I bought another drone.
Those who know me best will look at me a bit oddly for this: “Wait, seriously? Don’t you have a bunch of drones already? Didn’t you buy like 6 drones from someone at one point?”
Well, yeah, I did. But none of them fly right now. And the requirements to fix them were something I kept meaning to get around to
I have, for many years, had a strong feeling against using advertisements on my content in order to make money.
On LiveJournal, on Flickr, and on other websites that offer me the option, I have long done my best to minimize the ads that other people have to suffer through.
One of the tools that I’ve seen many times, but never actually figured out how to use, is blender. Blender is the only 3d editor that I’ve ever really seen — I know there are others, like 3D Studio, and the like, but they cost the big bucks, and as a hobbyist, Blender is much more style.
The reason I’ve never actually figured blender out isn’t for lack of trying. I’ve often wanted to make just a minor edit to something in a 3d model, especially since I got the 3d printer: To edit or remove chunks of something I don’t need, to remove one piece of a multiple piece object, etc. The reason I’ve never figured out Blender is that it works completely differently from almost every other piece of software I’ve ever worked with.
While working on my next 3D model — a print of Kresge Auditorium — I had a problem: The day that I flew over the building, there was an event going on outside, with a tent and archways covering one of the doorways. This meant that my image had holes in the front, which were getting in the way of the 3d printer correctly slicing the model.
In the past, I’ve just let these things be — but this model was relatively simple, and had only this one really significant problem: I figured it was as good of a chance as any to learn Blender.
Mastodon is Pretty Similar To Twitter
If you are a Twitter user, the overall Mastodon experience will feel pretty familiar to you. It’s a microblogging platform. You have a box to write words in; and a timeline of words you read. You have a notifications tab. You can reply to the posts other people have made, and you can favorite or boost (retweet) things. The sum total of the day to day experience is likely to not be hugely different than using Twitter.
Mastodon Accounts Are Not Segregated By Topic
There is a common misunderstanding that Mastodon accounts are segregated by topic. They are not. The content you can see is not separated based on the “instance” you are on: you can (and will!) follow people from a wide mix of servers, and content from other servers can be seen in your timeline (and even from people you don’t follow, you will see them as “boosts”/retweets). Some things this means:
You are not expected to post only about a specific topic based on the instance/server you are on. The “identity” attached to a server has approximately the same weight on content expectations as your Twitter username.
You do not need to worry that your server will limit the content that you see.
You can follow anyone, from any server. They can follow you, regardless of what server you’re on. You are not entering a silo.
Many people and UIs encourage the use of Mastodon servers that are topic-based. This offers a little value, in the same way that getting added to a Twitter Group DM of people who care about a topic does: that is, it can be a little bit of an identity helper, and let you find some people to connect with more easily, but largely doesn’t impact your day to day experience. However, you do still have to choose a server to be on.
You should choose a Mastodon instance based on trust
Because you can see the content of anyone from any server, and they can see the content from yours, the “topic” of the server is less important than trusting the people who are running it. There are a handful of different elements of trust that matter:
Other individuals or (or entire servers) can block an entire server from their feeds. This means that you don’t want to be on a server that is seen as being a “bad actor” in the community. Check the moderation policies and rules for the server to make sure that they indicate admins who are thoughtful about moderating content.
Is the server going to be up 6 days from now? 6 weeks from now? 6 months from now? 6 years from now? Mastodon is experiencing a serious influx of users; are your instance admins relatively capable (or willing to ask for help)? Are they prepared to be around to help fix the server if it goes down - or are you okay with it going down for a weekend, and know it will come back later?
Do you trust them to take appropriate care with your account? Things like “messages limited to followers” (or “only visible to those tagged”, the equivalent of “Direct” messages) are visible to server admins, as are details like your email address. Ensure your server is run by folks who are not going to abuse that access.
