An article on municipal wireless I recently wrote for GovTech's Digital Communities Magazine on the myth that municipal wireless has been failing just came out. If you're looking for more background behind my recent statements in the New York Times, then this is certainly worth a read:

Municipal Wireless Success Demands Public Involvement, Experts Say

Most media have it wrong. Municipal wireless networks across the United States didn't stumble in 2007 - high-profile cities where deals fell apart, such as Chicago, San Francisco and Houston, were not going to finance, own or operate their respective networks. These weren't municipal networks at all. The business model that faltered in 2007 was the "private corporate franchise" model based on the deal that Philadelphia and EarthLink agreed to in 2006. It was, in fact, the free market that failed last year - not governments in their traditional role as the builders and maintainers of critical infrastructure.

Read more...

The recent 700MHz auction results have been released -- and the winners are... exactly who we thought they would be: big telco incumbents. While this result may not be ideal, the open platform mandate for the C Block (which raised over $5 billion of the $19.6 billion in proceeds) will require Verizon to allow all compatible devices onto their network (which should dramatically increase the options for consumers who would like to bring their own devices to their service provider). Of course, there's still a lot to the rules that will need to be interpreted by the FCC -- the actual mandate was developed as a compromise among various FCC staffers and contains language that was purposefully nebulous. Meanwhile, here's an article from PC World that sums up some of the issues at play in this recent auction:

From PCworld.com:

700-MHz Auction Draws Mixed Reaction

Although disappointed that large incumbent carriers won the biggest prizes in the 700-MHz auction this week, some open-network advocates still say the auction could be a good first step.

Brad Reed, Network World

Friday, March 21, 2008 05:00 PM PDT

Some open-network advocates say the federal government's 700-MHz auction could be a good first step toward giving American consumers access to a truly open wireless network.

Sascha Meinrath, the research director for the New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program, says the 700-MHz auction went "exactly as expected," with big carriers Verizon and AT&T scoring big wins on the so-called "C" and "B" blocks of spectrum, respectively. Now that the spectrum has been allotted to the victors, he says, the future of open mobile broadband networks in the United States now hinges upon how vigorously the FCC enforces the open-access regulations it placed on the C Block, the 22-MHz chunk of spectrum that Verizon bid more than US$4.5 billion for the rights to operate.

The C Block is a particularly valuable piece of spectrum because it provides the broadest range of coverage over any spectrum available in the auction, and could potentially hold the key to building out a nationwide open-access wireless network. The FCC placed open-access rules on the block last year that will prohibit Verizon from blocking or slowing Internet traffic from competing carriers using the network, or from discriminating against devices trying to connect to the network. The commission adopted the rules in response to heavy lobbying from Google and consumer-advocacy groups.

Meinrath says while the open-access rules have the right intent behind them, they are broadly written and can be open to different interpretations. Thus the future composition of the FCC, and whether its members are strongly committed to the principle of open networks, will determine just how open the C-Block spectrum really is.
Verizon

Tim Karr, the campaign director for media advocacy group Free Press, says Verizon's past opposition to open networks means that the carrier should [that should probably be "shouldn't" --sdm] be trusted and that consumer groups will have to pressure the FCC to strictly enforce its own rules.

"I don't see Verizon doing anything in the wireless space to threaten their status quo of control over the broadband marketplace," he says. "We need to remain vigilant to ensure that Verizon honors the FCC conditions in a way that brings real consumer choice into a still-closed marketplace."

Karr also says the FCC should expand openness conditions to all wireless networks used by consumers, and not only the C Block. He thinks that unless the FCC is active in prodding Verizon and other carriers toward more openness, then Verizon's victory in the auction will leave "slim prospects for genuine Internet competition via a wireless 'third pipe.'"

