Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

Abandoning Broadband Competition, Fairness,
Dan Gillmor, Sat, 08/06/2005.

Read all of Gilmor’s excellent (as always) analysis with the link above. Excerpt:

As expected, the Federal Communications Commission has given the regional phone monopolies exactly what they wanted: permission to stifle DSL competition on “their” lines. As the New York Times reports:
“Under current rules, carriers like Verizon and SBC are required to lease their digital subscriber lines to these rivals at negotiated rates.”

It’s important — vital — to discuss the word “their” in this context, because it disguises a reality that the phone giants, as well as their congressional and FCC lapdogs, are worried that you might consider. Those lines are were only “theirs” because these companies grew up as public utilities. They were granted monopoly status in order to build out their networks. But monopolies are regulated in order to prevent gross abuses….

The worry for me is less about price, though that’s important, than about the near-certainty that the cable-phone duopolists will abuse their positions when it comes to delivering the data we want to send and receive on “their” lines. This is the question of “open access” that troubles so many of us.

Tim Boudreau’s Blog: When engineers (sort-of) read licenses - a cautionary tale, July 29, 2005.

Every day, it seems, libraries and librarians have to agree to another license to use information or software. These are typically long documents filled with complicated legal jargon. It is not always easy to know exactly what you are agreeing to.

Here are excerpts from
Tim Boudreau’s recent experience…

Did I scroll down and go through the whole thing with a fine toothed comb? Nope. Neither did anybody else - that’s the cautionary part of this tale….

… the document is written so perfectly backwards for an open source site that it’s almost impossible to tell that. It definitely means I should be careful what I wish for. Correct doesn’t necessarily mean human-readable….

…For the missing piece of the puzzle, you have to scroll way down to section 6…

So, here it is in a nutshell: When you download NetBeans, you click through a license. That license says “This license covers everything except the parts that are covered by open source licenses.” Which, in this case, happens to be…all of NetBeans. For a lawyer, it is perfectly clear because it says it doesn’t supercede the open source stuff - how could anyone read it and not figure that out?

For an engineer downloading software, the first thing you look for isn’t what the license says it doesn’t cover - and probably nobody expects a license agreement to say “This agreement doesn’t apply to a bunch of stuff, and by the way, one of the things it doesn’t apply to is the product you’re downloading.”

Last November, we noted the story about the US Government seizing web servers in London
(US Gov. says: “We seize servers, you can’t complain”). Now an update from
the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

Secret Documents About Indymedia Server Disappearance Unsealed

EFF last week won a motion allowing it to
access sealed court documents about the mysterious
disappearance of two web servers used to host news websites
for Indymedia, a global collective of Independent Media
Centers (IMCs) and thousands of journalists. After six
months of secret litigation, EFF obtained a copy of the
federal court order that resulted in the October 2004
handover of copies of Indymedia servers to the government
by Indymedia’s web host. That handover resulted in the
silencing of more than 20 news websites and radio feeds
for nearly a week.

However, the unsealed documents reveal that the government
never officially demanded the computer servers - the
subpoena to Rackspace only requested server log files.
This contradicts previous statements by the web host that
it took the servers offline because the government had
demanded the hardware. The documents also contradict
Rackspace’s claim that it had been ordered by the court
not to discuss publicly the government’s demand. It
cannot be determined from the unsealed documents
whether or not the government informally pressured
Rackspace to turn over the servers.

More here:

• US court files reveal Italian link to Indymedia server grab
  By John Lettice, The Register August 3, 2005.
• Indymedia Server Takedown EFF, Updated August 2005
  
  “The feds can’t pull the plug on more than 20 news websitesÑour modern printing pressesÑbased on a secret proceeding at the request of a foreign government. This is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment,” said Kevin Bankston, EFF attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. “As far as the Constitution is concerned, Indymedia has the same rights as any other news publisher. The government can’t shut down the New York Times, and it can’t shut down Indymedia.”

Unanimous FCC Votes To Deregulate Telecom Broadband
Technology Daily PM Edition, August 5, 2005.
[subscription required]

After the recent “Brand X” Supreme Court decision
(Supreme Court Rules for Industry, Against Internet Freedom), the FCC has decided to de-regulate
the telephone companies that provide high-speed Internet access through Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology. The FCC ruling will treat cable companies and telephone companies in the same way, allowing them to exclude competing service providers from their networks. Critics of the decision worry that this will drive small
Internet service providers (ISPs) out of business, reduce competition, raise prices for consumer broad-band access, and create a situation in which a few companies will control Internet access for most people.

The two Democratic commissioners, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, tried to get a “network neutrality” provision into the regulation. Such a provision “would bar DSL providers from degrading or blocking services offered by competitors. Under the compromise, the FCC has adopted a set of principles on neutrality, but they are not enforceable, agency officials said.”

More coverage here:

• FCC eases regulation of DSL lines
  by Paul Kapustka.
• FCC Prepares to Drop DSL Hammer Broadband reports
  
  …while the bells get deregulated, VoIP gets leashed: “So, if anyone spins the day as a triumph for deregulation and the free market, look a little closer. The Internet is getting regulated for the first time, while telecom is deregulated. Regulate the overly competitive application market? Deregulate the barely competitive access market? Something is backwards.”

A recent Supreme Court decision has the potential for affecting
access to the Internet and information. The basic issue is whether or
not cable companies (and phone companies) must share their lines
with competing Internet Service Providers (ISP).
When regulations require them to do so, there
are more alternatives for consumers; if there are no such regulatory
requirements, then a very few, very big, companies essentially control
most access to the Internet and gain the ability to block
content, increase costs to consumers, and control the flow of information.

