Technology Liberation Front

I think that once again someone inside of Amazon understands the information economy pretty well. This does seem like a lawsuit 'honeypot' (talk about mixed metaphors) since it cannot help but provoke a response (see mp3.com [1])

The thing that confuses most people is the emerging doctrine of information sale. What the music companies would like to be true, is that selling you a CD (or an MP3) is equivalent to selling you a ticket to hear the performance once. And as you could not reasonably expect, having bought a ticket to a musical performance, to be able to change the venue for that performance, the industry would like to equate that absurd request to transliterating a recording into a different medium or access method.

Consumers on the other hand have expressed a strong belief that they "own" that instance of the music and that transliterating it, listening to it from different devices, and/or putting it on a mix tape and having it play as background music for their housewarming party are all 'well within their rights' of things they can do with what they own.

The legal tool is of course copyright and many cases have focused on what exactly does it mean to make a copy (which would have been more obvious had the original case against magnetic tape gone the way of the record labels) and what is fair use, and what is the greater good.

The motivating force is of course money. Given the physical challenges of having copies and even with tape carrying them around, the…

In fact the law requires access to telephone poles. In one state Google got into a fight with incumbents over a policy where Google’s installers would be allowed to move incumbent’s equipment already on the poles to make room for its own, instead of following an existing process for having the incumbents move their own equipment. That’s probably a good idea assuming indemnification is in place, but Google wasn’t being denied access to the poles.

On the other side of the scale, Google Fiber has had the carpet rolled out for it in many places, for example being given for example free leases to public property for installing fiber huts: https://techliberation.com/2012/08/07/what-google-fiber-says-about-tech-policy-fiber-rings-fit-deregulatory-hands/

> Google received stunning regulatory concessions and incentives from local governments, including free access to virtually everything the city owns or controls: rights of way, central office space, power, interconnections with anchor institutions, marketing and direct mail, and office space for Google employees. City officials also expedited the permitting process and assigned staff specifically to help Google. One county even offered to allow Google to hang its wires on parts of utility poles – for free – that are usually off-limits to communications companies.

See also: https://hbr.org/2018/09/why-google-fiber-is-high-speed-internets-most-successful-failure

> But we believe Google Fiber’s most significant impact was to…

TFA talks about favorable deals for telcos. Telcos have received one-time incentives to do things that they may or may not have done, depending on who you read. The recurring incentive is usually to keep phone service working in rural areas.

What Google got (at least in KC) that AT&T wants is no franchies fee (typically cable companies and fiber providers pay the town a percentage of their revenue for the right run lines), no pole-attach fees, and cheap/easy permitting.

The impressive thing that Google has accomplished is not delivering Gig to the home. It is convincing cities, in a budget crisis economy, that the mere presence of gig is important enough to not only give up a traditional revenue stream (franchise fee) but also to give up cost recovery charges like pole-attach and permit fees. Apparently they still have a 5% fee in Olathe, but I'd bet they have other concessions that make up for it.

This: http://techliberation.com/2012/08/07/what-google-fiber-says-about-tech-policy-fiber-rings-fit-deregulatory-hands/
and this:

I'm not sure what this has to do with privacy. If anything, anonymous trolling is more private, not less.

Web annotation has been done and discussed, as has anonymous "stupidity of crowds" decision making.
http://131.193.153.231/www/issues/issue4_10/margolis/index.html
http://www.avantart.com/personal/nototv/saynototv.html
http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/jimbellap.htm

It seems to me it has the potential to be very culturally disruptive -- to the point that there would be a lot of pressure to tweak the first amendment in order to ban the site.

Somebody has a big ego. In reality, not enough people bother to install browser plugins to matter. Also, the first amendment may not be as strong as you think, with laws already in the works trying to stop cyber-bullying:
http://techliberation.com/?s=bullying

>The current wireless cell phone industry is a much better comparison, because it's already regulated under Title II.

Quoting from the posted article and jiving with my memory: "[...] the FCC explicitly exempted wireless data networks from Title II in 2007"[1].

More specifically, I think only mobile voice services are regulated under Title II[2]. Mobile data (aka mobile broadband) is exempt, provided the FCC follows their own declaration made in 2007.

[1] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-30A1.pdf

[2] http://techliberation.com/2014/11/19/the-myth-that-title-ii-regulation-of-broadband-and-wireless-would-be-comparable/

It's not me, it's the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that you have a quibble with, then.

Look up US Telecom Association v FCC (2016)

https://techliberation.com/2017/07/12/heres-why-the-obama-fcc-internet-regulations-dont-protect-net-neutrality/

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/06F8BFD079A89E13852581130053C3F8/$file/15-1063-1673357.pdf

What? The break the internet movement didn't mention that part? That censorship by ISPs was ok under net neutrality?

https://www.attpublicpolicy.com/consumer-broadband/the-surprising-to-me-narrowness-of-the-d-c-circuits-title-ii-decision/