Google, which did not win any actual spectrum in the auction, has so far expressed more optimism over the auction results than some of the consumer advocacy groups. In a post on Google's public policy blog, Google attorneys Richard Whitt and Joseph Farber called the auction "a major victory for consumers" and predicted that "consumers soon should begin enjoying new, Internet-like freedom to get the most out of their mobile phones and other wireless devices." Google also said that it couldn't comment in further detail on the auction results because it might violate the FCC's anti-collusion rules for the auction, but promised that it would have "more to say in the near future."

Congressman Nadler's recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, "We Interrupt This Broadcast" is full of misinformation and verifiable incorrect assertions. Folks like former FCC Senior Counsel, Kenneth Carter, and Matthew Lasar over at ars technica have already taken the piece to task for reading like a spin project of the National Association of Broadcasters. Since I've had a bit more time to address Congressman Nadler's Op-Ed rather than just focus on the propaganda aspects of the piece, I thought I'd provide some primary sourcing to directly refute the main points of his article.

Congressman Nadler claims, "White spaces are the intervals between television channel frequencies to ensure that TV reception is not interrupted by other signals" -- ignoring the white spaces that exist in vast swaths of the country currently underserved by TV broadcasters that have nothing to do with preventing adjacent channel interference. Talk to folks living in rural America and ask them how many TV channels they get on their rabbit ears and compare that with the channels that anyone living in the top metro markets gets. Then do the math
-- are their more channels in New York City than in Greenup, Illinois? If yes, then you're left with an inconvenient truth -- one can clearly put more TV channels in rural areas without causing interference.

But even more than that -- the spacing between TV channels are meant to prevent interference of stations who were using the best analog equipment available (as of several decades ago) and broadcasting at tens of thousands of Watts of power.

Which begs the question, "Is it possible that the spectrum spacing needed to prevent interference by 30-year old technology operating at 50,000 Watts might be more than todays cutting edge digital technology operating at, say, 200 Milliwatts?" If you suspect that answer might be "yes" -- congratulation, not only are you correct, but my good friend, Physics, is here to back you up.

Congressman Nadler goes on to state, "The usefulness of these white spaces is about to be compromised by a proposal before the Federal Communications Commission by some of the nation’s largest technology companies. Microsoft, Google and others are asking permission to use white spaces — free of charge..."

This sin of omission is particularly egregious -- Google got involved years after public interest groups were working to open up the public airwaves to the general public. Don't believe me? Check for yourself -- point your browser to the FCC's Filed Comments search form: put "04-186" in as the proceeding number (box 1) and either "Google" in the "Filed on Behalf of" line (box 4) then click the "Retrieve Document List" button. What you'll see is every document pertaining to the FCC's white space proceedings filed by these organization.

For Google, it looks like their first involvement was in 2007. Microsoft, on the other hand, got involved in 2004 (the year the proceeding actually began).
But what about the "others" that Congressman Nadler so quickly mentions?
Probably some other major corporations, right?

One of them is the New America Foundation, which I work for -- a public interest think tank. But there's also the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm; Consumers' Union, who fight for consumers' rights and publish "Consumer Reports"; Educause, a national coalition of institutions of higher education; Common Cause, one of the nation's largest citizen advocacy organizations; the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, which works to "assure a just and equitable media that gives meaningful voice to diverse peoples, cultures and ideas"; the Consumer Federation of America, a consumers rights group with "a combined membership exceeding 50 million people"; the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which advocates for "media and telecommunications policies that benefit the Latino community; as well as dozens of additional community groups, non-profit organizations, and consumer rights coalitions. Why does Congressman Nadler marginalize this massive public interest coalition, ignore the years of work that these groups have put into supporting White Space Devices, and dismiss their existence as "others"?

And of course we want consumers to be able to access white space free of charge
-- this is exactly why the National Association of Broadcasters, wireless microphone manufacturers, and their allies don't want white space devices to exist. The reason why such a large coalition of public interest and consumer rights organizations support white space devices is because they'll save us money, spur innovation of myriad new consumer products, and (through that
competition) lower the costs of everything from broadband (and media) services to next-generation wireless microphones.

