FacelessBook and Safer Internet Day

Yesterday was Safer Internet Day, apparently - and the head of the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (coppers, since you ask, devoted to stranger danger', instead of stepdads, priests, Scout leaders and the usual suspects) suggested you'll be safer with...Internet Explorer 8.
Ok, pick yourself up off the floor, it wasn't meant to be THAT funny.
More pertinently, co-regulation of social networking raised its European head, and one of Mme Reding's last acts as INFSO Commissioner featured the Safer Social Networking Principles with a signing ceremony in Luxembourg. 
Now co-regulation normally means legislation, which she is threatening to inflict on Facebook: “If it’s not done by self-regulation, then regulation has to come in,” Reding said in an interview in her office in Brussels. “I wouldn’t like to do it; I will do it if necessary.”
In the case of the Principles - which are mainly about stopping cyberbullying and the proliferation of kids on Facebook, the Commission did not introduce legislation but softer measures - a Taskforce and its position as broker.
Which brings me to my beef about Facelessbook - which I shall reproduce in the vain hope that they actually employ customer services people:
'Dear sirs

Last Thursday my Facebook account was disabled for breaking terms of use 
- particularly ironic as I was sending a message to a friend who has 
just joined Facebook, when I realized his 9-year-old son had an account 
with 70 friends. Pasting your terms of use into the message resulted in 
it being flagged for abuse - I suspect a child had rather cleverly 
flagged your exact warnings about under-age users as abuse!

I am interested to see whether any of these email addresses produces an 
answer as the email I first used resulted in no response over this 5-day 
period, no matter which account I emailed from.

Sincerely...'

I think I'll have to contact Richard Allan, formerly MP for Sheffield Hallam, then at Cisco, now Facebook Europe - who is definitely one of the good guys in public policy for the Internet. Richard also spent time at the Oxford Internet Institute when I was there in 2004. Richard reported on Facebook's policies to the EC recently.

Reuters coverage of Turkish web blocking law of May 2009

The blocking of Richard Dawkins, extremely eminent British scientist, for mocking a Turkish creationist, has increased international scrutiny of Turkish regulation, particularly in view of Turkey's attempt to harmonize its media laws with those of the European Union.

A tale of two Easter week conferences: EuroCPR v. BILETA

I will be in Vienna on 28-30 March for the 25th BILETA (British and Irish Law Education and Technology Association, but quite Euro for the first time) conference - speaking about mobile net neutrality. The conference reflects its lawyerly base and legendary social programme.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, a more tightly focussed discussion of broadband policy takes place at EuroCPR. It has Milton Mueller, Nico van Eijk and Yochai Benkler speaking - really impressive line-up, and I wish I could be in two places at once.
That said, its quite an economics-dominated event, but nowhere near as much as the even more regulator-heavy WIK conference in Berlin 27 April - at which Neelie Kroes is invited to make one of her first big speeches as Commissioner. Sharon Gillett will be there as well as several Caves - which means it will be more than just a regulator love-in.
Maybe a shout-out is also needed early for McGill's Prof. Becky Lentz hosting the 3rd annual GIGANET workshop. I will most definitely be there.

