Blog: IP

Apple's iPhone is being released today amid tremendous anticipation and publicity. Several people have asked me if I'm going to buy one. But despite the great innovation it represents in mobile technology, the iPhone is also a step backward for some of the worst practices of the mobile industry, and I'm not planning to get one.

The phone will only work on AT&T's network, unlike other GSM phones, making it impossible for a customer to lawfully purchase it and then connect it to another GSM network in the U.S. (T-Mobile) or any GSM system overseas. This is the same AT&T that recently announced its intention to built technology to spy on its customers on behalf of the RIAA and MPAA.

AT&T will charge an early termination fee if you cancel service, even though they don't subsidize the phone at all, despite the widespread claim in the mobile industry that the purpose of the ETFs is to recoup their cost of providing a free or discounted phone with activation.

And worst of all, the iPhone doesn't allow third party applications at all - even worse than Verizon's practice, the previous worst, of requiring all application writers to go through an arduous approval process and pay high costs to Verizon. The iPhone does allow AJAX Web apps to run on the phone's Safari browser, which ameliorates much of the problem, but that has many limits, most of which aren't yet known. Will the apps be able to access the camera or microphone? (Porbably not.) Will they be able to take advantage of the innovative input gestures like zooming by moving fingers closer or farther? Access the address book? Save files locally? Apple could have built an API for developers, but they've never been particularly interested in fostering a development community around their technology.

Many defenders of wireless industry practices like early termination fees and locking argue that if consumers really cared about these things, they wouldn't purchase phones and plans with them. Well, I'm not purchasing an iPhone. And I hope you won't either.

Working Assets Wireless has launched a campaign to pressure Steve Jobs to unlock the iPhone for any network and has done a terrific job of building awareness of Apple's and AT&T's anti-innovation, anti-consumer practices. I encourage you to sign their petition, and most of all, don't buy an iPhone.

The field of computer science, at base, is about efficiency. Algorithms are evaluated based on the time they take to run - "big O notation", using formulas like O(n²) or O(n log n) telling how much time it takes to accomplish a task based on the size of the input. Programmers love to optimize systems, to make them run faster and better and more reliably. And one of the great joys of computer engineering, unlike, say, architecture or bridge building, is that if something doesn't work optimally, it's often not that expensive to simply rewrite it.

It's easy to think government ought to work the same way. After all, government is simply a social construct, governed by a set of rules (laws) just as a computer program governs a machine's behavior. (Larry Lessig famously wrote how "code is law".) If some aspect of government isn't working, why can't we just reprogram it?

Unfortunately, government is not just a socially programmed system executing a set of legal instructions, but it's a complex one with lots of dependencies. In software, you might choose to simply rewrite your code, but you may be running it on an operating system you didn't write, with an application server you didn't write, accessing a database you didn't write. (If they're open source, you can try to submit patches, but they won't always be accepted). Or maybe your client needs you to integrate your code with some legacy system written decades ago on an IBM mainframe in FORTRAN.

When dealing with a system we can't fix, we try sending it data and seeing what it will do. If I call this function, this happens. If I put that data there, that happens. Software engineers start acting like biochemists - if the cell's concentration of ions is such-and-such, then the cell will exhibit so-and-so behavior. You can complain about the cell or curse the people who wrote the FORTRAN code, but you can't reason with these systems and explain to them why they're wrong.

To get results, we must treat government similarly. Think of Congress as a black box that reacts to various stimuli. Send them ten thousand letters from citizens in their districts about an issue, and they'll pay attention. Get a lot of people to give money to their challenger, and they'll think long and hard before voting against your point of view. Make it clear that voters care about an issue, and they'll care, too.

People on Capitol Hill like to think they're impartial stewards of the country, thinking dispassionately about the Right Thing to Do. But usually there's no consensus on what that right thing is. And when people in Congress do the wrong thing, it's easy to get frustrated about their backward thinking. Ed Felten, a terrific advocate for engineers, wrote a clever post rightly excoriating Rep. Howard Berman for saying he'd consulted "all the interested parties" on patent reform legislation when in truth he'd only consulted all of the Beltway lobbying groups, not citizens. Many commenters chimed in that politicians only listen to the groups that give them money and "know which master they are serving."

Back when Berman was appointed chair of the House IP Subcommittee, Larry Lessig wrote a scathing critique of the Democrats, newly in the majority. "'Radical' changes in Washington always have this Charlie Brown/Lucy-like character (remember Lucy holding the football?): it doesn't take long before you realize how little really ever changes in DC. Message to the Net from the newly Democratic House? Go to hell." Lessig saw Berman's appointment as a rejection of the blogs and activist groups on the Net that regained them the majority.