Congressman Nadler follows this up with an entirely paradoxical two sentences, "These devices could disrupt the new digital TV signals that government and industry have spent so much time and money to promote. In my district, which includes New York’s theater district, performers use wireless microphones on these 'unused' frequencies, as do news crews conducting live interviews on the street." Pause for a moment to consider what the Congressman is saying -- these devices could cause disruption, but we've been using them for years. He follows this illogic up by claiming, "in rural areas, white spaces are often used for broadband access" -- where is he getting his information. The first 700MHz radios were only created this past fall -- Ubiquity claims to have built the first ones. As the press report clearly states, "No word on pricing or street date, mostly -- we suspect
-- due to the fact that the frequency it operates on has yet to be made available."

When Congressman Nadler states, "unlicensed devices, like wireless laptops and remote-controlled toys, operating in the white spaces will probably cause havoc to TV viewers, theater goers and sports fans" he must be betting on the fact that physics works differently in the equipment folks in his district use than for the rest of us. And then he descends into the FUD -- TVs will stop working, the low-income and elderly will be harmed, emergency services will be interrupted, productions of Cats destroyed, NFL quarterbacks sacked -- for those of us in the know, these claims are about as ridiculously as claiming that white space devices are going to cause meteor strikes and bubonic plague.

Congressman Nadler continues on his litany of misleading information stating, "last year, when the F.C.C. tested the 'sensing' mechanism of some of these unlicensed devices, none of them detected broadcast and wireless signals consistently enough to avoid interfering with them." Let's take a look at the actual data from the FCC's own report. If a picture's worth a thousand words, let me greatly shorten my article and show you two. The first, I'll call the "Nadler Worldview" -- it gives you half the picture (in this case, Figure 3-4, which is located on page 14 of this report).

As you can see, as long as blinker ourselves and only look at half the data, Nadler is correct... the problem arises when we look at the full picture. But, at -115 dBm, the prototype white space device worked perfectly, correctly sensing broadcasts 100% of the time:

Meanwhile, for those claiming that these technologies are infeasible, I'd recommend taking a look at the Darpa XG project which, among other goals, is "developing technology and system concepts for military radios to dynamically access spectrum in order to establish and maintain communications...access 10 times more spectrum with near-zero setup time; simplify RF spectrum planning, management and coordination; and automatically de-conflict operational spectrum usage. XG technology assesses the spectrum environment and dynamically uses spectrum across frequency, space and time." You might also want to read the Darpa XG press release from 2006 where successful field-testing of the technologies were conducted. For those that would like to get down into the weeds, here's a link to a declassified overview of the Darpa XG project. I would like to see these technologies developed for civilian use. Given the previously successful testing of XG radios, assuming physics doesn't differ, it's clear that white space device technology is feasible for civilian use as well.

You don't hit a man while he's down, so I'm not going to end my post by going after Congressman Nadler, but rather with an offer of help. Personally, I think the Congressman has been had -- either by industry folks who sold him a bill of goods or advisors who didn't do adequate due diligence. In fact, a whole lot of folks have been had -- the NAB and its allies are spending millions of dollars to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt about white space devices (and a few million buys a good amount of confusion).

So my offer is this: Congressman Nadler, give me a call, I'm more than happy to sit down with you and your staff, walk you through any questions or concerns you might have, and get you primary sourcing so you can check my assertions for yourself. I've been speaking with a number of Broadway theater groups and found they they two have been sold the same bill of goods -- I'd like to take the time to clear the air, cut through the FUD, and get you the information you need.

In addition, anyone who wants to learn more can download New America Foundation's Policy Backgrounder: Unlicensed White Space Devices and Myth of Interference that I co-authored with my colleague, Michael Calabrese (executive summary is online here).

