Technology Futures

Major sites on the Internet are displaying either a black banner (e.g. Google) or are completely blacked out, meaning there is no access to site content today (e.g. Wikipedia). The two bills (SOPA is the House version, PIPA is the Senate version) are appallingly bad, as they toss due process out the window and give unelected bureaucrats the right to shut down any site in the U.S. without any actual proof of a copyright violation--all that is needed is an unfounded accusation. But wait! Like a Ginzu knife ad, there is more! If the site is hosted outside the U.S., and many, if not most of the actual counterfeit and bootleg content sites are, bureaucrats can order every single U.S. Web site to remove all links to the offending site.

Really? Really?

How?

This is what has been missing in the whole SOPA discussion: enforcement. If SOPA is passed, the Federal government will have to create a whole new bureaucracy--let's call it what is is, the U.S. Bureau of Net Police. The Net Police will be responsible for swooping down on bloggers, business Web sites, community network-supported discussion boards, and all sorts of other entirely innocent and useful Web sites and forcing them to remove links. How will they do this, you ask? Well, my guess is they will start with enormous fines, say $1,000/day for each offending link, and if you aren't quick enough, Net Police SWAT teams will show up, toss a few flash bang grenades through your door, confiscate anything that looks like computer, arrest you, and toss you in jail. All because your Quilting Club site accidentally linked to some offshore site selling bootleg fabric.

But don't worry...lawmakers have assured us that this is not the "intent" of the law. So what could go wrong?

Netflix, despite their clumsy handling of price changes, is not stupid. Somewhere along the way, they noticed they could pay outsized royalty fees to the studios every time someone streamed a TV show, or they could just produce their own TV shows and KEEP ALL THE MONEY.

Netflix has cut a deal with Fox to restart the cult favorite TV show Arrested Development, which has been off the air for almost five years. Fox is certainly getting a cut of the profits, but it is surely much less than if Netflix was not involved in financing the venture.

I talked to someone recently who was worried about the complexity of set top boxes needed for some IP TV services. The set top box is going the way of the dodo, and that's good news, because the boxes are a pain in the neck for both customers and IP TV providers.

The whole TV model is collapsing faster than even I imagined, and the cable companies don't have a strategy for saving their business.

The New York Times has an excellent article on the now almost two decades old digital divide problem. Where the digital divide was once "who has dial up access and who doesn't," it is now "who has real high speed access and who doesn't?"

The article does a good job of outlining the challenges that face communities, including the citizens and businesses that find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide. Of particular note is this:

"...it is hard to get a college degree from a remote location using wireless. Few people would start a business using only a wireless connection."

Fiber is the long term technology solution for both wired business and residential access as well as improved wireless and mobility access; what everyone forgets is that wireless networks have to move data and voice traffic onto the wired network, and robust open access fiber networks make wireless networks work better and makes wireless less expensive..