Douglas McClendon, Innovator Kansas City, Kansas 66103 (detailed address on request) Phone: (785) 979 - 7723 E-Mail: dmc@cloudsession.com DRAFT October 7th, 2012 A.D. DRAFT Kansas Office of the Attorney General 120 SW 10th Street, Suite 430 Topeka, KS 66612 - 1597 Phone: (800) 432 - 2310 Fax: (785) 291 - 3699 Dear Attorney General, Re: My form 2000F complaint to the FCC about Google Fiber's terms (ref#12-C00422224-1) Table of Contents I. The short story - Complaint to the FCC, and their referral to the Attorney General (p.2) II. The motivation - Why being allowed to host servers on the internet is important (p.3) III. The legal basis of my complaint - 'Net Neutrality' / FCC-10-201 / 'Right To Serve' (p.5) IV. Some expected and possible counter-arguments and my responses (p.7) V. More detailed explanations including likely and possible real world scenarios (p.18) VI. Personal considerations - Why I care as much as I do (p.19) VII. Concluding remarks (p.20) Appendix A: The FCC's official response including the entire original 2000F complaint (p.21) Appendix B: The FCC's 2010 10-201 Report and Order Preserving the Open Internet (p.25) ( detached: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1_Rcd.pdf ) Endnotes / References p.1 I: The short story - Complaint to the FCC, and their referral to the Attorney General Hello, my name is Douglas McClendon. I was born in Lawrence, and currently reside in Kansas City, Kansas. I have recently been directed to your office by the Federal Communications Commission after I registered with them the following form 2000F - 'Network Neutrality'1 - complaint against Google's new fiber internet service to the Kansas City area - --- begin FCC complaint reference #12-C00422224(-1) --- Google's current Terms Of Service[1] for their fixed broadband internet service being deployed initially here in Kansas City, Kansas, contain this text- "You agree not to misuse the Services. This includes but is not limited to using the Services for purposes that are illegal, are improper, infringe the rights of others, or adversely impact others’ enjoyment of the Services. A list of examples of prohibited activities appears here. " where 'here' is a hyperlink[2] to a page including this text- "Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection" In my professional opinion as a graduate in Computer Engineering from the University of Kansas (and incidentally brother of a google VP) I believe these terms of service are in violation of FCC-10-201. [1] http://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html [2] support.google.com/fiber/bin/answer.pyhl=en&answer=2659981&topic=2440874&ctx=topic --- end FCC complaint reference #12-C00422224(-1) --- Note that the online form 2000F also including selecting Google as the target of the complaint, and fixed broadband blocking (as opposed to transparency or discrimination) as the alleged rule violation. The FCC responded (see appendix A) rather tersely that - " The matter you have outlined in your correspondence does not come under the jurisdiction of the FCC. Included below is contact information for an agency that may be of more assistance (Kansas Office of the Attorney General) " That response I take one of two ways. Perhaps a bit more likely, it is just a form letter response they give to 90+% of complainants. Or alternately I hope that it means that they didn't find my complaint to be so baseless as to bother giving me a sentence or two of education as to why. Note: A Navy Information Warfare Officer2 gave public high praise23 to a draft22 of this manifesto. Operating under the assumption that there is a legal basis for this complaint, which may be under your jurisdiction instead of the FCC's, I hereby officially submit the same complaint for your consideration and subsequent action or feedback. I'll also add justification and commentary here that I wasn't able to fit within the limits of the online 2000F form. p.2 II: The motivation - Why being allowed to host servers on the internet is important Perhaps the centrally amazing aspect of the internet, described in technical terms, is that it was designed to allow each device connected to it, to dispatch a connection initiation request to any other device on the internet, and then upon that device's discretion(/decision/programming), engage in further two-way communication. The traditional terminology for this arrangement in computer science is 'a client/server communication session'. The 'client' being the device that sends the first connection initiation request. The 'server' being the device that listens for such requests, and responds to those it wishes to. The most typical example is a 'web server' sending 'web pages' to 'client personal computers' that have requested those pages. Google, Amazon, and other large (and many small) corporations have made countless billions of dollars in the business of operating servers connected to the internet. Wikimedia/pedia as well as countless educational institutions and even individuals have contributed to the mass of life enhancing content available to all of us on the internet by hosting their own servers. All of these servers provide innovative services to countless clients such as every webpage viewing internet user. The concept of 'Network Neutrality'3, embodied as the 2010 'FCC-10-201 Report and Order Preserving The Open Internet'(see appendix B), is meant to protect innovators who serve their community from being held hostage to the quasi-monopolies that control the actual transmission lines of the internet. Google in fact has been a vocal advocate of 'Net Neutrality' because they rightfully fear that without such ground rules, the networks that they and their client users purchase service from would start to 'gouge' them, due to the fact that without the networks/internet as a whole, Google could not offer innovative services to the internet at large. It is only with the deepest sadness that I assert that Google itself has fallen victim to the temptation to leverage its control over the new parts of the internet that it is laying down in Kansas City, to 'gouge' potential innovators, by forcing them to pay more for the 'general purpose technology'4 of internet access, than those customers that are only consuming existing cloud services, instead of trying to provide innovative new ones. Note of course the prior statement will only become true when Google offers a more expensive 'business class' service. Currently Google has no transparent19 public offer of internet service to Kansas City that includes no prohibition5 against hosting servers. But in a sense, this is even worse as far as damaging the economic possibilities of innovative new uses of the gigabit fiber-optic internet infrastructure they are deploying. The most enlightening single piece of evidence of Google acting hypocritically on this issue of Network Neutrality, is the following quote from Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf. He happens to be widely credited as being one of two 'fathers of the internet'6 alongside Robert Kahn, due to their work on the original “Internet Protocol”, abbreviated IP, or more specifically IPv4 and IPv6 representing the two deployed versions that comprise what we know of as 'The Internet'. On Google's main IPv6 education web page7, Mr. Cerf writes- "At Google we believe IPv6 is essential to the continued health and growth of the Internet and that by allowing all devices to talk to each other directly, IPv6 enables new innovative services." p.3 II (cont.): How IPv6 is a Game Changing Internet Technology Upgrade The technical topic of IPv6 is also perhaps crucially important to this issue, because with Google's groundbreaking deployment of the IPv6 upgrade to residential end users over the aging IPv4 protocol, Google is actually one of the first ISPs to not be in the position to have a valid excuse for disallowing all end users to host servers. Namely there is one crucial resource needed to host a server that the internet at large can communicate with. That is an IP(v4 or v6) address. IPv4 addresses are legitimately a scarcity, and ISPs are reasonable in disallowing serving if it saves them money that they don't need to spend on scarce IPv4 addresses for all end users. However IPv6 is a revolutionary technology upgrade that does away with the scarcity of IP address issue. Now, there is no reason whatsoever that each and every person on the planet cannot have 64 or more permanent IPv6 addresses, and use them to establish personal lifelong presences on the information superhighway using their 5-10 year old dusty PC as a server, hosted against their residential broadband internet access. But Google Fiber's current Terms of Service prohibit hosting any kind of server. Thus blocking the vast field of innovation that Vint Cerf was referring to when he said that IPv6 will enable new innovative services by allowing all devices to talk directly to one another. In Google's view of the lowest- cost-tier residential world, all the devices in your home will be able to talk with all devices on the internet, but only through a third party with an actually 'neutral' IPv6 connection to the internet that allows devices to act both as a client and a server. I strongly urge you, in pursuing this matter, to ask Vint Cerf if he believes that Google Fiber's "no server hosting of any kind allowed" terms of service are consistent with that(his) vision of internet innovation via IPv6, or the vision laid out in paragraph 13 of FCC-10-201. If he will go on record to that effect, I will be satisfied that I have misunderstood this highly nuanced and technical issue. p.4 III: The legal basis of my complaint - 'Net Neutrality' / FCC-10-201 / 'Right To Serve' First, please when reading the original complaint also focus on the last sentence of paragraph 134 of FCC's 10-201 Report and Order Preserving the Open Internet. I feel it is likely to be a cornerstone of any legal basis of my argument. Here it is verbatim - " Because Internet openness enables widespread innovation and allows all end users and edge providers (rather than just the significantly smaller number of broadband providers) to create and determine the success or failure of content, applications, services, and devices, it maximizes commercial and non-commercial innovations that address key national challenges- including improvements in health care, education, and energy