Computer World is reporting that Philadelphia's CIO, Terry Phillis "believes there is a 75% chance that EarthLink Inc. will sell or abandon its ambitious citywide Wi-Fi network operation in a year." National Public Radio is claiming, "Philadelphia's wireless Internet network was supposed to be a model for the nation, but the project has been plagued by delays and spotty service." Predating this recent surge of media critique, New America Foundation released an in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of the Philadelphia Wireless Initiative. While some folks were scornful of the report, more and more folks are realizing that something's fishy in Philly (and it ain't the oysters).

Taking a page from my own play book -- for those of you with a penchant for blogging, an interest in joining the dark side, or an unquenchable thirst for advice on how to get started, here's a few ideas for how to blog (even on such exhilarating topics as telecommunication policy):

1. Good posts are pithy and chocked full of info, informal and accessible. Meandering prose and dissertation-length postings have their place, but many of the most important and influential readers don't have the time in their schedules to read a thesis. That said, when getting started, I'd recommend working on some in-depth analysis, critique, or other insightful work and sending synopses and links out to a bunch of relevant lists. When you're starting, it's fantastically important that you're adding to the knowledge base, not just the debate. Take the time to create resources that people value, there's enough pundits and talking heads -- demonstrate your expertise and depth-of-knowledge and your readership will rapidly grow.

2. Ping your friends so that we can put pointers up on our sites to your blog. Interconnections are important and bouncing readers among relevant postings on others blogs can elevate both. Readership isn't a zero-sum game.

3. Relatedly, carve out a niche and stay in contact with your niche-mates. In terms of telecom bloggers, several (though certainly not all) of the key ones are in my blog roll -- make friends with the folks blogging in your area so they know you're working in the area and stay informed about what other folks are writing. Folksonomies, tag clouds, category listings, etc. help quickly situate your blog for new readers. Don't try to be everything to everyone. I love it when folks contact me with leads on new blogs and other information sources -- and I'd rather point folks to another blog covering a related issue than attempt to cover something outside my area of expertise myself. The interconnectivity within the blogosphere domain you inhabit helps everyone.

4. Be humble -- blogging is all about being willing to put information out quickly and getting it right most of the time. When we get something wrong, be thankful when folks take the time to correct you -- 99% of the time your readers are looking to help you out. Acknowledge the mistake, give credit where it's due, and correct it. Never flame your readers (even if they flamed you first ;) -- you should expect that some your readers will know far more than you do about some of the stuff you're covering (often, they're your greatest allies but would rather not be publicly front and center). Reply to folks that take the time to contact you -- I can't tell you how many times folks have e-mailed me to clarify information, correct something I've posted, or educate me about an issue I'm covering -- blogs are a fantastic outreach and educational tool for their owners, not just their readers. A good dose of humility will go a long way -- while blog owners wield supreme dictatorial power, the best blogs maintain open forums and transparent commenting processes. Likewise, my favorite blogs have a sense of humanity to them -- a sprinkling of the personal buffered by immensely useful and insightful critique.

5. Maintain privacy -- you can put out whatever you want on your own blog, but always err on the side of caution when it comes to releasing other people's names, identifying information, or private correspondences. You can always go back and add in a name if someone would like to be credited, but once you put information out there, it's near-on impossible to expurgate it. Once you've garnered people's respect, they will leak sensitive information to you. Rarely is this done anonymously -- take the time to understand what you've been given and the potential consequences of its release. Not disclosing highly sensitive information publicly encourages sources and helps shield them from potential backlash. A vast majority of the time, I don't publicly post about the information I've been handed -- I can often make the same points without the public disclosure (knowing that you've got documentation to back up your perspective if push comes to shove).

6. Combine efforts -- if you find yourself drafting up a useful e-mail that might be interesting to a wider community, think about how you can revamp it for a public posting. If you're working on interesting projects, initiatives, analyses, etc. keep in mind how you might make a blog post about it. I rarely have time to draft up a blog post -- but I can carve out a few minutes to tweak the work I'm already doing.

7. Keep it interesting -- whether through insight, multi-media integration, exploration of new topic areas, or the occasional personal posting -- don't let your blog become stagnant. Mine has an amazing amount of quasi-public pages that folks occasionally stumble upon -- a lot of Easter Eggs awaiting discovery.