Felten is right that Berman wasn't considering the public interest. Lessig was right that the leadership wasn't considering Net activists' concerns when appointing him in the first place. But simply saying that on a blog is like saying that a cancerous cell shouldn't be dividing so darn much. True, but we don't just talk about it, we develop chemotherapy and radiation and drugs to stop it. Instead of just blogging or whining on comments, we need to be developing antibodies to the special interest groups. The ordinary citizens, who Congress isn't listening to, need to make themselves heard, by writing letters, making phone calls, signing petitions, giving money, and voting.

We know it works. Just look at Net Neutrality, an issue that most people still don't understand. But a coalition of groups from Free Press to MoveOn to the Christian Coalition worked together and didn't just talk, they bombarded Congress with advocacy. And it got results. Several major Presidential candidates and the Congressional leadership came out in support of Net Neutrality. The stimulus was strong enough, and the response meaningful. That fight is far from over, but it shows what citizens can do when they take action.

Next time you read about the latest assault on Internet freedom, don't just blog about it. To Lessig, Felten, Cory Doctorow, and all the other great bloggers, don't just write about how much it sucks, direct people to get involved to fix it. Encourage them to join or give to groups like Save the Internet, Free Press, Public Knowledge, EFF, or the political action commitee I founded, IPac, as well as many more.

For a long time everyone complained bitterly about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior and its operating system dominance. Then some hackers got together, enlisted more hackers, and created an alternative so good that most Web sites don't run on Microsoft software and (coupled with several more innovations) some people say "Microsoft is dead." We can make the IP extremists' and the information gatekeepers' positions dead in Washington, too.

Larry Lessig is speaking at the PDF conference this morning, talking about his campaign to open up the content from the upcoming political debates. He showed a variety of innovative remixes of political content - Jon Stewart conducting a debate between President George W. Bush and 2000 Presidential candidate, Texas Governor Gerge W. Bush, a Paul Wolfowitz parody of "The Office", a love song between Bush and Blair, and the Obama 1984 video.

These remixes of political culture are a tremedous step forward in the ability of citizens to participate in political speech, but they require the ability for creators to use clips of public figures from the commercial media. And while Comedy Central has plenty of lawyers to defend Jon Stewart's right to do this, others don't. NBC attempted to block Robert Greenwald from using a clip of Bush, and the reason they gave? "It's not very flattering to the President." While they backed off this particular terrible excuse, media organizations continue to assert an absolute right to control all content.

Barack Obama and John Edwards have answered the call to open up debate content. Obama wrote, "The Internet has enabled an extraordinary range of citizens to participate in the political dialogue around this election. . . . We, as a Party, should do everything that we can to encourage this participation. . . . Rhere is no reason that this particular class of content needs the protection [of copyright]. We have incentive enough to debate. The networks have incentive enough to broadcast those debates."

Obama's words are terrific not only for their sentiment but also for their choice of themes - he mentions incentives, the fundamental goal of copyright. Where copyright creates incentives to create, it is performing a public good. Where, as in the case of debates, it instead blocks creativity and innovation, it is a harm and has no place in that particular context.

Senator Chris Dodd has also called for opening up the debate content to citizens, as has retired Republican Congressman Robert Livingston. Hillary Clinton has not spoken up on this issue, nor have the major Republican candidates.

I'm starting a candidate scorecard on issues of innovation. Here's the scorecard so far (For space, I'm only mentioning candidates where we know their positions, or who are in the top tier of national polls):

Candidate	Free Debates
Democrats
Obama	A+
Edwards	A
Dodd	A
Clinton	???
Republicans
Giuliani	???
McCain	???
Romney	???

Apple gets huge plaudits for each product it releases - sleek design, simple user interface, powerful features. But Apple's products are also built on another basic principle: do everything their way.

Apple has never played well with others. Sales of PCs surpassed those of Macs when IBM licensed the rights to build PC clones while Apple did not, and when the PC made it easier for software developers to control more PC functions than the Mac did. They only tolerate add-on products that interoperate with the iPod. And the new iPhone, despite its initial chorus of praise, looks to be one of the least flexible devices of its kind.

An article in today's New York Times, "Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs," discusses the extreme restrictions Apple forces upon its users with music they buy at the iTunes store. In fact, the article reveals, Canadian music publisher Nettwerk allows stores like eMusic to sell songs by leading artists such as Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan without DRM restrictions, but Apple keeps the DRM on for its own purposes.

Terry McBride, Nettwerk's chief executive, said that the artists initially required Apple to use copy protection, but that this was no longer the case. At this point, he said, copy protection serves only Apple's interests. Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, agreed, saying copy protection "just locks people into Apple." He said he had recently asked Apple when the company would remove copy protection and was told, "We see no need to do so."