efficiency that benefit our economy and civic life. " This is the key because it establishes a legal definition of the internet where all end users are able to innovate by providing services, commercial and non-commercial to the internet at large. I'll henceforth refer to this legal theory or interpretation as the "Right To Serve" (speech and information via your fixed broadband internet service connection). Note, the rest of paragraph 134 is also well worth considering, along with all of the entire Report and Order itself. As a graduate in Computer Engineering from the University of Kansas, I assert that being 'prohibited from hosting any kind of server' on my fixed broadband connection, absolutely blocks my ability as an end-user of the internet to provide countless lawful commercial and non- commercial services to the community at large. I hope such blocking is currently a crime. If it is not yet, my opinion is that it should be, due to how general purpose communication infrastructures such as the internet, the traditional telephone system, and the interstate highway systems, should not be able to hold their commercial or non-commercial end users hostage to their natural and unavoidable business quest for maximal profits regardless8 of social impact. I know some disagree with this. I was a devout fan of Ayn Rand and a card carrying libertarian for many years of my young adulthood. More recently I have come to believe that there are some general purpose commodity technologies that society can manage better than the businesses. I shudder to think of the prospect of BP or Shell acquiring I-70. Likewise, without enforced regulation (such as the existing language and spirit of FCC-10-201/NetNeutrality), I feel that allowing members of the $100Billion/year9 cloud services industry to control their competitors access to the portions of the information superhighway that they build and control is a serious threat to our economic and communication freedoms. After much peer debate, much of it more emotional than educational, on the Kansas Unix and Linux Users Association discussion forum10, one theory explaining the above FCC reaction comes to mind. It may be simply that my complaint about a line in Google's Terms of Service for it's Google Fiber ISP to Kansas City does not fall under the FCC's jurisdiction because perhaps their jurisdiction only applies to what is happening 'on the wires/optics/airwaves' as opposed to in the legalese portions of terms of service documents. And as such, the line I am complaining about is not actually legally enforceable12 because if it was enforced, then such enforcement would immediately fall under FCC jurisdiction. p.5 I cannot really afford a lawyer to tell me their reaction to that analysis, so I would more than appreciate any response from your office to provide me guidance. I feel I may have some basis for a lawsuit against Google, in that by having such anti-competitive - but legally unenforceable - language in their terms, they are materially damaging my business's ability to secure investment funding for business models that depend on the 'Right To Serve'. Again for emphasis, 'Right To Serve' being the notion that neither Google, nor any ISP is legally allowed to prevent or block clients on the internet from utilizing servers hosted in my residence connected to my fixed broadband internet access connection (as per FCC-10-201 spirit and letter of paragraph 134). My argument that this behavior is anti-competitive, in a particularly large scale way, is based on the unavoidable conflict of interest I see when a company that has historically made vast amounts of revenue through profitably hosting and running servers on the internet, becomes an ISP with an effective monopoly on the transmission lines of the internet. Note of course Google hardly has a national monopoly on residential internet service provisioning. But one could fairly easily argue that they are about to within the borders of Kansas City, given the magnitude of the difference in cost per megabit of service between them and their nearest competitor. 100 to 1 is the difference they have been advertising. By blocking internet end users from being able to host innovative servers on their residential fixed broadband connections, Google is getting to play a kind of protectionism game with its non-ISP businesses that make money providing 'cloud' services on the internet, that they are prohibiting residential users from providing each other with over the 'general purpose technology'4 of the internet. p.6 IV: Some expected and possible counter-arguments and my responses There are many counter-arguments that opponents of the 'Right To Serve' will offer to defend the commonplace existence of such anti-server-hosting language in residential fixed broadband ISP's terms of service. I've already alluded to the IPv4 address scarcity excuse as being temporarily valid, though inapplicable to this first residential broadband ISP offering11 me IPv6 service for the first time to my home. Please note that I have spent the last couple months debating this issue with the most relevantly educated individuals, both on highly reputable public technical discussion forums, as well as privately with effectively the highest levels of Google's leadership if the Slashdot leak12 is to be believed. The most common counter-arguments I've heard while debating this issue fall into these categories- security and service quality concerns, legal interpretation, and economic issues. I'll explain and reply to each of these chosen top 10 in brief detail one by one- 1. security: no safety of the old IPv4 NAT (p.8) 2. quality: impacting other's service, saturating the network (p.9) 3. security: new modes of non-snoopable communication (p.10) 4. security: zombie/hacked home servers, DDoS attacks (p.11) 5. quality: spam enablement (p.12) 6. legal: residential serving over fixed broadband is not the intended scope of 10-201 (p.13) 7. legal: businesses/ISPs get to choose their target markets (consumer vs business) (p.14) 8. legal: long established residential ISP terms of service language and practice (p.15) 9. legal: 10-201 is not enforceable here by FCC due to 'limited ancillary jurisdiction' (p.16) 10. economic: protecting Google's potential cloud profits (don't bite the hand...) (p.17) p.7 Counter-argument #1 -- security: no safety of the old IPv4 NAT My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: Unless we block all serving by filtering all incoming IPv6 connection requests, countless insufficiently secure home PCs will be vulnerable to compromise by criminal hackers that are currently thwarted by the inaccessibility of average PCs behind typical IPv4 NAT routers. My response: That security benefit was at best an accident, and at worst an excuse for poor security implementations. But the short answer is that I would be more than happy if ISPs chose to default filter all incoming IPv6 connection request traffic, as long as users were guaranteed the freedom to opt-in to unfiltered service with a kind of 'developer switch' of some sort. Similar in nature to the developer switch users of some Google associated hardware projects are familiar with for allowing more advanced and customized usage of their technology. Personally I would like to see a long term solution that involves a fully user controllable firewall as part of all standard broadband internet service. One that is easily resettable to some sane set of defaults. I think it would be sane for those defaults to include filtering IPv6 incoming connection request traffic, at least for the first few years13 of IPv6 seeing real ubiquitous deployment. However I also anticipate that after a few years of innovation, that such defaults would evolve to take advantage of impressive and safe new services. p.8 Counter-argument #2 -- quality: impacting other's service, saturating the network My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: If residential end users are allowed to host servers, they would hog the network resources and ruin the quality of network service for their neighbors. My response: All I want from ISPs is a fair share of network resources. And by fair, I mean that I want my usage of the traffic to be balanced with others, but most certainly in an application and service agnostic way. My upstream traffic as a web or game server should be treated no differently than each of my neighbors total upstream traffic, that may include more video uploads to YouTube, or live video streams to Skype or GoogleHangouts. The essence of the spirit and motivation for Network Neutrality rules, at least as far as I understand the issue, is entirely about not letting networks give advantage or preference to any particular destination or type of application or service, so as not to make the network operator the chooser of winning and losing applications, services, and destinations on the internet. By disallowing hosting servers in their Terms of Service, Google Fiber is getting to choose all residentially hosted innovative business's servers and services as losers, instead of treating their upstream and downstream network traffic on equal terms with their neighbors. The network due to existing protocols and implementations, is already designed to do exactly this. I admit, there may be some highly nuanced highly technical issues relating to this, but on the surface it seems if Google allows any of its endpoint customers on this gigabit fiber-optic network to host servers, then it means they must have a working solution14 to prevent any single endpoint from disproportionately degrading service for neighbor endpoints. The solution no doubt involves things like the open source 'tc/Traffic Control' software available for Linux15 routers and servers, or some functional equivalent. p.9 Counter-argument #3 -- security: new modes of non-snoopable communication My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: If residential end users are allowed to host servers, then just as Vint Cerf predicted/designed, their audio and video communication devices (e.g. iPads and laptops) will talk directly7 to one another instead of through intermediary 3rd party corporate servers such as those of Skype or GoogleHangouts. Then, because of that direct communication, terrorists will be able to evade government eavesdropping through the use of, for example16, an ssh encrypted gstreamer open