8. Keep your interface clean and accessible -- give folks the option to get exactly what they want quickly or stay awhile and mull through your postings.

9. Finally, and most importantly, is regular posting -- especially when you're getting started and/or want to build your readership. If people know there will be something new every day, they'll come back to your site on a regular basis. If you go more than a few days without posting, either let your readers know (e.g., I'm on vacation, in Antartica, suffering from Ebola) or folks will get bored and move on.

Hope folks get inspired. Personally, I still blame my good friend Steven Mansour for leading me down the road of blogging darkness.

The New America Foundation released the following media alert commenting on Verizon's so-called "any app, any device" plan:

Media Alert

November 27, 2007

Verizon "Any Device" Plan a Positive Step, But Details and Full Consumer Choice Still Needed

WASHINGTON - New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program offered qualified praise for this morning's announcement that Verizon Wireless will allow its customers to use any device it certifies on its wireless networks.

"Verizon's plan is a positive step, but FCC Chairman Martin and the other commissioners deserve the credit for making consumer choice a condition on the TV band spectrum licenses that will be auctioned early next year," said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program. "This appears to be a move to head off market entry and new wireless competition from Google and other Internet companies that would result if the incumbent carriers were unwilling to meet minimal FCC consumer choice requirements."

"It remains to be seen whether the pricing and other details will in fact give consumers the same choice of devices and applications that they have on wireline Internet connections," said Sascha Meinrath, research director of the Wireless Future Program. "It is not enough to simply claim support for 'any' application and device. Verizon plans to certify equipment themselves; by definition this means that they will not let certain devices on their network. This and other inconsistencies leave me deeply concerned."

"Verizon's announcement is an acknowledgment that the carriers' business models can accommodate more openness, but the extent of this openness is not yet clear. We believe the FCC should still provide regulatory certainty that the FCC's Carterfone consumer choice rules apply equally to wired and wireless services," stated Mr. Calabrese.

For background on the Wireless consumer choice issue, see this New America paper by Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu:

http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/wireless_net_neutrality

Additional background is available at www.newamerica.net/wireless_future.

CONTACT:

Michael Calabrese
Sascha D. Meinrath
202-986-2700

Senator Durbin has launched a 4-day online discussion with everyone who's interested. This is an incredibly rare opportunity to help directly impact national telecommunications legislation -- your ideas and feedback will be used to help draft legislation to provide ubiquitous, affordable broadband. You can listen to Durbin's 2-minute intro below:

I will be one of the featured experts on Thursday evening and will be following the conversation over the next four days. If you're interested in having your voice heard -- this is definitely a great opportunity to do so.

[NOTE: this article will appear in the upcoming issue of Government Technology's Digital Communities Magazine.]

A massive secret war on consumers' rights to make legal use of audio, video, print, and other media is being waged. This battle, under the ironically titled rubrics of “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) is part of the ongoing battle to more fully commoditize previously free media use and exact additional control over copyrighted material and extract additional profits from media consumers. This article documents some of the changes surrounding copyright and focuses on the increasing use of Digital Rights Management and decreasing freedom all of us face.

A Brief History of US Copyright

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution states that Congress shall have power, “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Thus enshrined, the goals of copyright were, first and foremost to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts” through the use of copyright. Copyright was originally 14 years with a 14-year extension possible upon petition – granting a total potential period of 28 years. This term was changed only once in the first hundred years of US history – expanding initial copyright from 14 to 28 years in 1831. It was not until 1909 that Congress once again extended Copyright – this time extending the renewal term from 14 to 28 years (for a total potential copyright period of 56 years).