It’s Mostly Okay To Move Later
Mastodon instances have a feature that lets you move your followers from one account to another. That means that I was able to move my followers from my @crschmidt@mastodon.social account account to my @crschmidt@better.boston account. You can also export and re-import the list of people you follow, so you can move the people you follow as well. If you make a mistake in where you set up camp, and want to move, your social graph can come with you.
Your post content, on the other hand, will remain in the old location. So long as the server stays up, this probably isn’t a huge deal–most people aren’t going to reply to old content anyway, and it will still be accessible. But it does mean that people who reply to things I wrote on Mastodon before this month will be replying to “me” in a way I will never see. On the other hand, I’ve been posting on Twitter for 15 years, and the number of times when I get interactions on posts older than about two weeks is about twice a month, so this isn’t a huge problem.
In general, this means that moving does not mean abandoning your network; but will leave your posts behind. Given how microblogging works, this makes moving relatively low cost.
Does Local Instance Matter At All?
There are a few things that which server you’re on does influence.
Each instance has a “local” feed. This is a handy way to get started finding some new people. On smaller instances, this will be more meaningful than on larger instances.
The content that shows up in search will be limited to content that has made it to your instance for some reason or another. This means that things like searches for hashtags will be across “the content on the local server, and any content that anyone from the local server follows.”
Mastodon does not have a lot of experience to scaling to massive servers. Joining an instance with 250,000 active users is likely to be a bad experience. Instances with 1,000–20,000 active users have a much longer history and are likely practical.
The first of these is a feature: It’s a nice local discovery tool. The second of these is a limitation: it would be better if search was more federated and you didn’t get a different view of search from each server. The last of these is just a veiled warning to not join mastodon.social (or whatever the next “big instance” that comes after it) is.
Twitter Features You May Miss
Mastodon doesn’t have quote-tweeting. Usually people instead encourage for you to create a reply (possibly including some more context, since the original post won’t be as visible) and then boost your own reply.
Mastodon doesn’t have full-text search. Finding “That tweet I saw go by a couple days ago” will likely be impossible. Aggressive use of the bookmark feature may help you somewhat here.
Mastodon only has the “Latest” feed equivalent from Twitter, not the “Home” / algorithmic feed that is the default. As a regular use of both on Twitter, I think that people sometimes overestimate both the positive and negative impacts of algorithmic feeds. It does mean that your content will be influenced more heavily by who you follow, and what time of day you’re reading, and you are likely to see very popular content (with many boosts) more often than on Twitter.
Likes are not used to surface content to other people in your network, so if you want other people to see something, boost it, rather than liking it.
Engagement statistics on posts are only accurate on the “home” instance; that is, you need to open the post in a new webpage in order to actually see the stats. You will see accurate stats on your own posts, but don’t assume that you are seeing a full list of “who has boosted / faved this post”; the “ratio” that people talk about on Twitter largely isn’t visible by default on Mastodon.
Direct messaging doesn’t really exist as a first class feature. You can create a post which is limited to visibility of “people mentioned”. It is just a mention that only a limited number of people can see. Some UIs (including the main Mastodon web UI) surface this in a tab that says “Direct Messages”. But it’s not similar to most other DM platforms. There is no “Group Chat” equivalent.
Things You May Want To Know
People use hashtags more often. Hashtags are an explicit search signal: If you want something to be visible to other people in search, tagging it with a hashtag will be more likely to let them find it. However, most people don’t use search to find other things on Twitter, and they likely aren’t going to on Mastodon either; building up a stronger social network of people to share content is much more likely to be effective. “I hear that you’re supposed to use hashtags for things to be found here” is often said; I consider that to largely be a misunderstanding of the most likely way for people to discover content.
Hosting servers is not free. Twitter, overall, makes about $50/year/user in the US from advertising. Hosting Mastodon is more technically involved, and done at smaller scale, which means higher cost per user. Self-hosting an instance as a small user would probably cost you about $5-$10/month. While most servers at the moment are done on a volunteer basis in spare time and resources, you should look to your instance’s server pages and see if there are ways you can contribute, if you’re able.
