The MPAA comments in the FCC's Net Neutrality proceeding cautions against taking steps that would interfere with the deployment of watermarking, filtering, deep packet inspection, and so on. What's the connection exactly? Part of it is unknown--since the technologies are new, and are just being deployed. Part of it is known... much of the dispute about technologies being deployed to protect content (not just in the sense of protecting copyrighted content, but in the sense of security generally) is about who will pay for it. The content creator? The network infrastructure engineers? The developers of software used in distribution? The retailer? The CPE manufacturer? Insofar as net neutrality principles end up constraining who may charge whom for what, they may preclude otherwise desirable arrangements of who bears the costs. And insofar as net neutrality constrains one player on the net from blocking or interfering with another, it may hamper efforts to control piracy like spam, by impeding traffic carried by or through disreputable ports of call.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:14 AM | DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Infrastructure , Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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I write again from Lake Tahoe (it's snowing). This time motivated by the panel on massive server farms and the discussion of distributed computing. Folks have been talking about and predicting distributed computing for years, about the applications and processing power moving off the desktop and on to the Net. And more and more of the associated architectural problems--storage, memory, if not yet switching, parallel programming, and network capacity--are being addressed.

Continue reading Open Source and Distributed Computing . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:32 PM | Infrastructure , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Software

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With the globalization of economies, countries look for lessons on building and sustaining effective national innovation policies. One country we here at PFF have talked about is India. But India also provides insights for other countries seeking to obtain the status it has achieved over the past few decades. Business Standard reports that one area where India lends experience falls on its patent policies. In India, previous non-acceptance of product patents "encouraged piracy and production of sub-standard (pharmaceutical) drugs in garages", and discouraged:

... investments and innovation ...average R&D expenditure was less than 1 per cent of turnover. (As a result of allowing product patents, R&D expenditure has now increased to almost 10 per cent of turnover for larger Indian pharmaceutical companies and patents have been obtained, not only in India, but also in developed countries, the PCT having helped.)

Lack of product patents in India also resulted in:

Companies mov(ing) away from producing essential drugs to non-essential drugs. ...Consequently, essential drugs had to be imported, a perverse instance of import-promoting industrialisation, probably the only country in the world to actually adopt such a strategy. Instead of research on drugs relevant for India-specific diseases, there was an obsession with cardio-vascular diseases, drugs for which could be pirated.

Currently, with patents for pharmaceutical products:

The Indian pharmaceutical industry is now in a period of transition, no longer scared of intellectual property protection ... it is bizarre that other countries don’t pick Indian policies that facilitate this transition and instead, pick policies that India has discarded.

posted by Noel Le @ 8:37 PM | Infrastructure , International

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Government Technology has an article on China's plans for transitioning from a "manufacturing center" and "sub-assembly and processing factory for other multi-national corporations" to an "Innovation Economy." Apparently, the government in China wants to generate money via "new inventions and innovations". Well, I wish the Chinese well, but anticipate that one of the lessons they'll realize, something which foreign companies have held on them for years: the importance of intellectual property rights. Hopefully, by creating their own intellectual property, the Chinese will respect and enforce that of others.

the Chinese government will authorize over 70 billion Yuan, or $8.5 billion, for investment in science and technology next year, and every year thereafter. This itself represents an increase of nearly 20 percent annually. The Chinese, however, have more in mind than R&D spending. A huge propaganda campaign is planned to educate the Chinese masses, to include online discussions and the formation of an "innovation demonstration team" to tour the country and promote the idea. The government is also talking of the need to reform the financial and tax systems to provide incentives for the growth of cutting-edge industries.

posted by Noel Le @ 4:00 PM | Infrastructure , International

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Here is a piece by Chris Castle on the connection between Net Neutrality and copyright issues.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 12:47 PM | Big Tent , Infrastructure , Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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Alcatel has a neat map on the state of digital inclusion around the world.

Thanks to Philip Stevens of the International Policy Network.

posted by James DeLong @ 9:00 AM | Infrastructure

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From LIGHTReading:

The telecom industry is traditionally one of the largest markets in the world, in terms of a percentage of GDP -- currently about $1.4 trillion annually.

Continue reading Arithmetic Problem . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 10:38 AM | Infrastructure

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Intel says this is Global WiMAX week, which will culminate in a reception at the Tunis summit meeting.

Its thesis seems to be that WiMAX may be sub-radar in the U.S., with its plentiful wireline connections, but is being deployed steadily overseas.

posted by James DeLong @ 9:39 AM | Infrastructure

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C|Net News says that Verizon Wireless and Sprint Wireless are gearing up to offer music downloads to the cell phone market, "which at more than 170 million in the United States alone dwarfs the number of people who have purchased iPods or any other MP3 players."

Don't look for bargains, though:

Continue reading Roaming Charges . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 8:07 AM | Infrastructure

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Content may be king, but it needs a royal road on which to travel. Economic guru John Rutledge comments:

Too many people, including the regulators, are worrying about the 20th century stories, like Renovo acquiring IBM. These are PCs in boxes, hard assets, and they are not the source of advances in technology.

Continue reading Connectivity . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 8:02 AM | Infrastructure

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posted by James DeLong @ 8:32 AM | Infrastructure

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posted by James DeLong @ 8:36 AM | Infrastructure

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posted by James DeLong @ 10:00 AM | Infrastructure

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