However, the past 45 years have seen an unprecedented explosion of copyright extensions. As copyright critic and Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig writes in Free Culture, since 1962, “Congress has extended the terms of existing copyrights; twice in those 40 years, Congress has extended the term of future copyrights. Initial the extensions of existing copyrights were short, a mere one to two years. In 1976, Congress extended all existing copyrights by 19 years. And in 1998, in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Congress extended the terms of existing and future copyrights by twenty years.” The 1976 extension also eliminated the need to file a renewal for copyright, and after 1978, all copyrighted materials received the maximum term possible. Since over 85% of copyright holders never filed for extensions, this meant that the average copyright period went from roughly 32 years before 1976 to a mandated period of 95 years today.

In a nod to the Constitution's original intent to “to promote the progress of science and useful arts,” the Copyright Act of 1976 also mandated important limitations for copyright: “The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (AHRA) further expanded fair use rights, declaring: “No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.” As the Senate report on AHRA further clarified, these exemptions are meant to cover any use “not for direct or indirect commercial advantage.”

Regardless of the massive copyright extensions we have witnessed in the past several decades, between the 1976 and 1992 Acts, it would seem then that many noncommercial and private use of copyrighted materials, and most educational and research uses of these materials are a part of the fair use doctrine. While many people question the elimination of the renewal requirement of copyright, the increase from a 14-year initial period to an automatic 95-year copyright coverage, and the difficulties in promoting “science and the useful arts” when the last year that works were fully in the public domain was 1923, an even more insidious undermining of fair use has been quietly infiltrating fair use for the past decade.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act

In response to massive lobbying efforts from copyright holders (e.g., MPAA, RIAA, NAB, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, Disney), Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). Among the myriad protections afforded to copyright holders, the DMCA criminalized the production and dissemination of technologies, devices, or services that could be used to circumvent control access to copyrighted works (AKA digital rights management) and also criminalized the act of circumventing an access control – even when there is no infringement of copyright itself.

The DMCA states that “no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title”; “no person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” In other words, DMCA created a legal loophole whereby copyright holders could infringe upon the general public's fair use rights, and anyone circumventing this diminution of fair use rights could be fined “not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense; [and] fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both, for any subsequent offense.” To put this into perspective, a US Department of Justice report found that the average time served in jail for “violent offenders” (e.g., homicide, rape, kidnaping, robbery, sexual assault – and who typically do not pay fines) was 43 months.i

Combined with the systematic extension of copyright to time periods far exceeding average human life expectancy, the DMCA provides a dangerous precedent for undermining our ability to freely access constitutionally protected rights. Yet even this would not unto itself be enough to harmfully effect fair use. The major dangers only arise when Digital Rights Management is built into the media we access as well as the hardware we access it on. As we shall see, the initial attempt to do exactly this was a resounding victory for fair use rights.

Digital Rights or Digital Restrictions – The Sony DRM Fiasco

In 2005, Sony BMG introduced a DRM technology on over 20 million CDs and that automatically installed a software program on users computers that would limit their ability to make fair use of their music. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “At issue are two software technologies which Sony BMG claims to have placed on the music CDs to restrict consumer use of the music on the CDs but which in truth do much more, including reporting customer listening of the CDs and installing undisclosed and in some cases hidden files on users' computers that can expose users to malicious attacks by third parties, all without appropriate notice and consent from purchasers.” In essence, Sony created a secret program that installed itself onto a users' operating system, monitored the system, and reported back to Sony on what users were doing. In addition, the program disabled certain functions that Sony determined and hid itself from easy detection and un-installation.

In addition to doing the functional equivalent of hacking into end-users computers to monitor their activities, unlike traditional CDs which, once bought, are owned by the purchaser, Sony BMG attached a 3000-word End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) that severely limited consumer's rights to make fair use of their purchased music.ii According to EFF, Sony's EULA states that “You can't keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a 'personal home computer system owned by you'”; “You have no right to transfer the music on your computer, even along with the original CD”; “Forget about using the music as a soundtrack for your latest family photo slideshow, or mash-ups, or sampling. The EULA forbids changing, altering, or make derivative works from the music on your computer.” In other words, Sony's EULA attempts to eliminate legally protected fair use rights.