Reporting posts will go to instance admins and moderators, who are largely volunteers; there is no “Mastodon moderators”, just other people like your volunteer instance admins who are going to deal with them.
You can block posts from an entire instance. Since instances are often grouped by interest, topic, or social community, this can be useful as a tool: while not every bot will be on the “botsin.space” instance, the majority of posts from that instance will be from bots, so you can block it rather than each account from that server individually.
Mastodon is still an early adopter community, and the growth in the past 2 months is drastically changing it. What this means is that there are still a lot of things that are evolving rapidly. The community has existed for more than 5 years, and there are some norms that existed for 4.5 years that are now evolving with a massive influx of new users.
Because Mastodon is an early adopter community that previously had a larger contingent of marginalized folks, there are some norms that focus those communities more, that it would be good to adhere to. These include the use of the “content warning”/content note feature (which hides words/photos behind a click-through; similar to “spoiler tagging” on some other platforms); doing more work to include image descriptions (which exist on Twitter, but are often skipped; try not to do that); and use of #TitleCaseHashTags, which make reading hashtags easier for screen readers. (Basically, because the community is still small, people are kinder than they will be as the community grows. Be one of the people making it more kind, not less.)
I’ve decided I should buy a bike.
I’ve been riding the Blue Bikes around Cambridge for a little more than a month — partially in response to the meltdown of the T — and I’ve come to the conclusion that biking in Cambridge is sufficiently useful and sufficiently safe that it’s a means of transport I should continue trying to use for some trips.
My intent is that this will be used primarily for city riding, with a possibility of using it on well-maintained recreational trails, but I’m not looking for a mountain bike or anything.
Ideally, I want something light, but I probably want multiple gears — Cambridge is largely flat, but biking through East Cambridge without gears would be a challenge. I have found that the Blue Bikes typically aren’t geared *high* enough: I often find myself looking for more power and not being able to get it. It’s like finding the perfect 슬롯 사이트 when you’re into online casinos and esports; you need the right features to enhance your experience, whether it’s bonuses, game availability, or payment methods. Similarly, the right bike should cater to my needs for a smooth and efficient ride, with the right gearing system to match the city’s varied demands.
I’m likely looking for used rather than brand new — I don’t need anything fancy. Based on my positive experiences with the Blue Bikes, a step through bike of some kind seems appropriate.
I’m not looking for heavy cargo capacity: I still have a car, and am still likely to use that for anything resembling heavy lifting. This will be for transporting me and nothing else that I can’t fit in a backpack.
Storage at work will likely be in the company bike cage; storage at home will likely be locked up in the backyard.
When describing the story-within-a-story of the original Moulin Rouge, a character describes it as “a magnificent, opulent, tremendous, stupendous, gargantuan, bedazzlement” — a series of adjectives that apply equally well to the stage adaptation currently playing at the Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston.
The show lives up to the standards set by the 2001 movie musical, engaging in a series of back to back musical mash-ups while the ensemble cast takes the stage, moving in more directions than can be counted at any given time. From the opening scenes, the audience is subjected to an overwhelming collection of bright lights, colorful costumes, and incredible choreography, moving the two dozen or so cast members around the stage in coordination.
The storyline wasn’t particularly original in 2001, and there’s nothing much changed in the musical adaptation: Christian [Aaron Tveit] is an aspiring songwriter from Ohio, come to seek love in the Parisian streets of Montmartre. After meeting Toulouse-Lautrec [Sahr Ngaujah], he heads to the Moulin Rouge to meet the lovely Satine [Karen Olivo], and convince her to help them put on a show at the Moulin Rouge. Together, they convince the club’s owner, Harold Zidler [Danny Burstein] and their financier, The Duke, who seeks Satine’s sole affections. Love triangle ensues, the show must go on, etc. etc.