source two-way audio/video communication channel. My response: Clearly the FBI is scared17 of such things. I feel too old at the age of thirty-seven to try fighting that with as much energy as it deserves to be fought. In my perhaps not humble enough opinion, I assert that this is a case of the cops/investigators being cheap, rushing for the privacy and security degrading shortcut to make their jobs easier, at the expense of the privacy, liberty, freedom, and innovations of the people. But if back-doors become mandated for internet communications software, then so be it. I am an independent businessperson, trying to feed and shelter myself, and need to know the ground rules for the internet so that I can plan the rest of my life's innovations accordingly. Both of these issues - residential serving and government mandated back doors - are really big deals, that either way will create a substantially different internet of the mid-term future. The kind of difference that if anticipated correctly or incorrectly, may make one's career able or not to support a family. I personally hope that neither residential serving, nor secure encrypted internet phone calls help terrorists cause mass death and evil. But before letting that fear overwhelm, consider history- The server administrators of the internet have been using the backdoor-free ssh tool for encrypted communications of all sorts throughout the entire history of the modern internet. This tool is thought to provide government resistant encryption, able to wrap/tunnel pretty much any internet communication software. If such non-backdoored internet communication tools are really such a national security threat, then I think we would have had them mandatorily backdoored long ago. What this tells me is that society is resilient enough to withstand the generalized threat of terrorists conspiring with encrypted communications. At least to the level that it should be clear that the benefits of allowing secure communications for everyone far outweigh the reality that amongst everyone, are many with very bad intentions. Some liberties and privacies are worth significant prices and risks. I think the 'Right To Serve' is worth the price and risk. If you disagree, at least consider carefully the theoretical possibility that were this counter-argument to sway law and policy, we may be making a vast security problem a bit easier to deal with, at the expense of preventing the economic benefits of a new 'web-3.0' industry, starting in Kansas City! However, by all means, get the input from the smartest and most reputable computer networking, national defense23, and law enforcement professionals you know, to make a properly balanced decision on this kind of issue. p.10 Counter-argument #4 -- security: zombie/hacked home servers, DDoS attacks My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: If residential users are allowed to host servers some of those servers will receive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and some of those servers will be compromised and used to send gigabit level DDoS attacks. My response: This is two issues. First, if residentially hosted servers receive a DDoS attack, I would presume that between Google and the NSA's published guidelines for best IT practices people would be able to respond appropriately to that. Surely Google has some techniques to mitigate DDoS attacks. I would be more than happy if Google would publish those and apply those automatically for me. If they involve server side software, e.g. some tc, ip6tables, or other commands to configure a Linux server, then I would have no problem utilizing such a solution to be a good citizen of the internet. In general, as the internet evolves and new and modified use- cases take over for old ones, I expect reasonable network management practices, from the ISP to home sysadmin, to adequately evolve with the evolving threat space/surface. Second, as to servers being more vulnerable and thus targets for 'zombie DDoS networks', I just don't see how, on the whole, home hosted servers are likely to be disproportionately insecure compared to the average security history of home PCs that have already over the history of the internet, been recruited by the millions for such DDoS 'zombie botnets'. In both cases, as above, network and host level security will evolve as use cases evolve. I certainly don't mind that if my ISP detects known criminal botnet traffic emminating from my hosted servers, that they virtually or physically disconnect them partially or entirely from the network. As long as there are reasonable network management procedures in place that allow me to use industry standard published best practices to recover from the compromise as quickly as I can, and get back on the network. That is I would guess how most businesses have been operating servers on the internet for the last twenty or so years, including Google itself. Once again, I'll go back to the idea that yes- for national and network security reasons, it probably would be cheaper to police by just turning off vast chunks of functionality of the internet. But if we had done that from the start, we wouldn't have reaped the benefits of innovation that 'internet openness' has enabled. p.11 Counter-argument #5 -- quality: spam enablement My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: Allowing residential fixed broadband users to host servers will bring more spam to the internet. My response: Let me just be lazy and quote Vint Cerf's testimony to congress18 from 2006 about 'Network Neutrality', speaking on behalf of Google- “ A number of justifications have been created to support carrier control over consumer choices online; none stand up to scrutiny. Open-ended carrier discrimination is not needed to protect users from viruses, stop spam, preserve network integrity, make VOIP or video service work properly – or even insure that carriers are compensated for their broadband investments. In particular, we firmly believe that carriers will be able to set market prices for Internet access and be well-paid for their investments – as broadband carriers in other countries have successfully done. “ p.12 Counter-argument #6 -- legal: residential serving over fixed broadband is not the intended scope of 10-201 My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: 'Network Neutrality' was meant to protect business-class (server hosting allowed) internet access customers against the network owners and operators of the internet. It was never meant to protect the 'Right To Serve' of lowest cost tier residential internet access customers. My response: Ok, so maybe I haven't slowly, or even completely read every word of 10-201. Let alone the necessary web of critically related law. But I read quite a lot, and skimmed all of 10-201 with the intent of specifically finding any such obvious glaring holes in my 'Right To Serve' theory. I did see language in 10-201 about 'edge-providers' as being distinct from 'end-users'. But then I read closer and found where paragraph 134 of 10-201 leads me to believe that the 'Right to Serve' exists for both 'end users' and 'edge providers'. But as I am not a lawyer, I am basically asking Vint Cerf and/or the Kansas Attorney General to clarify my understanding of 'Network Neutrality'. p.13 Counter-argument #7 -- legal: businesses/ISPs get to choose their target markets (consumer vs business) My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: If Google wants to, they are free to simply cease doing business with any customer that wants to and tries to operate a server with their residential fixed broadband internet access. My response: This is similar to the prior counter-argument. I've spent some time reading 10-201 looking for language that would make this interpretation more plausible than the opposite interpretation. I haven't found it, and in fact only the opposite4 language. But if the language in 10-201 or any other part of law or official US policy defends this idea, then I guess I'm wrong. Again, if Vint Cerf or the Attorney General tells me I'm wrong on this point, I'll listen very closely and probably take their word for it. Though I will add that it would seem just plain wrong for Google to be able to discriminate against the garage internet startup companies (or even just the subset19,20 which Google's non- ISP divisions don't feel their market-shares and potential future market-shares threatened by). For a lot of reasons12. p.14 Counter-argument #8 -- legal: long established residential ISP terms of service language and practice My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: Residential ISPs have had the same language for years and nobody else has ever complained like you have. My response: I must admit that the novel IPv6, Vint Cerf, and Google elements of my arguments are the only reason I have any significant hope of getting anywhere with this difficult and technical trek to obliterate a single vaguely-unenforced12 line of legalese buried deep within a long terms of service document. I am in fact trying to shame Google into doing something, that I believe they have the money and power to get away with not doing if they don't want to. In other words, I believe the equal and equally legally unenforceable language in other residential ISP's terms of service is just as in need of fixing. But let's start with getting Vint Cerf to comment on the record on my 'Right To Serve' legal theory before going after the companies to whom shame in the circles of advanced computer users and professionals is of zero consequence. As well- Did you forget that I'm a Kansan by birth and choice presently living in Kansas City with the option of getting gigabit fiber-optic fixed broadband residential internet access from Google in the very near future? And one that's been a Linux geek half their not so short life? p.15 Counter-argument #9 -- legal: 10-201 is not enforceable here by FCC due to 'limited ancillary jurisdiction' My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: Some article21 on ARSTechnica talks about the FCC and Network Neutrality / 10-201 being a 'weak' law/order due to some 'limited ancillary jurisdiction' issue. My response: First, the entire article is a theoretical conjecture on how companies might legally fight their obligation to follow the network neutrality rules. It didn't actually mention any legal challenges using this