significant tool in the Obama administration's dealings with Iran. Word came from Reuters that an official with the U.S. State Department had asked Twitter to delay an important, planned system maintenance process that would have taken the microblogging service off the air for a while. The maintenance was delayed from the middle of the afternoon, Iranian time, until the middle of the night in Iran.

The Internet's information revolution is often taken for granted in this country, due to the near ubiquity it has. It's fascinating to have a front-row seat to the protests in Iran via Twitter and other social networking sites on the Internet, even with the Iranian government's attempts to shut them down -- a task that's becoming harder by the minute in today's connected world.  It's even more interesting that our government, realizing the importance of the Internet in the Iranian opposition movement, is moving behind the scenes to ensure that it remains available to as many Iranians as possible.

The Pirate Bay attempts to circumvent copyright law

The Pirate Bay Launches Ipredator VPN [NewTeeVee]

Having lost a civil and criminal copyright infringement trial and looking to avoid enforcement of Sweden's newly strengthened copyright laws, The Pirate Bay, the web's most notorious BitTorrent tracker, is introducing a new "service" to its users. The site, which is based in Sweden, has announced Ipredator - a new virtual private networking (VPN) service designed to provide anonymity to its users.

Sweden's, and the European Union's, new copyright protection laws provide for ISP's to turn over IP addresses of copyright infringers to content owners. This provision would allow the content owners to protect their rights to the material that P2Pers are trading online. Since the notion that content creators should be paid for their work offends The Pirate Bay, they've created this VPN service to mask the IP addresses of the P2Pers using its site. If the individual IP addresses cannot be traced back to a user, then there is no way for ISPs to reliably determine which users are trading copyrighted content. For this service, The Pirate Bay plans to charge $7 per month.

The Pirate Bay's new VPN service is one more move in the cat and mouse game that content owners, governments around the world and pirates are engaged in. While this may be a "victory" for The Pirate Bay, it's likely to be short lived. Without a business model that compensates content producers, content won't continue to be produced for the pirates to steal.