The 463: Inside Tech Policy

The Future of The Internet Was Posh For a Night

Katie Hallen -- Arianna Huffington and Melanie Ellison threw a posh soiree for Berkman Center for Internet Society Co-Founder Jonathan Zittrain this past Saturday night in honor of his new book, The Future of the Internet – And How To Stop It.

Held at the Ellison’s breathtaking, ubermodern Pacific Heights home overlooking Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, the party was well attended by Silicon Valley celebrities including Melanie’s husband, Larry Ellison, Larry Page and Craig Newmark (sporting an Obama pin). Others included Mayor Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, Phil Bronstein, Yves Behar (designer of the XO laptop), USA Today’s Jon Swartz (co-author of the cybersecurity caper Zero Day Threat), and Stanford Law’s Joshua Cohen (leading John Rawls philosopher and editor of the Boston Review). And, myself.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kara Swisher posted this fun video capturing the evening and thoughts on the book. For more, Zittrain discusses the book tonight on Charlie Rose.

The Berkman Center is a 463 client.

The Future of Content & Control (May 12 Event @eBay)

If you have an interest in tech policy and are in the Bay Area, than you need to be at eBay HQ next Monday for what should be a very interesting event.  The free forum is a production of the Media Access Project and is the inaugural event in a series of conferences that are designed to give the technology community an opportunity to inform the presidential campaigns about the issues important to the future of American innovation.

These events are sponsored by Google, Microsoft, eBay, AT&T, and, my firm, 463 Communications.

All the info on Monday's (10:00 a.m to 2:30 p.m.) line-up is here.  Please contact Brooke Rae-Hunter if you are interested in attending (seating is limited).

Wishing We Were There

I can count on one hand the times that I wish I was in LA instead of San Francisco. I'm currently wishing I was at the Tech Policy Conference down south. Sadly, a crazy confluence of work forced me to cancel a panel opportunity and also made me miss seeing all my industry friends there.

Andrew Noyes is there and Andrew Feinberg is indefatigably posting.

Stop Signs

Katie Hallen -- About 150 tech geeks and policy wonks gathered at Google’s new D.C. office last Thursday to celebrate The Future of the Internet – And How To Stop It, Jonathan Zittrain’s new book out in April. The soiree, cosponsored by Harvard Law’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Family Online Safety Institute, featured a tripleheader – Zittrain plus Stanford Law’s Larry Lessig and one of the Internet fathers, Vint Cerf.

In the audience, it was button-down shirts and pinstripes intermingled with satirical Ts and washed jeans. In a way, the eclectic dress of Capitol Hill meets Silicon Valley provided visual symbolism for Zittrain’s book, which contrasts the Internet’s openness of yesteryear with the rising tide of lawmakers, courts, and even tech companies seeking to lock it down.

Zittrain argues that it was the “smiley geeks,” like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who helped set the Internet and home computers on a “generative” path that allowed virtually anyone (who could code software) to innovate, giving us new Web browsers, free encyclopedias, Internet phone calls, etc. Generative systems have thrived because they lack central control and depend on the goodwill of their participants.

Today, though, the generative model is threatened with the rise of locked appliances like the iPhone, Xbox and TiVo that prohibit innovation to their platforms from anyone except the manufacturer. Why the lock down? In large part, to protect the consumer from hackers seeking to wreak havoc and purloin sensitive data.

Lessig projected that a “9/11-type event over the Internet” where hackers take control and cause a massive shutdown could very well happen and warned the government likely has a Patriot Act for the Internet waiting in the wings – a prediction that made several geeks sitting near me at the event visibly cringe.

The answer? For one, a democratic Internet where constituencies are allowed to police themselves and encourage moderation within a system that thrives on decentralization. For more, the book is out April 14.

The Berkman Center at Harvard Law School is a 463 client.
Photo by Grant Hamilton

This Week in DC Tech Policy

Lots of interesting tech policy events and hearings this week (courtesy of National Journal's Daybook --sub required). After the jump....

POTUS 2.0

President Tron

As, we saw in a poll, voters at least want their next president to be as conversant in the Internet as they are. The kickoff panel at yesterday's Congressional Internet Caucus conference (The State of the Net) provided an opportunity for some of the presidential campaigns to show their geek creds. The panel focused on how the next administration should manage and prioritize technology policy. It featured representatives (some ostensible, some actual) representatives of the Clinton, McCain, Obama and Giuliani (RIP) campaigns. Here's GCN's report on it.

My quick take: The new boss may not be the same as the old boss, but, at the very least, the rhetoric will sound strikingly similar. That is, the Mom and apple pie issues were covered extensively. R&D, science and tech education, clean tech, and broadband all were heaped praise.

Hillary's guy, Thomas Kalil, from the Center for American Progress and a Clinton 1.0 official, played right from the classic "Innovation Agenda" playbook shared by many. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most of these "no brainer" policies have failed to connect to the right synapse at the right time in the last eight years to fully please many techies. An Administration and a few different shades of Congresses can all look in the mirror.