legal hairsplitting defense. I can't say I've done exhaustive research legally into the matter. If Google actually wants to use something as legally nakedly weaselly sounding as that to avoid compliance with the spirit of Network Neutrality, then so be it. Let them suffer the long term shame and resulting hit to employee and user morale as people realize what hypocrisy is entailed in their overall internet strategy. p.16 Counter-argument #10 -- economic: protecting Google's potential cloud profits (a.k.a don't bite the hand that feeds) My paraphrasing of the counter-argument: Allowing residential users to host servers against their broadband internet access would allow some of them to rely on servers other than the ones currently providing Google and other's cloud services. This would be an economically damaging disruptive influence on the established internet business landscape. My response: So what, the newspapers had to suffer with IPv4, let YouTube suffer a little with IPv6. p.17 V: More detailed explanations including likely and possible real world scenarios I was going to ramble on about network neutrality in general and how it applies to a dozen or so use-cases and business models that I'm interested in. But it appears that even the unfinished 2k121001 version22 of this manifesto has already garnered sufficient attention and high praise from a Navy Information Warfare Officer23 that I've managed to acquire Vint Cerf's email address. So, for now I'll be relatively brief here, anticipating the possibility of being able to incorporate actual on the record comments from Mr. Cerf of Google in the final draft. But to ramble anyway, first, be reminded that the information superhighway was inherited from DARPA. So even from an extremely libertarian perspective, the absolutist argument that the network and its control belongs solely to the builders and operators of it, does not sway me. That would be even before highlighting how special deals24 funded by taxpayers were dealt to Google by the local governments of the areas of their network build-out. Even further, when you consider the comparability of the modern internet to 'ma' Bell's phone network of the past. Google and Apple may put a lot of marketing dress on modern smart-phones, but a phone is basically a phone, and the entire world was entirely prepared for and expecting the video addition when the technological capacity of the networks and devices allowed. What the 'phone' is to humankind, is as special a concept as the human creation and concept of the 'road'. Being able to get from physical place A to B, or being able to communicate from person A to B, are very special25 things. Like being able to get a free glass of water from a business that serves food. I feel that citizens of the world should feel entitled not to go thirsty from lack of water, or un-voiced from lack of ability to serve their own free speech from any access point to the 'general purpose technology'4 of the global and open internet. Next, it is important to note how government pressure on Terms of Service issues can be thought of as a kind of 'internet kill switch' for otherwise lawful free speech26. There must, in my opinion, be some minimal level of behavior which is permitted on the internet by right, and not by privilege grant-able and revocable by the the various network operators. I believe the 'Right To Serve' should be included in that minimal set of good citizen internet rights, when it comes to what all customers should expect and demand from their ISPs. Third, and more open endedly, there are real world use-cases27. Finally, there is also plenty of other tangentially related stuff28 I'd be happy to talk about at length if you ask or if I find the time to write about it. p.18 VI: Personal considerations - Why I care as much as I do While I find it easy to say that my technical, legal, and moral points on this issue stand alone, and have nothing to do with my older brother who is a (non-GoogleFiber-related) Vice President at Google alongside Milo Medin in charge of Google Fiber and one of the fathers of the internet Vint Cerf himself (and dozens of others), I will discuss the connection as it relates to my motivations for pursuing this as passionately as I have. It was Brian who taught me to program an Atari-400 in the 'basic' language starting, dare I say somewhere around the age of five. It was upon his advice, that sometime around 1994 I installed (Slackware) Linux on my father's 486 Personal Computer. From there I learned to run services like talkd, httpd/apache, smtpd/sendmail, quake329 game servers and more. I hosted a server for my family running the open source SquirrelMail webmail for years before gmail even existed. In the early days of the internet, it was just assumed that the general purpose technology4 of the internet allowed you to host servers at home, without having to ask or get written permission4 from a network provider. Then, as the IPv4 address shortage began rearing its head, static IPv4 addresses to residential broadband customers starting becoming rarer. These were needed to host a traditional service without resorting to 'dyndns workarounds'. Now even dyndns workarounds are insufficient as my personal TimeWarner current broadband service puts me behind an IPv4 NAT making independent serving of free speech on the internet impossible30 for me. It honestly never occurred to me as a well employed information technology professional back in those days that 20 years from then, with IPv6 finally deployed, that my residential broadband ISP would not allow me to host a linux apache web server. I mean, I still just don't get it, unless it's just a matter of Google being a little bit 'evil'31, and wanting to maximize revenue for its shareholders. But doing this via industry standard practices that in my mind, with IPv6, are finally becoming more clearly in violation of the spirit and letter of the United States' 'Network Neutrality' ground rules for the internet. Then there is also the simple fact that I absolutely bought into the frontier hype32,33,34,35,36,37 about the Google Fiber project for Kansas City. It definitely was a factor in my decision to continue to reside here. But quite honestly, with the current terms of service, I don't find the new internet service to be exciting at all. Hosting your own server, is in my opinion one of the most obvious first exciting things to do with a gigabit broadband service if you are an IT professional, hobbyist, or aspiring student. In short, I feel that with the level playing field that 'Network Neutrality'/FCC- 10-201(p13)4 was meant to provide, that I have the talent and ability to innovate in a way that will help me to provide financially for myself and those I love, rather than needing a handout from someone else. If I could just understand why things are the seemingly inconsistent12 way they are, I wouldn't be writing these dozens of pages of manifesto. p.19 VII: Concluding remarks In conclusion, I am confident that I have made a good case for my arguments4,7,23. There may well be some reason I haven't considered that may thwart my desired outcome of seeing the 'no server hosting of any kind allowed' clause5 removed from Google Fiber's (and eventually all ISP's) terms of service. And if so, I'll adapt and either learn to appreciate the well and straight12 reasoning behind the decision, or, in traditional internet style, route my innovations around the perceived damage. I've made clear the economic and free speech values and opportunities at stake here. As best I can tell from my research into this matter, Vint Cerf would agree with my vision of the general purpose internet and the empowerment for all end users, especially residential ones, that it represents. Please ask Google, specifically Chief Executive Officer Larry Page12, vice president of Access Services Milo Medin35, and vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf18 for comment about the situation, and at the very least confirmation or denial of the alleged12 lack of intent to enforce the term of service in question. I think there are many potentially innovative technology businesses in, or thinking about coming to Kansas City, that would greatly appreciate getting the lack of clarity on this issue resolved. Sincerely, Douglas McClendon p.20 Appendix A: The FCC's Official Response (by snail mail) 2012/09/05 p.21 p.22 p.23 p.24 Appendix B: The FCC's 2010 10-201 Report and Order Preserving the Open Internet ( detached: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1_Rcd.pdf ) sha512sum: db5e3bd9f5cf3837d153928e2f3b9c6b00c2d6777f39bf30d3ea5442e033f312... ...28bcab9b4d89219c322c56490913d9abb6ab5ff2080232e4f2f4eadc14bdee6f For easy reference, a couple of my favorite paragraphs, numbers one and thirteen- topic: FCC-10-201 Report and Order Preserving the Open Internet - Paragraph 1 ... Today the Commission takes an important step to preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation, investment, job creation, economic growth, competition, and free expression. To provide greater clarity and certainty regarding the continued freedom and openness of the Internet, we adopt three basic rules that are grounded in broadly accepted Internet norms, as well as our own prior decisions: i. Transparency. Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their broadband services; ii. No blocking. Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services; iii. No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic. We believe these rules, applied with the complementary principle of reasonable network management, will empower and protect consumers and innovators while helping ensure that the Internet continues to flourish, with robust private investment and rapid innovation at both the core and the edge of the network. This is consistent with the National Broadband Plan goal of broadband access that is ubiquitous and fast, promoting the global competitiveness of the United States.(1) ..... topic: FCC-10-201 Paragraph 13 ... (Under Section Heading:) The Internet’s Openness Promotes Innovation, Investment, Competition, Free Expression, and Other National Broadband Goals 13. Like electricity and the computer, the Internet is a "general purpose technology" that enables new methods of production that have a major impact on the entire economy.