The musical numbers are stunning, and performed amazingly well by the characters. Christian and Satine both provided amazing range to the eclectic mix of songs, from the Sound of Music to Elvis to Gaga. While a wide range the hits are brought back from the movie, a number of more modern tunes are brought in as well; adaptations of everything from Adele to Lady Gaga to the White Stripes. Fans of the original will find plenty of nostalgic callbacks, but the surprise mixing in of newer tracks clearly provided a new audience with plenty to look forward to. Finding a transition from spoken word or previously used track to a remix of an unexpected song often provided a chuckle of realization from the audience. Even old favorites, like the “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” mix brought forward from the movie, are updated with new tracks: in this case, bringing in additional notes from Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”. And the original ensemble numbers were among my favorite parts of the show: the “Bad Romance” flavored piece at the beginning of Act 2 (featuring not just Gaga, but a mix of 4 others, including Britney Spears “Toxic”) was an amazing set of visuals, and started Act 2 off with a bang.
Zidler, as our showman for the evening, leads us through much of the story, and plays more of a comic role than he did in the original. While in 2002 or 2003 I might have found this upsetting — my romantic streak let me put entirely too much importance in the Bohemian ideals espoused by the movie to let it be spoiled by explicit comedy — I felt it was a perfect fit. (The reality is that the story behind Moulin Rouge is slightly more vapid than I really would have granted in the past.) The note of comedy plays out throughout the show, and I think gives the production a different taste that makes it more enjoyable for the stage production.
The sets were a revelation, a testament to the theatrical magic that can make one truly know your real home value in terms of creative space and artistic expression. Even without being a theater expert, the visuals were astounding, employing optical illusions that lent an unexpected depth to the stage production. The nostalgia was palpable, with the dressing room inside an elephant providing many familiar features from the movie, including the heart-shaped window offering a quaint view of Parisian streets; the apartment in Montmartre was equally immersive, its decor perfectly in tune with its narrative purpose. And it seems my impressions align with the professionals; as a critic in the Boston Globe put it, “The production is as slick as it gets … Derek McLane’s sets are extravagant, ever-changing with a whimsical appearance of the Eiffel Tower”—a sentiment that confirms the shared appreciation of this visual feast.
The costumes were beautiful and ever changing, but all provided a sexual energy, matched by the choreography of the show. From the pre-show opening, with corseted dancers engaged in sensual contact as cage dancers, to the all-male can-can line at the very end, you’re intended to be overwhelmed by the visuals presented.
The show was spectacular, and as Zidler predicted years ago: I came out of the show “dumb with wonderment”. With enough callbacks to the source material to cover all the nostalgia I need, while maintaining a taste of new mixed in throughout, I came away overwhelmingly pleased with the experience. As an entrée into the world of pre-Broadway musicals, I couldn’t be happier with this show.
Moulin Rouge runs at the Emerson Colonial theater through August 19th.
Over social media over the past several weeks, I have noticed a lot of people upset about RAICES donations being used to fund the bonds of many detained refugees incarcerated in ICE facilities. I think that this frustration — while understandable — is fundamentally flawed, and wanted to share why I think that what RAICES is doing is exactly what they should be doing: that is, paying bonds directly to DHS is not some turnaround or publicity stunt, but rather, this is RAICES doing exactly what they said they would do.
Some background: RAICES is an immigrant advocacy legal org. They work with local lawyers to help provide legal support for immigrants, and in that role they provide a number of services, including paying bonds for some of those they work with. Prior to this year, they were relatively small — managing a few hundred thousand in annual donations — but recently saw a huge uptick in donations as the result of a number of highly visible public donations campaigns. In total, they received more than 20 million in donations in a period of just weeks — an absolutely enormous amount of money for a small organization like theirs to manage.
If RAICES was not a bond fund, these funds would languish for a *long time*, because managing millions of dollars of funds — something like 20x their previous operating budget! — is logistically a nightmare. (For example, a hurricane-related fund last year received $35M in funds targeted for use helping hurricane victims recover in Texas … and have managed to spend only $12M of it, with $23M languishing in an account that practically speaking may never be sent.) Most organizations are not set up to receive this much money! But thankfully, we all got lucky that this *one* singled out organization is so goddamn perfect for a ton of cash: paying bonds for people is literally the best way to ensure that they are reunited with their families.