DRM isn't the only limitation on the iPhone. Despite the ability for GSM customers generally to switch their phones from one provider to another by swapping SIM cards, Apple has apparently gone to great lengths to force buyers of its phone to use Cingular. And Steve Jobs doesn't intend to allow third-party applications on the iPhone either. Continuing the pattern of previous Apple products, it's clear that if Steve Jobs had his way, there would just be Apple and a bunch of consumers, no developers pushing the envelope of what technology can do.

How does Jobs justify this control-freak behavior? He spouts the same reliability excuses wireless companies use to keep their networks closed off - "Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up." But the Internet doesn't go down when some application messes up. It's entirely possible to design a network that's robust enough to deal with misbehaving devices. AT&T made the same argument to preserve their monopoly in phone manufacture in the early days of the telephone system.

Innovation happens most when it's easy for someone to improve a piece of an existing system, and plug that in. Since anyone can write software for a personal computer, software developers can give you the ability to do something on your computer even if the computer manufacturer didn't think of it. Many phones have the same flexibility. Steve Jobs doesn't like that world. He'd rather you just bought your devices from Apple, and they do only what Apple lets you do. I'd rather decide for myself, and many consumers will feel the same way. And many observers believe that this will ultimately cripple the iPhone's growth just as it did for the Macintosh twenty years ago.

Via the Freakonomics blog, Canadian musician Jane Siberry lets fans downloading songs choose whether to pay, and how much. There are four options for every song: A gift from Jane ($0), Standard price (whatever it would sell for on regular services, usually $0.99), Pay now (prompting the user to enter a price), or Pay later (allowing a free download and asking for money later).

Jane also posts statistics for individual songs and aggregate. The most people (46%) choose to pay later, and 14% pay more than the suggested price, while only 8% pay less. While record companies insist that putting downloaders in jail is the only way to get people to pay for goods of value, respect, at least in this case, can do a lot.

Not only are Canadians really good musicians, they seem to be more sensible about copyright, too.

Some very creative folks remixed the V for Vendetta trailer and Sesame Street to create this phenomenally clever parody, "C for Cookie".

Watch it, it's hilarious.

(But I can't help but think: in a world where all computers are crippled so that they can't modify downloaded digital content, or where no rights exist to use trademarks even in fair use, this act of creativity might be impossible or illegal, and might we end up living in Sutler's or Oscar's world after all?)

Nice job hosting the Oscars, but what was up with the repeated refences to "pirating" and "stealing" music and movies? Did AMPAS put you up to it? Did they say, Jon, you can make whatever jokes you want, but you have to make sure to slip in our political positions on copyright as well. It feels really slimy.

It's fine for moviemakers to make social comment with their craft (this year's movies did in spades), and I guess the whole point of the Oscars is to generate more viewership for the movie industry, but for the industry to use the awards show to promote its own profit agenda is like the press writing biased articles about their own business disputes, the way the AP published an article entitled "Democrats caught in own Web spinning after chiding GOP" about a little disagreement over the NY State Democratic Committee's use of news on its Web site.

They also managed to slip in a dig or two about how everyone ought to watch movies on the big screen (where they make more profit). Can't the movie industry celebrate filmmaking and resist lobbying at the same time?

Last week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the "Broadcast Flag" and "Audio Flag," a set of proposals by the MPAA and RIAA that would stifle innovation by giving content holders a virtual veto over new technologies and existing user rights.

But Senator Stevens, the 82-year old committee chairman from Alaska, surprised the audience by announcing that his daughter had bought him an iPod, and suddenly Stevens had a much greater understanding of the many ways innovative technology can create choice for consumers. Content industry representatives at the hearing found themselves answering much tougher questions than they typically receive.

When I read about this in ths news, I immediately, thought, wouldn't it be great if more Senators owned iPods? Someone should give them to the Senators on the committee! Rather than wait for every Senator's daughter, over the weekend the team at IPac put together a campaign Your Senator Needs an iPod to raise money to buy a video iPod for the campaigns of Senators who work on legislation affecting technology. We're going to pre-load each one with examples of the cultural richness made possible by sharing and collaboration - public domain content, Creative Commons content, and audio messages about the importance of balanced copyright policy. It will be engraved with the words "listen to the people." And it will arrive at each Senator's campaign office with a letter of explanation and a list of all the people who helped pay for it.

The campaign went up Tuesday with a link on Boing Boing, and quickly spread through the blogosphere with links on Fark, Engadget, Ars Technica, Digg, and many other blogs, especially Apple enthusiast blogs everywhere (makes sense).

So far, we've raised enough for 4 iPods and are almost up to a fifth.