(12) The Internet’s founders intentionally built a network that is open, in the sense that it has no gatekeepers limiting innovation and communication through the network.(13) Accordingly, the Internet enables an end user to access the content and applications of her choice, without requiring permission from broadband providers. This architecture enables innovators to create and offer new applications and services without needing approval from any controlling entity, be it a network provider, equipment manufacturer, industry body, or government agency.(14) End users benefit because the Internet’s openness allows new technologies to be developed and distributed by a broad range of sources, not just by the companies that operate the network. For example, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was able to invent the World Wide Web nearly two decades after engineers developed the Internet’s original protocols, without needing changes to those protocols or any approval from network operators.(15) Startups and small businesses benefit because the Internet’s openness enables anyone connected to the network to reach and do business with anyone else,(16) allowing even the smallest and most remotely located businesses to access national and global markets, and contribute to the economy through e-commerce(17) and online advertising.(18) Because Internet openness enables widespread innovation and allows all end users and edge providers (rather than just the significantly smaller number of broadband providers) to create and determine the success or failure of content, applications, services, and devices, it maximizes commercial and non-commercial innovations that address key national challenges -- including improvements in health care, education, and energy efficiency that benefit our economy and civic life.(19) ...... p.25 1 Topic: 'Network Neutrality' 101, it becomes a law and/or enforceable FCC rule ... "It's here: FCC adopts net neutrality (lite)" by Matthew Lasar -- Dec 21 2010, 12:05pm CST ... "Today for the first time the FCC is adopting rules to preserve basic Internet values," declared FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, who called the Order "a strong sensible non-ideological framework that protects Internet freedom." The regulations ban content blocking and require transparency from ISPs. They also require network management and packet discrimination to be "reasonable," but they exempt wireless broadband from all but the transparency and blocking rules. ... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/12/its-here-fcc-adopts-net-neutrality-lite ..... 2 Topic: What a Navy Information Warfare Officer is (such as Dave Schroeder23 who has praised a draft22 of this document) ... Cryptology Officers Get New Name, Boss -- Story Number: NNS051014-04 By Chief Journalist Teresa J. Frith, Navy Personnel Command Communications -- 2005/10/14 MILLINGTON, Tenn. (NNS) -- Those in the Navy Cryptology officer community were designated 'Information Warfare Officers' in May to reflect their roles in managing, moving and protecting information. ... http://www.navy.mil/search/print.asp?story_id=20384&VIRIN=&imagetype=0&page=1 ...... 3 Topic: FCC-10-201 Report and Order Preserving the Open Internet - Paragraph 1 (see appendix B for the entirety) ... Today the Commission takes an important step to preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation, investment, job creation, economic growth, competition, and free expression. To provide greater clarity and certainty regarding the continued freedom and openness of the Internet, we adopt three basic rules that are grounded in broadly accepted Internet norms, as well as our own prior decisions: i. Transparency. Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their broadband services; ii. No blocking. Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services; iii. No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic. We believe these rules, applied with the complementary principle of reasonable network management, will empower and protect consumers and innovators while helping ensure that the Internet continues to flourish, with robust private investment and rapid innovation at both the core and the edge of the network. This is consistent with the National Broadband Plan goal of broadband access that is ubiquitous and fast, promoting the global competitiveness of the United States.(1) ..... 4 Topic: FCC-10-201 Paragraph 13 (see appendix B for the entirety) ... (Under Section Heading:) The Internet’s Openness Promotes Innovation, Investment, Competition, Free Expression, and Other National Broadband Goals 13. Like electricity and the computer, the Internet is a "general purpose technology" that enables new methods of production that have a major impact on the entire economy.(12) The Internet’s founders intentionally built a network that is open, in the sense that it has no gatekeepers limiting innovation and communication through the network.(13) Accordingly, the Internet enables an end user to access the content and applications of her choice, without requiring permission from broadband providers. This architecture enables innovators to create and offer new applications and services without needing approval from any controlling entity, be it a network provider, equipment manufacturer, industry body, or government agency.(14) End users benefit because the Internet’s openness allows new technologies to be developed and distributed by a broad range of sources, not just by the companies that operate the network. For example, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was able to invent the World Wide Web nearly two decades after engineers developed the Internet’s original protocols, without needing changes to those protocols or any approval from network operators.(15) Startups and small businesses benefit because the Internet’s openness enables anyone connected to the network to reach and do business with anyone else,(16) allowing even the smallest and most remotely located businesses to access national and global markets, and contribute to the economy through e-commerce(17) and online advertising.(18) Because Internet openness enables widespread innovation and allows all end users and edge providers (rather than just the significantly smaller number of broadband providers) to create and determine the success or failure of content, applications, services, and devices, it maximizes commercial and non-commercial innovations that address key national challenges -- including improvements in health care, education, and energy efficiency that benefit our economy and civic life.(19) ...... 5 Topic: The heart of the complaint to the FCC, the offending language in Google Fiber's Terms of Service ( http://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html ) ... “You agree not to misuse the Services. This includes but is not limited to using the Services for purposes that are illegal, are improper, infringe the rights of others, or adversely impact others’ enjoyment of the Services. A list of examples of prohibited activities appears here." 'here' is a hyperlink ( http://support.google.com/fiber/bin/answer.pyhl=en&answer=2659981&topic=2440874&ctx=topic ) to a page including this text- “Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection" ...... 6 Topic: Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn are called 'fathers of the internet' due to codevelopment of IP(v4/v6) the 'Internet Protocol' ... NOTE: Wikipedia's reference for the 'fathers of the internet' attribution. Also Mr. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google http://campus.acm.org/public/pressroom/press_releases/2_2005/turing_2_14_2005.cfm ...... 7 Topic: Vint Cerf speaking on behalf of Google's official IPv6 website - “devices talking directly to one another” ... At Google we believe IPv6 is essential to the continued health and growth of the Internet and that by allowing all devices to talk to each other directly, IPv6 enables new innovative services. ... http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/ ...... 8 Topic: Google Does Not Believe (harsh slashdot commentary no motive but money is a common explanation) ... NOTE: Slashdot comment from user Bob9113 hours after I publicly Facebook post the Vint Cerf Google Believes quote ... Google Does Not Believe (Score:5, Insightful) by Bob9113 (14996) on Tuesday September 18, @03:44PM (#41378269) Homepage So does Google now believe that there's a genuine 'risk of disclosing a user's real identity'? Or is this just a case of Google's left hand not knowing what its right hand is patenting? Google does not believe. They do not believe in protecting anonymity, nor in advancing reliable identities. Google wants money and power. There was a time when it was reasonable to think that Google believed in things, that they wanted to do good, but those times are gone. Google wants to make money on anonymity because they want to make money, not because they believe free speech depends on anonymity. They want to make money on reliable identities because they want to make money, not because they believe identities should be reliable. They want to make money on being the only one who knows the real identities because they want to make money, not because they believe one company should be the sole authenticator. Most sufficiently large corporations have no beliefs. "I want as much stuff as I can get" is not a belief. Beliefs are things for which you are willing to make deep sacrifices. When a company sees that the patent system is broken and its public response is that they need to get more aggressive about patents, it is a clear statement that they lack motives outside of acquisitiveness and will-to-power. Avarice is not a belief, it is our default state when we choose not to elevate ourselves above the animals. Google does not believe. ... http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3126853&cid=41378269 ..... 