Bonds are not actual money that goes to the government to keep. That is, the money paid to DHS does not somehow line the coffers of those imprisoning immigrants permanently: instead, the bond is a surety to make sure that the person in question gets to court, and is repaid by the court once they show up. For refugee cases, something like 97% of these cases do. And once they do that money goes back to RAICES… which can use it again for more immigrants.
The campaign page on Facebook was very clear about the intent: Quoting from a Guardian article on the topic, “The campaign page said all money raised was going to “directly fund the bond to get parents out of detention and reunited with their children while they await court proceedings””. The campaign was propagated all over Facebook, and was also advertised on other social media websites, including Youtube (with the help of websites like themarketingheaven.com). But unfortunately, the campaign wasn’t received well by the public.
Slate reviewed this effort in the midst of this massive amount of fundraising: Why Even Viral-Fundraising Skeptics Can Feel Good About Donating to RAICES. The article called this out as an absolutely lucky break in our furor of fundraising: This bond fund will not only serve to immediately get thousands of parents out of ICE detention and reunited with children, but this bond fund will likely serve to help ensure that not just the current batch of people, but thousands more every 3-6 months will be able to be reunited with family, not having to spend time in ICE facilities completely unnecessarily. And that’s the reason why I continued to encourage people to give money to them.
I’m sorry some people didn’t read the campaign they were giving money to, or felt tricked, but this bond fund is just an extremely excellent use of this money, which is going to help detained immigrants for years to come. We realistically couldn’t have found a better way to directly help those affected by such a program than this.
So, I have a popular YouTube video. (It’s not that popular anymore, but it was once.)
YouTube recommended I watch a video: Drone Crash, Fail & Win Compilation 2015, Part 3/3 (watch in 1080p).
So, I watched it, and was somewhat surprised to see a video I recognized in it: mine.
Now, this particular video is not licensed under a Creative Commons license. (The reason for this is that I have seen plenty of evidence that people misunderstand what creative commons *means*, and don’t bother to attribute — sometimes properly, sometimes at all — and I didn’t want to have to argue about it with people who were ripping off the video for their own personal profit.) This means that if someone wants to use the video in a way that isn’t allowed by fair use (or some other portion of copyright law), they need to obtain a license. Some people have obtained a license. In other cases, I’ve been able to convince people who were hosting the video themselves to instead embed the YouTube video. (All of the ad proceeds from the video are donated to the Mass Audubon Society, so this matters to me more than it otherwise would: I feel a responsibility to maximize the money that is donated because of this video..)
In the comments on the compilation video, someone said: “He has just stolen all the clips from other peoples videos without even asking them first. Only Creative Commons videos are free to use so its copyright theft!”
Now, this misunderstands the way copyright works a little bit — Creative Commons videos aren’t ‘free’ to use in the sense of freedom, they require specific requirements that still need to be met — but it’s generally reasonable: Reusing someone’s copyrighted content without a license *may be* copyright theft. But it isn’t when such use is allowed under fair use. (There are other cases too, but I think fair use is the most straightforward claim in this case.)
So, to that end, I replied with the following analysis of whether the 12 seconds of my video used in this compilation was a violation of my copyright. I welcome comments or feedback on ways in which you disagree with or support this analysis.
Purpose and character of the use: ‘whether the art aims to only “supersede the objects” of the original for reasons of personal profit.’ I don’t think that putting all these clips together creates a meaningful work of new art, and that it would fail the test for Purpose and Character of the use. This is not an educational video; there is no commentary; it’s done in no way other than to get eyeballs. (If there were no ads on the video, one could at least claim it wasn’t commercial in nature, which would act in its favor, but there are ads.) That said, the combination of all of these shots together certainly puts some pieces in a different light; that is, there is some creativity being applied. I don’t think it crosses the line
Nature of the copyrighted work: This is not documentation or news footage; it is not the case that the nature of the work is special in a way that would allow it to be meaningfully protected under fair use, as far as I can tell.