In praise of mobile broadband and tethered phones

I've been accused (frequently but only from one source;-) of being hard on wireless broadband - which isn't true, I'm very hard on European incumbent mobile phone companies, which isn't quite the same thing. I'm not convinced that Vodafone, Telefonica, TIM, T-Mobile (though they have moments) and Orange are the freedom-to-tinker loving closet hippies that some might like us to believe.
However, I will praise both handset manufacturers and my own mobile company, Hutchison 3 (by the people who originally brought you Orange when it was cool).
First my funky Samsung i8510 is proving as nice a phone as when I ordered it on a £20/month contract (that's pretty amazing value for a mini-computer with 300 national/3003-to-3 and 100 video minutes per month on a one year contract). Most importantly it has great speakers and 8GB internal memory, plus an 8Megapixel camera - so I just got an MP3 player, personal video player with its cool screen (not quite an iPhone but...), camera and phone rolled into one, for next to nothing. Its also a really good personal organizer.
Second, 3 continues to ramp up their coverage - I used to complain bitterly about indoor reception on their USB  'dongles' but now I get reasonably broadband-ish coverage except in the evening peak hours, and even then it still works at dial-up type speeds. Top speed received this morning is 1.8Mbps which is quite typical, though averages are way lower. I can actually watch YouTube most of the day if I wish, and its OKish for Skype to Canadian cell calls. Plus its £7.50/month for a 3GB cap. If as an early-mover I didn't get coverage, now it seems a real bargain. Note I have no fixed connection at home, saving squillions in line rentals etc.
But the really impressive piece of this is 3 championing the removal of 2G termination subsidies which fixed operators have paid hand-over-fist to mobiles across Europe forever - its only a really big deal in the UK because BT divested its mobile arm in the dot-com credit crunch of its own, and that means almost all Uk landlines for several years were cashpoints for mobile companies (obviously elsewhere in Europe if you own a mobile company, and the largest one in your own country, you're less exercised by rate distortion).
So 28,000 cheers for TermninatetheRate.org-  more power to them!
Which makes me wonder whether Jonathan Zittrain's article in the FT about the iPad wasn't over-egging the pudding somewhat? The US DoJ gave up on the Microsoft case after Dubya took office, but the European Commission kept jabbing for almost 10 years. Nevertheless, Windows had to be opened up and was. But that was a monopoly. Apple? Well, isn't that the company where status-craving graphics designers waste their money? As long as we have PCs that competition authorities keep open platforms, I don't care what an obscure brushed-aluminium company does to its gullible customers - although it better be careful in Europe with iTunes.

Reasonable People Achieving Consensus?

There have been some extremely constructive developments in the net neutrality debate in the US (notwithstanding the 'beliefs' argument).
Verizon, one of the two biggest DSL and now fibre providers, and Google, owner of YouTube, submitted a joint response to the FCC NPRM. I hadn't blogged about it last week because the book launch was a pretty busy time. There was also a response by eminently wise men: Dave Clark, Bill Lehr and Steve Bauer.
Both submissions make very similar points, and I will summarize them crudely. But the main point emerging is that it is essential to design a system that does not let lawyers spend years screwing with the Internet. Therefore, both submissions propose what in Europe we would call a net neutrality lite co-regulatory solution - based largely around allowing standards and alternative dispute resolution to replace traditional adversarial rule making.
So here is the basic message:
[1] The Internet has largely been unregulated except by standards, and that has contributed to its dramatic growth and vigorous developer community, along with private investment.
[2] There is relatively little evidence of anti-net neutrality behaviour but an acknowledged need for traffic management on networks to cope with congestion.
[3] A light touch response is therefore appropriate. In particular, traditional knock-down drag-out mortal combat before the FCC and then courts does not seem timely or appropriate in most cases.
[4] The FCC - or whichever agency deals with the issue, possibly in cases of consumer harm the FTC - should rule on reasonable management practices where it receives complaints of abuse, but otherwise should leave the players to decide, and take what in Europe we might call 'utmost account' of technical advice.
[5] Technical Advisory Groups should be established to help flesh out what 'reasonable' should mean. That should include application development as well as network development - P2P apps should help solve not worsen the problem.
[5] These 'TAG's should then offer a possibility of arbitration for more toothy problems.
[6] The regulator thus acts as backstop in especially difficult cases.
And the three clinchers:
[7] Discrimination should be permitted - 'special access' is a normal development that will help attract investment to build faster lanes alongside the open Internet.
[8] The overall regime may not be appropriate for wireless carriers given their especially constrained bandwidth and overall network ecology.
[9] Government should ensure that the basic Internet access option must be offered alongside any future filtered version, and take steps to define it such that it not become a 'dirt road' alongside the more commercially partitioned versions. I would describe this as a 'Parliamentary train' failure of universal service.
All of this could be applied to the European debate too, and there's where the tenth take-away becomes so important:
[10] It is not the proper role for ISPs to act as copyright police or proto-government censors.
There seems to have been an outbreak of sanity in Washington?