9 Topic: Gartner cloud services market analysis ($100B/year wwide growing fast) ... Gartner Says Worldwide Cloud Services Market to Surpass $109 Billion in 2012 STAMFORD, Conn., September 18, 2012— ... The public cloud services market is forecast to grow 19.6 percent in 2012 to total $109 billion worldwide, according to Gartner, Inc. Business process services (also known as business process as a service, or BPaaS) represent the largest segment, accounting for about 77 percent of the total market, while infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the fastest-growing segment of the public cloud services market and is expected to grow 45.4 percent in 2012. "The cloud services market is clearly a high-growth sector within the overall IT marketplace," said Ed Anderson, research director at Gartner. "The key to taking advantage of this growth will be understanding the nuances of the opportunity within service segments and geographic regions, and then prioritizing investments in line with the opportunities." ... http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=2163616 ..... 10 Topic: the 'Right To Serve' debate on the Kansas Unix and Linux Users Association discussion forum ... - (initial thread, 57 posts, 15 authors) - https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/kulua-l/LxsOtdglNM0 - (2nd part, 44 posts, 17 authors) - https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/kulua-l/FA99TCnn3DQ - (3rd part, inadvertently broken from original thread - 23 posts, 10 authors) - https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/kulua-l/d6B_LfAvyYQ ...... 11 Topic: IPv6 - Google advertises it to townhall as part of Google Fiber ... Answers to your Town Hall Questions - Part 1 June 10, 2011 ... Q: Will you be supporting IPv6? A: Yes, we plan to make our network IPv6 ready. To learn more about IPv6, check out this page. ... google fiber blog http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-04-01T00:02:00-07:00&max-results=10&start=20&by-date=false 'page' is link to http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/ (see 7) ..... 12 Topic: alleged anonymous leak - Google C.E.O. and C.F.O. claim no intent to enforce 'no servers' clause ( 'barring large scale datacenter abuse'') ... Re:EVIL: No Server Hosting Allowed (Score:5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10, @11:46AM (#41288357) ... Posting anonymously for reasons that will be obvious. Larry Page is really annoyed by the "no servers" clause. In an internal weekly all-hands meeting he repeatedly needled Patrick Pichette about the limitation, and pointedly reminded him that the only reason Google was able to get off the ground was because Page and Brin could use Stanford's high-speed Internet connection for free. Page wants to see great garage startups being enabled by cheap access to truly high-speed Internet. Pichette defended it saying they had no intention of trying to enforce it in general, but that it had to be there in case of serious abuse, like someone setting up a large-scale data center. I don't think anyone really has to worry about running servers on their residential Google Fiber, as long as they're not doing anything crazy. Then again it's always possible that Page will change his mind or that the lawyers will take over the company, and the ToS is what it is. If I had Google Fiber I'd run my home server just as I do on my Comcast connection, but I'd also be prepared to look for other options if my provider complained. ... http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357 ..... 13 Topic: IPv6 - Google adoption status - on the cusp of internet r/evolution ... Google's adoption stats ... less than 0.2% till 1/1/11, but 0.4% at 1/1/12, and already greater than 0.8% as of today ... http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html ..... 14 Topic: Self-throttling a linux server or network's traffic - Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control Howto ... Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control Howto by Bert Hubert and others http://repo.or.cz/r/lartc.git:2012/09/30 ... 15.1. Running multiple sites with different SLAs You can do this in several ways. Apache has some support for this with a module, but we'll show how Linux can do this for you, and do so for other services as well. These commands are stolen from a presentation by Jamal Hadi that's referenced below. Let's say we have two customers, with http, ftp and streaming audio, and we want to sell them a limited amount of bandwidth. We do so on the server itself. Customer A should have at most 2 megabits, customer B has paid for 5 megabits. We separate our customers by creating virtual IP addresses on our server. # ip address add 188.177.166.1 dev eth0 # ip address add 188.177.166.2 dev eth0 It is up to you to attach the different servers to the right IP address. All popular daemons have support for this. We first attach a CBQ qdisc to eth0: ........... ... http://www.lartc.org/lartc.html ...... 15 Topic: Good citizen established best practices for networking - Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control Howto ... NOTE: I(dmc) do not pretend to completely grasp all nuance of all relevant technical issues. For example, if there is some issue related to this quote that requires conformance on the part of software to be a good citizen on the internet as far as bandwidth sharing goes, then I'm all for that being a requirement in the Terms of Service of ISPs. However, one would hope that any such ubiquitously good citizen practice would make it somehow into the default layers of the dominant OSs, e.g. windows and linux, such that application/user level code need not concern itself with such detail directly. (fail-safe/gracefully). I would currently guess that such exists in any defaults I would personally ever use for any application/service software I may innovatively develop. Or perhaps once or twice I might accidentally do the wrong thing, see my ISP virtually disconnect me from the network, but with a process in place for me to fix my mistake and be reconnected without being considered a criminal at any point in the process. That sounds like reasonable network management to me, but YMMV, $0.02, etc... ... Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control Howto by Bert Hubert and others ... RED isn't a cure-all for this, applications which inappropriately fail to implement exponential backoff still get an unfair share of the bandwidth, however, with RED they do not cause as much harm to the throughput and latency of other connections. ... http://www.lartc.org/lartc.html http://repo.or.cz/r/lartc.git:2012/09/30 ...... 16 Topic: IPv6 + ssh + gstreamer + nexus7(or laptop+webcam or ...) = 'just works encrypted network video phone' ... The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet By Jonathan Corbet -- July 31, 2012 ... But the truth of the matter is probably more prosaic: by all accounts, the Skype application is just not an example of stellar software engineering. Unfortunately, it is an example of proprietary software, so there is no way for anybody but Skype to fix it. There should really be a place for a free- software video calling application that (1) actually works, and (2) can be verified to lack backdoors for government agencies and anybody else interested in listening in on conversations. But that application does not seem to exist at this time, alas. ... http://lwn.net/Articles/508841/ ...... 17 Topic: The FBI seems scared of non-ubiquitous (and non-backdoored) communication technologies ... FBI renews broad Internet surveillance push by Declan McCullagh -- September 22, 2012 7:00 AM PDT ... In May, CNET disclosed that the FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a proposed law that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in back doors for government surveillance. The bureau's draft proposal would require that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly. ... http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57518265-38/fbi-renews-broad-internet-surveillance-push ..... 18 Topic: Vint Cerf's Network Neutrality Testimony to Congress ... Prepared Statement of Vinton G. Cerf Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist Google Inc. U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Hearing on “Network Neutrality” February 7, 2006 ... Allowing broadband carriers to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services, and to potentially interfere with others, would take control away from the end users of the Internet, and place it in the hands of those who own the network. ... A number of justifications have been created to support carrier control over consumer choices online; none stand up to scrutiny. Open-ended carrier discrimination is not needed to protect users from viruses, stop spam, preserve network integrity, make VOIP or video service work properly – or even insure that carriers are compensated for their broadband investments. In particular, we firmly believe that carriers will be able to set market prices for Internet access and be well-paid for their investments – as broadband carriers in other countries have successfully done. ... http://commerce.senate.gov/pdf/cerf-020706.pdf sha512sum: 99aca96e9d93e8eb81ece9eb8e69909d4882cf8e46084a5f25ef9585b2876b5 abc5806562b576b3fbb5af8c8fb4462c125837b51a1473043774baa3bfb656ead ..... 19 Topic: GoogleFiber has no public offer of server-hosting-allowed 'business class' internet service. ... NOTE: such lack of transparency of differential charging for business rates violates multiple network neutrality rules and priniciples in my(dmc) opinion and not-a-lawyer interpretation. In fact I would go so far as to say the lack of transparency could reasonably be perceived as a likely attempt to keep out of the public eye, discussion, and radar, (a.k.a. cover-up) the network neutrality rule violation of differential pricing for 'serving allowed' service. ... Google Fiber Terms Of Service (2012/10/05) ... Businesses If you wish to subscribe to any Services on behalf of a business, please contact Google Fiber directly. Additional terms of service apply to use of the Services by a business. ... http://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html ...... 20 Topic: Example of Google 'forcing' its ISP customers to effectively partner with them in business endeavors ... Google lays out schedule for neighborhoods By MIKE HENDRICKS and SANGEETA SHASTRY The Kansas City Star -- 2012/09/14 ... Nearby, Italian restaurant Cupini’s was considering ways to put Fiber to use — once businesses are included. Live cooking demonstrations could benefit from faster speeds, said owner Eddie Cupini. So would a Google Hangout video chat that would let people call in for recipe advice from the chefs. ..... “We’ll be able to communicate with a broader group of customers and people from all over the world, maybe,” Cupini said. The restaurant, partnering with Google, already has two laptops set up so customers can see the ultra-fast speeds in action. ... http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/14/3813594/google-lays-out-schedule-for-hooking.html#storylink=misearch ..... 