After initially denying that any problem existed, Sony bowed to the massive public outrage, lawsuits, and numerous warnings about the security risks that Sony's DRM software introduced (including the issuance of a removal tool from Symantec and warnings from the Federal government) and began to address the issues caused by their DRM regime. Music CDs from numerous artists, from Britney Spears to Foo Fighters and Santana to the Strokes, was affectediii – and remediation continues to this day to repair the damage. However, if Sony's DRM fiasco was a shot across the bow, it was only a tiny taste of what was to come.

Introducing Windows Vista: Unprecedented Digital Restrictions for an Unsuspecting Populace

Windows Vista integrates many of the restrictions Sony's DRM rootkit directly into the operating system. One of the best analyses on the impacts of Vista's built-in DRM is by security expert and self-proclaimed professional paranoid, Peter Gutmann,iv who writes, “Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called 'premium content.' This incurs significant costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista, but the entire PC industry.”

Among the other “features” of Windows Vista that Gutmann explores are:

• disabling of hardware that is not approved by Microsoft – the idea being that you could use unapproved hardware to copy copyrighted material (even if this copying is legally protected by fair use laws);
• degrading the quality of audio/video to prevent capture through other devices – Gutmann mentions the incredible problem this poses for telemedicine practitioners hoping to share high-resolution scans/videos of, for example, your brain;
• making decisions for you (the end user) as to what media you can and cannot copy (regardless of your legal right to do so) – in essence, an operating system that, though extra-legal means, eliminated your rights as the purchaser of media.

The question many readers might be asking is whether these fears are hypothetical or whether these actions are actually being taken. As it turns out, not only are these problems being experienced, they are well known to the major companies and media providers. Windows Vista has already been found to refuse to play legally bought media and has had problems with “disabling hardware” like iPods to the point where they permanently cease to function – as the Apple website itself states, “Ejecting iPod from Windows Explorer or by using the 'Safely Remove Hardware' feature in Windows Vista may corrupt your iPod. Microsoft is working on a software update for Windows Vista which addresses this compatibility issue.”v A non-exhaustive list of known problems between Windows Vista's DRM and iPod/iTunes include:

• iTunes Store purchases may not play when upgrading to Windows Vista from Windows 2000 or XP;
• iPod models with the “Enable Disk Use” option turned off may be unable to update or restore iPod software, and make changes to iPod settings;
• iPod models configured to Auto Sync and have the “Enable Disk Use” option turned off may require being ejected and reconnected to resync;
• Ejecting an iPod from the Windows System Tray using the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature may corrupt your iPod;
• Cover Flow animation may be slower than expected;
• Contacts and calendars will not sync with iPod.

Not only does the Vista operating system infringe upon your legal rights, it detrimentally impacts other hardware you may wish to attach to your computer. Since a vast majority of new computer buyers have no choice except the Windows operating system, these issues will affect potentially millions of unsuspecting consumers in the months and years to come. Taken together, copyright law, DRM, and Windows Vista represent an insidious trifecta for expanding the commodification of personal activities and an unprecedented assault on fair use, privacy, and legally protected activities.

Sascha Meinrath is a regular contributor to Digital Communities and a co-editor of www.MuniWireless.com. He is the co-author, with Victor Pickard, of “Feudalizing the Internet: Enclosures and Erasures from Digital Rights Management to the Digital Divide” and “The New Network Neutrality: Criteria for Internet Freedom” and secures Creative Commons licensure for all his writings. Sascha blogs regularly at www.SaschaMeinrath.com.

Well, here's the first case of confirmed massive so-called "digital rights management" problems with Windows Vista -- Apple is now telling its customers not to upgrade to Vista because it doesn't work well with iTunes. So if you buy a new PC computer today -- you may not have access to your completely legal iTunes media. As I've said before, if you can control content on the end-users' devices, Network Neutrality really doesn't matter.

