The 463: Inside Tech Policy

The Ringtone Money Grab

We've written about the complex, yet incredibly important, world of music publishing and licensing (see:  Bigger than Grokster?, The Complexities of Music and Music Publishers Leave Dark Age).  Shockingly, despite our efforts, the impact of Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Code has yet to be referenced on The OC or even debated on Meet the Press. 

This doesn't mean that there isn't furious and even interesting battles happening behind the scenes with the labels, publishers, performance rights organizations and the music distribution intermediaries.  Naturally, this action is being driven by serious interest in making as much money as possible in new, opening digital markets. The current (and seminal) gold rush is the $4 billion dollar-plus ringtone market.

American Lawyer currently has an excellent article on why (free registration required).  An excerpt:

RFID: Satan's Technology (and here we thought it was Grand Theft Auto)

Sometimes we're wrong (see:  "Missing:  All That Post-Grokster Legislation").  But, sometimes we're lucky enough to be right. Unfortunately, in this case, this isn't a good thing for the tech industry.  See "Is That a Microchip in Your Pants?".  Here we provide perspective and a short history of RFID and the technology's seemingly intractable collisions with privacy advocates.  After the very dumb use of RFID chips to track children at a Northern California school, we feared that if the industry didn't manage the political and perception processes well, bad things could happen.  They are.  As Tom Foremski notes at SiliconValleyWatcher today:  "The biggest danger to Silicon Valley is that it could become illegal to innovate here."

Indeed.  In what should be a wake-up slap, a normally reasonable California state senator from Palo Alto (yes, you read right) has introduced legislation that would place a moratorium on the use of RFID chips in numerous government applications.  Originally, the proposed law called for a ban, but the bill has been watered down a bit since it's original introduction (and after easily passing the state senate 29-7).  Still, many in the tech industry feel that the bill will impede innovation and wrongly punishes a technology instead of bad user behavior.

Mobile BitTorrent

From MocoNews.net:

BitTorrent, the P2P file sharing system,  is going mobile too. Adisasta Software, a small Bali-based company, releases WinMobile Torrent, a version designed to work on Windows Mobile Pocket PCs. The software works on any device sporting the Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2003/2003 SE, and it would eventually work on the future Windows 5 platform.

Windows 5 was released this year by Microsoft to work on advanced 3G phones.  At least one phone has been created to work with the platform.  Could this be the harbinger of the "pPod" we've mentioned?

Also, as we've noted in this space before, mobile P2P will exacerbate the natural tension between  the telco and content industries.

IPTV Legislative Fight Previewed

TV over IP may come eventually to a television set near you, but not before a regulatory fight in the U.S. Congress.

It's a fight pitting two giant industries against each other -- cable television carriers vs. the largest telecommunications carriers -- with the two sides arguing over the rules that will govern competition for traditional television and advanced video and broadband services offered to U.S. residents.

This from a Grant Gross NetworkWorld story on a D.C forum that previewed the IPTV legislative battle.  Gross outlines the battle:

Getting Perpendicular

The size of hard drives for iPod sized devices could rocket as high as 200 GB by 2007.  How?

Perpendicular storage, of course.  The geeks at Tom's Hardware Guide explain:

The Short History & Long Future of Tech Policy

463 has a column in Text 100's newsletter HyperText on where tech policy has been in the Internet era, where it's headed and how smart technology companies should respond. Click here to read the full version.  Or click below for the conclusion....

Text 100 is a leading international technology public relations agency and one of 463's communications partners.

Roberts: There's Always a Tech Policy Angle

The Legislating IP blog and friends sift through serious tea leaves in attempts to predict how a Judge John Roberts would treat IP and Internet law if confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice.

Intel Speaks on Muni Broadband

Despite the heat of the issue in 2005, much of the tech industry has shied from taking firm positions on whether municipalities should be allowed by states to operate broadband networks (be they wireline or wireless).

A Senate bill (S. 1294) has Intel's Communications Policy Director Peter Pitsch speaking out as reported by Technology Daily (subscription) and reposted by Red Herring:

Missing: All That Post-Grokster Legislation

Okay.  We admit it.  We were wrong. We thought that there would be a veritable rush on Congress the minute the Grokster decision was handed down to codify around the margins of ruling.  We thought that Congress would feel it necessary to get laws on the books pronto to codify how content owners get paid in a free-wheeling P2P world, how those elusive, but well known "bad-actors" get punished and how innovation and technology can continue to flourish within any sort of newly created statutory structure.

We also thought that the RIAA and MPAA would pull an Induce Act and be the first to write a draft that would be so extreme that any compromise would be decidedly tilted in the favor of the entertainment industry.

Yet, the congressional silence has been deafening since last month's ruling.

And this is just fine with the entertainment industry as revealed in a Congressional Internet Caucus roundtable held yesterday in DC and covered by CNET and InternetNews....   

Dems on CAFTA:Where's the Pro Free-Trade Stance?

A very important issue to the high tech industry, the Central American and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement, was approved by the Senate last week, but faces an uncertain future in the House.  This agreement is good for the technology industry and deserves to be passed.  Thanks to folks like Senator Feinstein who voted in favor in the Senate and hope that members of both parties in the House see the light.   

A good story in the Washington Post speaks of political dynamics.

Also, a great website resource is www.uscafta.org