Obama's rep was a VC named Julius Genachowski. He's been a friend of Obama since they went to law school together. Genachowski mentioned Obama's fairly detailed innovation plan that he unveiled at Google a couple months ago [we wrote about it here] and touched on the big themes, namely, that the premise for the plan is that tech is essential to being part of the solution for almost every major issue that is important in this campaign. However, former congressman Tom Taucke and current Verizon policy boss complained in his later keynote that no one on the campaigns were pushing this exact salient point. (Tangent: How would anyone know? While flying out for the conference, I flipped back and forth between CNN and MSNBC's coverage of the campaign and think I got about three minutes of policy substance out of five hours of frothing horse race nonsense.)

Genachowski also noted Obama's call for a federal CTO, but didn't get into specifics on what the roll of this official would play beyond noting that the CTO could help fix "market failures" in key sectors that could spur private tech investments. And, he did echo Obama's call for using tech to create government transparency.

McCain's man, Doug Holtz-Eakin, said that Mr. Campaign Finance Reform is also a big supporter of using tech for transparency. In fact, he was so transparent, that he he let everyone know that through the magic of the Internet, the senator raised $500,000 from Midnight to the morning in his post-Florida glow. Eakin took the only pro-free trade stance for the day (which we highly commend) and called to end the annual R&D tax credit extension "charade". He was notably "on message" when it came to immigration rules that impact the industry: "We will secure the borders before engaging in any other immigration reform."

Someone close to McCain mentioned to me the other day that he thinks that the senator is unnecessarily playing his business and tech creds down. Mitt may have "managed" millions of dollars, but, bygone, Big Mac was the Chairman of the pretty-darn important Senate Commerce Committee. And, as this source said, he didn't punt all of his work to staff. He got his fingernails dirty on all sorts of business critical issues. Yesterday, I don't remember Holtz-Eakin ever so much as mentioning this role and McCain didn't either in the Republican debate.

All and all, an interesting panel that said all the right things. Can't wait to get those right things done.

At the State of the Net Conference Today

First, apologies for the relatively sparse blogging this month. I'm quickly learning that when you are a new dad, "blogging time" finds a way to get replaced. Things will pick it back up again very soon...

Second, I'm at the State of the Net conference today in DC and will be moderating a panel on online video regulation. If you are a reader and at the show, please come by, say hello and tell me how you would like to see this space improved.

State of the Net Conference Looking Quite Interesting

The crew at the Congressional Internet Caucus are assembling an excellent line-up for their annual State of the Net Conference on January 30 in DC. And, I say this not only because I happen to be moderating a panel on Internet video policy.

Come to this and grab your self a piece of gab pie chock full of copyright, spectrum, privacy and broadband policy. The POTUS 2.0 panel promises to be very interesting. It will be a first discussion about how the next president should approach tech policy and will have reps from the McCain and Obama campaigns.

The current agenda and panelists are after the jump... My panel is close to being finalized, but let me know if you have a genius suggestion that we can't pass up. And, hope to see you in DC for this...

Internet Privacy Panel: Special Invite to Readers of The 463

Readers of this blog are an educated, connected and inquisitive bunch. And, we appreciate your visits here. Therefore, I only think it fair to extend a special invite from time to time to you.

For those of you in the Bay Area, on December 12, there will be an excellent panel on the many Big privacy issues of the day. The panel features some of the most important Chief Privacy Officers in the business

The panel will be moderated by Dr. Moira Gunn, host of NPR's Tech Nation, and feature the CPOs from Sun Microsystems, the State of California, Agilent and Intuit. (And very likely one or two other special guests).

All the big issues will be hit. Legislation, social networking's impact, electronic health care records, international harmonization. You name it. And, if you come, you can ask about your favorite privacy issue.

Who:
*Jim Allen, Chief Privacy Officer, Agilent
*Michelle Dennedy, Chief Privacy Officer, Sun Microsystems
*Dr. Moira Gunn, Host of NPR's Tech Nation
*Barbara Lawler, Chief Privacy Officer, Intuit
*Joanne McNabb, CIPP/G, Chief, California Office of Privacy Protection
*Additional panelists to be confirmed

Where:
Sun's Menlo Park, CA campus
10 Network Circle, Menlo Park, CA 94025

When:
Wednesday, December 12
10:30am – 11:00am Arrival and informal discussion
11:00am – 12:15pm Panel
12:15pm – 1:30pm Lunch and 1:1 conversations with CPOs

***Please RSVP ASAP to me***
SPACE WILL BE LIMITED, and I may have to cut off 463's invites at some point.

TechNet Innovation Summit Wrap

TechNet held its Innovation Summit yesterday at UC Berkeley to a crowd of a few hundred. Man about the globe Charlie Rose moderated panels that included TechNet co-founders John Doerr and John Chambers, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, former Clinton economic adviser Laura Tyson and more.

Investor's Business Daily wrote on the first panel:

With the Iraq War, terrorism and health care dominating the race for the presidency, the trio said they fear politicians are paying too little attention to bedrock economic issues that hinge on U.S. competitiveness and innovation.

Increasing productivity growth by just a few percentage points, Chambers said, would create new jobs and boost middle-class incomes without fueling inflation.

Panelists also pointed out it will take innovation to end our reliance on foreign-produced and greenhouse-gas emitting energy.

Innovation starts with education, Tyson said. Too many students are dropping out of school, and too few are studying math and science.

Chambers called the primary education system "broken," citing statistics that show other countries outpacing the U.S. in engineering graduates by a 10-to-1 margin.

Other coverage: San Francisco Chronicle, IDG, Dan Farber.