This is just the first of what will most certainly be widespread DRM problems -- since the Operating System is deciding for users what media they can and cannot consume. For Apple (which has huge resources as well as direct partnerships with Windows), the solution is to create patches so that their media will be exempted from Vista's draconian DRM. But what about for everyone else? Here's the list of just some of the Windows DRM problems straight from Apple's website, including things like
refusing to play legally bought media and turning your iPod into a really expensive doorstop if you follow the Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" instructions (I kid you not!):

* iTunes Store purchases may not play when upgrading to Windows Vista from Windows 2000 or XP.
* iPod models with the "Enable Disk Use" option turned off may be unable to update or restore iPod software, and make changes to iPod settings.

* iPod models configured to Auto Sync and have the "Enable Disk Use" option turned off may require being ejected and reconnected to resync.
* Ejecting an iPod from the Windows System Tray using the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature may corrupt your iPod.
* Cover Flow animation may be slower than expected.
* Contacts and calendars will not sync with iPod.

My good friend Victor Pickard and I are thinking about writing some of this up in a new paper we're going to be working on, "Feudalizing the Internet: Enclosures and Erasures from Digital Rights Management to the Digital Divide." Stay tuned for more as we trace the Windows Vista DRM debacle.

Here's the newest from Sascha Meinrath & Victor Pickard -- look for the full paper in coming months:

Feudalizing the Internet: Enclosures and Erasures from Digital Rights Management to the Digital Divide

As new media production and social networking capabilities flourish within the so-called Web 2.0 to empower users and transform politics and everyday life, less visible structural changes threaten to foreclose the Internet’s democratic possibilities. While recent research heralds the brave new world of digital networks (Benkler, 2006), others suggest more cautionary tales (Chester, 2007; Wu, 2006). Bringing this core tension into focus, this paper examines a number of recent and ongoing Internet policy battles, ranging from net neutrality to intellectual property rights, which will help determine the fundamental structures of the Internet. These fights come at a critical juncture in Internet development when multiple trajectories are possible. It is not hyperbolic to assume that the outcomes of these crucial debates will help shape the contours of the Internet for decades to come.

Despite the general excitement around the popularity and political power of You Tube, My Space, and other innovations in user-run media, recent digital rights management (DRM) issues criminalizing lawful behavior on the web, threats to net neutrality, and worsening digital divides complicate optimistic assessments. If these recent negative trends continue, we argue, the Internet might become, in effect, a feudalized space—one that limits democratic potential while enriching a relative handful of corporate interests, such as the phone, cable and software companies that stand to gain from various enclosures. Our paper seeks to both bring to light the specific policy debates connected to these problems, while uncovering normative understandings about the role of the Internet in a democratic society.

While earlier work examined fundamental Internet tensions between structure and agency, and between encroaching commercialization and democratic possibilities (Pickard, In Press), more recent work has focused specifically on the net neutrality debate, linking it to a larger set of normative criteria for democratizing the Internet (Meinrath & Pickard, 2006). What is still lacking from the scholarship is a comprehensive analysis of the key policy debates, both U.S. and global, around multiple layers of the Internet. By cataloguing current threats to a democratic Internet and closely examining the linkages between intersecting policy battles, this paper illuminates both what is at stake and what policy provisions should be implemented to prevent the feudalizing of the Internet.

The New Network Neutrality includes ten criteria laid out by Sascha Meinrath and Victor Pickard that help create a more participatory and democratic Internet:

• Requires Common Carriage.
• Is Open Architecture and Supports Open Source Driver Development.
• Is Open Protocol and Open Standard.
• Supports and End-to-End Architectures (i.e., is composed of a "dumb" network).
• Is Private (e.g., no back doors, deep packet inspection, etc.).
• Is Application-Neutral.
• Is Generally Low-Latency and First-In/First-Out (i.e., requires adequate capacity for both).
• Is Interoperable.
• Is Business Model Neutral.
• Is Run by its Users (i.e., is internationally representative and non-Amerocentric).

Download the full paper here.