Believing in net neutrality is like believing in Christmas

Obama has declared again his belief in an open Internet, which is how he appears to interpret the net neutrality debate.
But what does it mean to 'believe' in net neutrality? To agnostic Englishmen, any political expression of belief is worryingly reminiscent of Tony Blair's deism and discussions of good and evil, which doesn't seem appropriate to a technical/economic policy problem.
However, lets unwrap the Christmas present. I believe in the festival - I don't believe in Father Christmas any more, I certainly don't believe in virgin births and sky-gods, but I do believe in the powerful redemptive power of the story of the saviour-child (have you seen Children of Men? Then you see the point).
I also believe in a festival to bring family together, to sing beautiful old songs, to celebrate with food and wine, to give gifts, to provide some charity, to condemn Scrooge. I do worry that its over-commercialized and can be ruined by bad TV, bad turkey as much as bad company.
Net neutrality has gained some of these associations - its not the Messiah, its over-commercialized on both sides, video may threaten its future even while it redefines the medium, but at centre, net neutrality at a minimum (the 'lite' version) expresses the view that there should be some room for freedom of expression alongside more obvious commercial freedoms to over-eat, over-view and over-charge.
Christmas comes but once a year - and net neutrality may be restricted to helping those who otherwise would be without Internet access, making sure your ISP has some kind of open pipe to the Internet if they sell you 'Internet service' - not that you have to buy it. But lets have something to believe - even if its not 'I wish it could be Christmas every day'. In many countries  (frankly those that don't celebrate Christmas so this analogy falls as short as the BandAid single) and on some mobile services, they simply never see an open Internet. In this allegory, its only crumbs off the table...

'Net neutrality: towards a co-regulatory solution' released by Bloomsbury

Its on a Creative Commons download- and the Preface thanks all of you as readers, and many of you by name - so thank you:-) 
If you enjoy reading the bits you print or read onscreen, there is an introductory offer on the hardback, either contact me or look on the Bloomsbury website.
Happy reading - I will post the gentler or most revelatory reviews and link obscurely to the rest...
STOP PRESS: if you wait to download until Monday, you can get the cover and see it in all its glory.

BEREC formed - European FCC draws no closer?

The new super-souped-up European Regulators Group is founded today - with a name so preposterously badly chosen that its alternates BERT and GERT sound better every day...its called BEREC (B-Erik?) and its been welcomed by Ofcom for reasons that are clear - better the B-Eriks than letting the European Commission take executive control. In the future the European Commission will be required to seek BEREC's advice and take 'utmost account' of its guidance in making its own recommendations in the telecoms sector.It will have up to 28 Eurocrats staffing it alongside the 27 NRA chiefs so expect a delicious fudge, though its agenda items are very substantive:

"Next Generation Access: regulation for the next generation of super-fast broadband;

Net neutrality: the debate about internet service providers prioritising data on their networks

Universal Service Obligations: the requirement on communications companies to provide access to specific services, such as a landline phone; and

Functional separation: establishing competitive telecoms markets by creating operationally separate businesses for local and backhaul network access."
But don't get too excited, here's what it says about net neutrality and its reactive position:
"During 2010, the debate on enhancing net neutrality is likely to develop further. The revision to the regulatory framework will make important revisions to strengthen requirements in this area. ERG will contribute to this debate and examine issues which fall within the scope of the electronic communications regulatory framework. In particular, ERG will work with the Commission and provide input to any measures or communication which will be developed by the Commission including a formal opinion in response to public documents issued by the Commission."
"Deliverable: ERG Opinion on Commission communication. Deadline: Depending on Commission initiatives"