Amount and substantiality: This is the real question, and varies a lot depending on the video. For the Burj Khalifa video, there’s only ~2 seconds of video, and I would argue it could be reasonably said that this isn’t the substantive portion of the work. However, for the Hawk vs. Drone video (which is mine), the 12 seconds of selected video very much are the substantive portions of the video — in particular, that specific chunk of the video was exactly the same 14 second chunk of video that a national Nightly News station paid $850 for a license to. Since the Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. case in 1991, there has been a massive move towards licensing for music sampling, and this fits a similar role: I think that for some of these videos, there is clear evidence that the amount and substantiality prong is failed by this video.
Effect upon work’s value: I think this one is probably the one that this video succeeds in the most. Specifically, I think that this compilation video does not infringe upon the value of any of the works it has taken from in a serious way. In particular, I don’t believe that anyone who is a likely viewer of my video would say “Oh, I’ve seen the hawk video as part of this compilation; now I’m done.” That said, I think this prong could be minimized even further by including links back to the source videos in the comments: If the creator had done that, I think that the expectation would be that the overall effect would be even less substantial. The most significant video might even be mine — it is one of the longer clips, and it is certainly one that contains the most of the relevant content. (The original source video was only 30 seconds long in the first place — and the other 18 seconds were pretty boring.) With that being the case, I think that it could be argued that this video does not have a meaningful effect upon the work’s value, and might be acceptable under fair use for that reason.
Taken in sum, I think that the video is right on the edge of a Fair Use claim; I think that this could be further improved by the creator by removing ads, and linking to source videos in the description of the video. As is, I have personally considered and rejected the idea of submitting a DMCA claim for my copyrighted content which is contained in this video, because I think that content of this type should be allowed under fair use, even if our current courts would take a protectionist view towards this content in particular. Compilations like this rarely detract from the value of the original work: they create new value in their combination.
Of course, reasonable people may disagree on several of these points.
The FAA’s ability to enforce civil penalties against safe flyers of UAV craft has not yet been tested in court, but don’t take this to mean that flying drones commercially is without risks: even in cases where the FAA isn’t assessing fines, handling the legal side of an FAA investigation can be a long, drawn-out process that can cost you lots in attorney’s fees.
With the advances in unmanned remote controlled craft over the past couple years, a massive industry of new photographers has sprung up. Even with a strongly stated position from the FAA that commercial flying is against Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs), there are many businesses in the US that continue to use drones for photography. Some do this knowing that there is risk, while some eschew the risk, taking the approach that safe flight is not within the realm of enforcement of the FAA for remote control model aircraft.
Even if the FAA has no power to enact penalties for a particular operation, that doesn’t mean that the flight is risk free, from a business perspective. In the ongoing case of “Michael Huerta, Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration v. Skypan International Inc.”, the FAA is pursuing Skypan for failing to meet the terms of a subpoena (original petition, exhibits). Unlike in any other case that has been publicized, however, this case is one where the FAA has no evidence that the flight was in any way unsafe, other than it took place inside New York City’s Class B airspace (approximately 5 miles from LaGuardia airport).
Over the past year, Skypan International has filed more than a half dozen motions related to responding to this subpoena, regularly producing documents that they feel are meeting the FAA’s demands, and being repeatedly called to task by the FAA for failure to meet with the demands of the subpoena. In the latest bout, the FAA claims that Skypan International has failed to the extent that they are in contempt of court for their failure to produce documents associated with the subpoena. Overall, more than a year has passed, with presumably dozens or possibly even hundreds of hours of legal time spent both on complying with, and responding to requests from, the subpoena from the FAA, from an organization which felt it was cooperating with the FAA!
As part of the continuing case, Skypan did attempt to claim that since the FAA had no regulatory power to assess the fines it was considering, it was unreasonable to request the documents as part of the subpoena; this was not successful, as the FAA (reasonably) argued that as part of an investigation, requesting documents to figure out whether anything *did* take place under their regulatory authority is part of their job.