The Supreme Court decision
(National
Cable & Telecommunications Association Et Al. V. Brand X Internet
Services Et Al. June 27, 2005) comes down on the side of the big
cable companies. It effectively removes any requirement for cable
companies to share their networks with other ISPs. Opponents of the
Court’s decision say that “Giving the network owners such great control
over what rides over their networks could set technology on a dangerous
course.” (Cable Firms Don’t Have to Share Networks, Court
Rules By Yuki Noguchi Washington Post, June 28, 2005; page
D01). Another critic of the decision described the potential results of
the decision starkly:

The days are now numbered for surfing an uncensored, open-access
Internet, using your favorite search engine to search a bottomless
cyber-sea of information in the grandest democratic forum ever
conceived by humankind. Instead you can look forward to Googling about
on a walled-off, carefully selected corpus of government propaganda
and sanitized information “safe” for public consumption.
(Web
of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, And Why by
Elliot D. Cohen, Buzzflash, July 18, 2005.

Current regulations require “telecommunications service” providers, such
as telephone companies, to share their networks with rivals. But the
Court ruled that when cable companies offer Internet service (i.e.,
“cable modem”) they are providing an “information service” and so are
exempt from the requirement to share their lines with rival companies.

The decision has prompted telephone companies, which are currently
required to share their lines with other ISPs that provide DSL (digital
subscriber line) Internet service, to argue that they should be relieved
of this requirement.

Consumer advocates say that the deregulation of the cable and telephone
and other communications industries has allowed unprecedented
consolidation of control of information and the “Brand X” decision will
bring this consolidation to the Internet. As an example of how
consolidation affects access to information, Cohen notes that the
mainstream media have “systematically played down the Supreme Court’s
decision.” Harold Feld of the Media Access Project relates how
one major cable company, Comcast, blocked certain political email
claiming they identified the messages as spam. (Fighting Big Cable (and
why it matters), Harold Feld, July 31, 2005). Feld says that, even if the blocking
was a mistake and not politically motivated, he is
just as concerned if “a single company has the power to screw up
potentially important political speech by mistake.”

Background information:

• Supreme
  Court to Decide Future of High-Speed Internet Access (Public
  Knowledge; “activists dedicated to fortifying and defending a vibrant
  information commons”)
• Public Knowledge Calls for ‘Open Broadband Future’
  (Public Knowledge)
• 
  Broadband/Open Access to the Internet over Cable Infrastructure
  (Media Access Project; a “public interest telecommunications law firm
  which promotes the public’s First Amendment right to hear and be heard
  on the electronic media of today and tomorrow”)
• Judicial
  Filings of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association
  (the principal trade association of the cable television industry in the
  United States)
• Network Neutrality Now By Jeff Chester and Gary O. Larson, In These Times,
  July 6, 2005.

Several new articles help explain the dangers to digital libraries
of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, the integration of DRM
technologies into the Windows and Macintosh operating systems, the new
hardware DRM technologies, and how hardware and software and operating
systems creators may incorporate restrictions even though no law
requires them to do so.

These articles do not mention libraries,
of course, but their relevance to libraries should be clear to anyone
who deals with long term preservation and access issues.

Cory
Doctorow’s article (Apple
to add Trusted Computing to the new kernel?,
BoingBoing, July 31, 2005) about the forthcoming Intel-based
MacOS X operating system gives a quick, down-and-dirty, angry-user’s
view of how changes in hardware can affect usability of digital
information. Cory says,

The point of Trusted
Computing is to make it hard … to open a document in a player other
than the one that wrote it in the first place, unless the application
vendor authorizes it. It’s like a blender that will only chop the food
that Cuisinart says you’re allowed to chop. It’s like a car that will
only take the brand of gas that Ford will let you fill it with. It’s
like a web-site that you can only load in the browser that the author
intended it to be seen in.

What this means is that “open
formats” is no longer meaningful. An application can write documents in
“open formats” but use Trusted Computing to prevent competing
applications from reading them. Apple may never implement this in their
own apps … but Trusted Computing in the kernel is like a rifle on the
mantelpiece: if it’s present in act one, it’ll go off by act three.

Cory, who has used Macs since 1979 and even has a Mac tattooed on
his right bicep, says he won’t use Macs ever again if this all happens.
Why? “My data is my life, and I won’t keep it in a strongbox that
someone else has the keys for.” Libraries take note.

This isn’t a Mac-only problem, of course. Microsoft is working
diligently to incorporate DRM technologies deep in the Windows operating
system and is doing so in a way that will leverage future hardware
lock-downs as well. Seth Schoen, an expert on “trusted computing” at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation,
attended this year’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC)
and has written a four-part series of updates on Microsoft’s security
and lock-ware strategy for Windows. The articles are thorough and clear,
though a bit technical for the non-techie.

I recommend starting with The Dangers of
Device Authentication for its coverage of how emulation, a key
digital library preservation strategy, may be eliminated by
next-generation OS/hardware lock-downs, and for its notes on privacy
problems of DRM.

Then try Microsoft Sells
Out the Public on CGMS-A, which explains how and why the
“entertainment companies are pursuing an astonishingly effective
campaign to persuade technology firms to stop making and selling lawful
recording devices.” Schoen echoes some of what Cory says about open
formats. He notes that the scope of Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) is “expressly limited by the so-called “no mandate” clause, which
establishes that technologies that deal with unencrypted, open standard
media formats are not restricted by the DMCA. These technologies are
unregulated even if the entertainment industries dislike them and even
if they do not obey those industries’ preferences for restricting
users.”

Protected Media
Path, Component Revocation, Windows Driver Lock-down explains how
Microsoft will have control over software created by others if software
vendors want their software to run on Windows. (I’d like to see a
library require an operating system vendor to submit its code to the
library for authentication before we purchase it. Can anyone say “open
source”?)

Microsoft
Trusted Computing Updates is the first article and gives the context
for the others.