A number of people flying under the “Fly Safe, and Keep Flying” approach. This is a reasonable approach for most people: the risk of FAA enforcement action in most cases is pretty slim. However, even if flying safely, as a commercial organization, there is still risk to any flight for commercial purposes of FAA investigation — which, even without penalties, can be a costly endeavor.
There is one upside at the moment. The pending case in DC Circuit Court against the FAA for their overly broad “Interpretation of the Special Rule for Model Aircraft” is currently held in abeyance at the request of one of the petitioners — which is itself a problem, slowing the potential response from the FAA to this legal challenge. However, as a component of the abeyance, the court has ruled that: “In the event the agency starts enforcing the rule challenged in this proceeding – “Interpretation of the Special Rule for Model Aircraft,” 79 FED. REG. 36,172 (June 25,
2014) – before considering and disposing of the comments it solicited, petitioners may request appropriate action.” (abeyance order). In short: If the FAA chooses to pursue further activities under the interpretation from June, the abeyance can be set aside, and the case against the FAA will proceed. This is hardly an ironclad agreement, but it seems unlikely that this is in the FAA’s best interest, and it is unlikely that they would choose to do so absent extreme cases.
Fly safe, but be aware: No amount of commercial flying is without risk of potential investigation from the FAA.
(One of the best sources of kibbitzing on drone-related legal topics that I have found is the UAV Legal News and Discussion Facebook group (somewhat to my surprise). In this group there are many of the experts in the field, from lawyers to journalists investigating the FAA’s actions. I highly recommend joining the group if you’re interested on keeping up with legal-related drone developments.)
I recently read through a long series of comments on Net Neutrality between two people at different ends of the political spectrum — most of them about traffic shaping, which is where a lot of the net neutrality debate has centered over the past year. I wrote a long response about traffic shaping policies, but as I wrote it, I realized that Net Neutrality really shouldn’t be about whether the next startup has to pay Comcast a fee to get the same network access that Netflix gets today. It needs to be about protecting US internet users from harmful practices by monopolistic ISPs. Here’s my thoughts:
Sufficient competition in the ISP space would be awesome. There isn’t sufficient competition in the US. The definition of broadband doesn’t include an explicit definition of latency, but the notion that satellite provides a competitive experience in a world where milliseconds of latency make drastic amounts of difference in user experience is silly. The lack of competition in the US ISP market is absolutely what creates the need for alternative approaches to protecting consumers from what are essentially monopoly providers.
If you don’t accept that for most users, the ISP choice is “Whoever happens to serve where I live”, then of course strict regulation under something like Title II/common carrier status seems unreasonable. Let’s take it as a given that 30% of the country has only one provider which meets the government mandated description of “broadband”, and ignore the traffic shaping arguments for the time being, because that’s not the most important thing out there. Instead, let’s look at some other practices that Title II could regulate, under the notion of ensuring ISPs don’t “make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services.”
If there was open competition, all of these would theoretically be fixed by “the market”. But “the market” has left 30% of Americans with only one fixed broadband internet option (BGR story on FCC internet report) – and 67% with two or fewer; a duopoly of two major providers, oftentimes both partaking of the same borderline illegal practices.
Preventing ISPs from blocking content was deemed by the court to be outside the scope of Sec 706 powers for the FCC. The notion that it could then act on these other practices which impact user experience seems unlikely to me. With that in mind, I would say that there are much more important arguments than protecting startups from being unable to compete due to traffic shaping policies: Instead, the importance is the protecting of free speech and communication over the internet, unimpeded by the whims of monopolistic corporations which provide the sole lifeline of so much of the world’s information to so many users.
Traffic shaping and how it shapes up is certainly of personal interest to me, because a chunk of my job is monitoring traffic shaping across a big hunk of the content that flows over the internet. It’s just not the most concerning thing that ISPs are doing in the absence of strict regulation and a true competitive marketplace.