21 Topic: ARSTechnica: 'limited ancillary jurisdiction' issue relating to FCC-10-201 ... US net neutrality rules finalized, in effect November 20 by Nate Anderson - Sept 22 2011, 2:41pm CDT ... That's the plan, at least. The FCC has just filed its final "open Internet" rules (PDF) with the Federal Register, which will publish them tomorrow and make them official. The rules go into effect on November 20, nearly a year after they were passed over Republican opposition on a 3-2 vote. (One of the FCC Commissioners who voted against the rules now works for Comcast.) ... Rather than reclassifying broadband services in such a way that the FCC has clear jurisdiction over them, the agency relied instead on its much weaker "ancillary jurisdiction." (The legal rationale for this begins on p. 77 of the final rules, and the FCC gamely makes a case that it has the proper authority.) ... As for the rules, they're the same modest regulations adopted back in December. ... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/us-net-neutrality-rules-finalized-in-effect-november-20/ ...... 22 Topic: 2k12/10/01 version of this document, referenced in the next endnote23 ... http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121001.txt http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121001.pdf http://cloudsession.com/dawg/projects/righttoserve/files/kag-draft-2k121001.txt http://cloudsession.com/dawg/projects/righttoserve/files/kag-draft-2k121001.pdf sha512sums: 0ad0b613818b393904393fbf9ba3acfd9ae5f413cd0433801487152ee898e4aeb1011dcf5 f0a40febcb96c09bb0be3686ddae99b29c9b6629e7e4109170b4f73 kag-draft-2k121001.pdf ba510dcbb53ef7203140fa2b75e80083dfb577632057f4266fe87cff01f41f68834700f5fcbc 3ae7869abc174c6057981f941d6925179bcca638f6bb41550c9a kag-draft-2k121001.txt ...... 23 Topic: Public attention and high praise from a Navy Information Warfare Officer2 (or someone ironicly impersonating one) ... I thought your Google manifesto was very good (I know it's a work in progress). [referencing the 2012/10/01 draft22] ... The net neutrality argument is interesting, and I have to say I agree with the essence of everything you wrote on that subject. ... http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156485&cid=41530745 ... (The above comments were a conversational offshoot of this more or less unrelated thread(public comments/discussion) on slashdot) ... That's one problem with cyber (Score:5, Insightful) by daveschroeder (516195) * on Monday October 01, @03:20PM (#41516877) Homepage Attribution. Disclaimer: I am a Navy Information Warfare Officer. First, it's important to note that the White House didn't confirm the suspected source. It was anonymous officials who said this appeared to originate "from China" -- take that as you will. As you point out, an attack may appear to come from a particular (set of) IP address(es), network(s), or source(s). An attack may have a certain profile, or share a profile with other attacks. An attack may have an assumed motivation based on its target. The attacker(s) may even wish to make it appear that the attack is originating elsewhere. Even if the "source" is established, is it a nation-state? Hacktivists? Nationalist hackers acting on behalf of government or at the government's explicit or implicit direction? Transnational actors? None of the above? ... http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156485&cid=41516877 ...... 24 Topic: ARSTechnica: since taxpayer money goes to the network, open-access rules important ... How Kansas City taxpayers support Google Fiber by Timothy B. Lee -- Sept 7 2012, 7:00am CDT ... If a city is going to spend public funds on a new broadband network, it has an obligation to ensure that taxpayers are getting a good deal for their money. That might mean insisting on conditions, such as build-out requirements or open-access rules, that will avoid the need for yet another taxpayer- subsidized network to be constructed in the future. ... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-taxpayers-support-google-fiber/ ..... 25 Topic: ARSTechnica: FCC legal just/basis point- Sec706 of Telecom Act: (encourage advanced telecommunications capability) ... NOTE: inter-human communications are 'special', why we have a Federal Commission regarding them ... FCC defends its "trojan horse" approach to net neutrality by Timothy B. Lee -- Sept 13 2012, 7:00am CDT ... But the FCC points to several different provisions of telecommunications law that it says justify its regulations. The centerpiece of its argument is Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, which instructs the FCC to "encourage the deployment" of "advanced telecommunications capability." ... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/fcc-defends-its-trojan-horse-approach-to-net-neutrality/ ..... 26 Topic: Google's Youtube debatably censoring artistic speech to local governments ... Google Blocks 'Innocence of Muslim' Video In Indonesia and India Posted by samzenpus on Monday September 17, @05:02AM ... from the not-in-my-country dept. hypnosec writes "Google has blocked the anti-Islamic video, which was posted on YouTube, in Indonesia as well as India. YouTube has already denied a complete removal of the clip 'Innocence of Muslims' that mocks Islam and Prophet Mohammed. The video has led to protests and violence across the Arab world. The foreign ministry spokesperson of Indonesia and India have confirmed that Google has blocked access to the video. Indonesia has also asked RIM to filter the video on its smartphones." ... http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/17/0324213/google-blocks-innocence-of-muslim-video-in-indonesia-and-india ...... 27 Topic: real world use cases (example business models) (TODO: better integrate in main before sending to A.G.) ... NOTE: there is always a rebuttal that at least half of these business models may be more or less viable by purchasing cloud servers from Amazon or other widely used existing services from other large established enterprise businesses. The question is- Am I free to compete on my own? • innovation: telemedicine, e.g. psych treatment to p/schizo who don't trust 3rd party middlemen in their videoconferencing apps. • innovation: house the homeless as per (using server closets to monetize subsidized housing) • innovation: security cameras, e.g. my experience at boardwalk using motion.sf.net back in late 2004, stalker-threat, (offencbackups) • innovation: PokerTH, alternate ranking system, shared open source code • innovation: Neil Stephenson style metaverse based on quake3 open source code (cite taskforce) • innovation: (pizza) oven (or just home heating) designed to recycle waste heat from server(s) monetized by new Amazon VM marketplace that was announced the day after I publicly posted the 'house the homeless with serverclosets' idea to my google plus feed. • innovation: mom and pop 3D printing services for the duration of time before 3D printers are as cheap and common as 2D printers. ...... 28 TOPICS UNREFERENCED: other stuff (not yet associated tangentially relevant topics and references) ... ... ... Topic: ARSTechnica: Netflix unhappy about managed services exception ... Did the FCC just bless a capped, two-tier Internet? by Nate Anderson -- Dec 3 2010, 7:35am CST ... Imagine that you are Netflix boss Reed Hastings. You're busy trying to eat the cable companies' collective lunch by offering on-demand Internet streaming video; sure, you're not there yet, but it's clear this model has a bright future… except for one little worry. The cable companies and telcos you rely on to deliver your bits also compete with you, offering profitable video services of their own that don't come through "the Internet" but are increasingly based on IP and use the exact same pipe. Should those companies be allowed to offer managed quality of service enhanced video streams over a segregated section of the last-mile Internet pipe to directly compete with your own best-effort Internet offering? And how could this possibly be a fair fight? We don't need to imagine Hastings worrying about this scenario, though, since Netflix has made its concerns clear in writing. Back in January, the company warned the FCC about letting "managed services" swallow up the open Internet. "The fact that network operators control the delivery pipes and generate significant revenue from content that travels over those pipes provides both the means and motive for discriminating against new ventures that might threaten revenue sources of the network operators," Netflix warned. These developments "exacerbate the growing concern that [video providers] will use their control over programming networks to stifle competition, including the growing competition from online video providers like Netflix." Therefore, according to Netflix, the FCC should apply its open Internet principles to "managed services," too, possibly by requiring that such services could never consume more than a set fraction of the Internet pipe, reserving the rest for the "open Internet." ... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/12/did-the-fcc-just-bless-a-capped-two-tier-internet/ ..... ..... Topic: ARSTechnica: republican 2005 FCC policy defending the right to services of consumers choice ... AT&T, have you no shame? by Nate Anderson -- Aug 23 2012, 4:06pm CDT ... One of the ironies of FCC rulemaking is that, under Republican leadership generally hostile to the idea of legally enforced net neutrality, the FCC actually passed a 2005 "policy statement" (PDF) outlining four freedoms all Internet users could expect. Number three read: To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement. ... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/att-have-you-no-shame/ ..... TOPICS UNREFERENCED (Continued) ..... Topic: 'Wicked' broadband already in Lawrence, similar example of business complications/incentives with local governments ... Parts of Lawrence already have super-fast Internet By Chad Lawhorn (LJWorld) -- July 27, 2012 ... The latest twist in the dealing with the company is its new name. Montgomery said the company dissolved the not-for-profit Lawrence Freenet organization last month. All future marketing will be done under the Wicked Broadband name, which is owned by Community Wireless Corp., a for- profit corporation that holds many of the agreements with the city. ... http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2012/jul/27/parts-lawrence-already-have-super-fast-internet/ ..... ..... Topic: Amazon product advertising API (monetizing a website) ... Product Advertising API The Product Advertising API provides programmatic access to Amazon’s product selection and discovery functionality so that developers like you can advertise Amazon products to monetize your website. ... https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/detail/main.html ..... ..... Topic: Facetime Net Neutrality issue (wireless, but within scope) ... Net Neutrality Groups Challenge AT&T FaceTime Blocking by David Kravets -- 09.18.12 5:03 PM ... Online rights groups said Tuesday they are asking the Federal Communications Commission to weigh in on the matter. By rule, Public Knowledge, Free Press and the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute can file their net neutrality complaint with the FCC in 10 days because the clock started ticking when the groups notified the nation’s second-largest carrier of their intent Tuesday. ... http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/factime-fcc-flap/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+ %28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29 ...... 29 Topic: Quake3 game server free speech issue ... Here buried in an endnote, I'd just like to defend my own partially-cannabis-fueled days of my youth, playing networked online games such as Id software's Doom and ultimately open sourced Quake 3. While it was just 'playing games' it was also a valuable educational(36) process that taught me about TCP/IP client/server networking. I even have to point out that the demonic imagery did not keep me an atheist as I was then, but I feel led to a modern mature Christianity, one in which I feel comfortable being exposed to even extreme religious and anti-religious free speech served to me by others on the internet. The world I want to live in is one where all decent generally law abiding citizens are free to voice their most cherished as well as craziest ideas and beliefs across the globe with the open internet. It may take awhile for society to mature to the level where we can have that, without some occasional related flare ups of terrorism or one off people who snap and terrorize just a few people. But the nightmares I see in a world society without that kind of free speech, is much, much, much worse. Perhaps free speech vs blasphemy will still be a major issue for society 500 years from now. I really hope not, but I don't know. But the best path I see forward is to put the power of the internet microphone in the hands of all end users by allowing serving from residences. Not to mention that widening the base of US citizens that know basic networking via the experience with running game and other servers, has to be good for our overall national cyber/information warfare defense strategy. also note, I asked friends for any questions to pose to Vint Cerf. All I've gotten thus far is- – “Zero or One?” - Lance Wessel – “Do I have a Right To Serve?” - dmc ..... 30 Topic: IPv4 address scarcity (and/or IP filtering to restrict customer serving) leads to inability to serve free speech over the internet ... Any gurus reading this care to contradict this assertion that I'm not so certain of? I guess if you had a static network with all nodes continuously broadcasting (perhaps very very slowly introducing large, but in some cases tolerable latencies), maybe you could serve some slow text-free-speech data via e.g. layered ssh/http/etc protocol. Probably this is misunderstanding or simple ignorance. Thinking more maybe it only works around a probably insufficient subset of interesting cases. In ANY event however, just letting everyone use IPv6 simply and as designed, makes all of those gross workaround considerations far less relevant. ...... 31 Topic: Google's code of conduct: their famous “Don't be evil” motto ... Other activities can also be illegal, unfair, or create the appearance of impropriety. Such activities include: • using Google’s size or strength to gain an unfair competitive advantage ... ... Google aspires to be a different kind of company. .... And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up! ... http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html#toc-competition-laws ...... 32 Topic: Kansas City Star: most-generic business development 'frontier' hype ... Google this: Can KC cash in on high-tech ambitions? By YAEL T. ABOUHALKAH The Kansas City Star -- 2012/09/12 ... Is Kansas City going to be the city Version 2.0 of Seattle, Austin or Boston, attracting gobs of young people eager to live an urban lifestyle in or near a hip downtown while creating lots of cool high-tech companies? Maybe. And maybe not. ... http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/12/3811710/google-this-can-kc-cash-in-on.html#storylink=misearch ..... 33 Topic: Lawrencian notes business advantage for relocaters to Kansas City due to GoogleFiber (and good background in the article on Milo Medin and Patrick Pichette talking with Brownback) ... Google picks Kansas City, Kan., for high-speed fiber network project By Chad Lawhorn & Melissa Treolo -- March 30, 2011, 11:35 a.m ... Beth Johnson, director of economic development for the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, said the project was great news for Kansas, and said it could boost Kansas City, Kan., when companies are trying to decide where to locate within the region. ... http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/mar/30/google-choses-kansas-city-kan-high-speed-fiber-net/ ..... 34 Topic: Topeka's business interest in GoogleFiber ... Topeka renames itself to ‘Google’ in an effort to lure tech company’s fiber optic plan By Associated Press -- March 2, 2010, 10:06 a.m. ... Topeka — Topeka's mayor says the city shall temporarily be referred to as "Google, Kansas — the capital city of fiber optics," in an effort to persuade the Internet giant to test an ultra-fast connection in the state capital. ... http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/mar/02/topeka-renames-itself-google-effort-lure-tech-comp/ ..... 35 Topic: Google touting the potential for innovation as initial intent (and Milo Medin Google title) ... Google to offer KC ultra-fast Internet for $70/mo. By Maria Fisher and Peter Svensson, Associated Press -- July 26, 2012, 10:25 a.m. ... Google is hoping that the network could help the development of other advanced applications that can take advantage of the high speeds. It's also hoping to spur phone and cable companies into upgrading their own networks. "Access speeds have simply not kept pace with the phenomenal increases in computing power and storage capacity that's spurred innovation over the last decade," Milo Medin, Google's vice president of Access Services, said in a blog post. ... http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2012/jul/26/google-set-announce-kc-plans/ ..... 36 Topic: Google touting the potential for innovation as initial intent (&Gaming) ... TO: Mayor Sly James and the City Council of Kansas City, Mo. Mayor/CEO Joe Reardon and Commissioners of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kan., Residents of Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan. FROM: Mayors’ Bistate Innovation Team RE: Playing to Win: A playbook for capitalizing on ultra-high-speed fiber in Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri DATE: May 22, 2012 ... PLAY: SUPPORT ONLINE GAMING DEVELOPMENT Companies that create digital games are often at the cutting edge of information technology and new applications. Gamers tend to make some of the best digital designers and programmers with hyper-developed spatial and analytical skills. ... MBIT recommends enabling and encouraging the development of gaming technology businesses. Game developers will be attracted to the availability of reasonably priced high-speed fiber, the presence of creative talent in the community, and community commitment to provide business support services. Action Steps: Consider the location and growth of gaming technology businesses as a local economic development strategy. Work with area educational institutions to ensure that high school and college curriculum supports building a workforce with information technology skills to develop games for the commercial marketplace. ... http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=playing%20to%20win%20bistate%20commission %20kansas&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marc.org%2Fassets %2FGoogleFiberPlaybook.pdf&ei=O89vULymOab10gGV34HwAg&usg=AFQjCNHrHW2Ay7TmFrC8doeSuRWEfpzNCA sha512sum: 603b4e391bfbab5d40731e4b68f0e1a75c8d2f8acd3f48201b105aaf7fdd195b3f4b38 d71a160abbe0c4ae0fbc77b900f2fb4c13a4ccbe130d82925d02839df1 GoogleFiberPlaybook.pdf ..... 37 Topic: Google touting: amazing new services and job opportunities ... Super fast fiber for Kansas City Google Official Blog -- July 26, 2012 ... It’s easy to forget how revolutionary high-speed Internet access was in the 1990s. Not only did broadband kill the screeching sound of dial-up, it also spurred innovation, helping to create amazing new services as well as new job opportunities for many thousands of Americans. ... http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/super-fast-fiber-for-kansas-city.html ..... ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... .XY-..--.-XY---XY.-YY.YYYXXY-..-.--.XXXYYY-YYYYY.-XYYXYX.XXXYXX. .XX..-.-.-XX..-YY--XX.YX.---.-...--.XY...--YX..XY-XY---..XX..--- .YX.--....XY...YY--YY-YYYXXY----..-.YYYYYX-XYXYX.-XYXXXY.XXXYXY. .XX.----..XY...YYXXYX-XXYXXX.-...--.XY...--YYXY-.-XXYYXY.XXXYYX- .YXYYYY..-XY...-YXXX..XX..-......---XY.-.--YX-XX.-XX.-.-.YX..... .XXXYXX-.-XY----.XX-.-YXYXXY--...--.YX....-YY..YY-XYXYYY.XXYYYY- .---.--..--..-.-..-......---.-...--.-....--..-.-.--.--.-..-..... .--..-...--.----YYXY..YYYXX-.-.-.--.XXXY.---.XY..-XYXXXX..-..... .----..-.--.---XYXXXY-YX..XY---...-.YYYYY-...XX..-XY----.---..-. ..-......---.-.YY--YX.YYYXX.-..-.---YY--YY-..YY..-XXYYXX.---.-.- .--.--.-.---..-XY.-YY.YYYX--.-.-.---YY..YY-..YY..-XXYXYY.--.-... .--..-.-..-....YYXYYX-YY.XX....-.---YXXXY.-..YY..-XY...-.--.---. .--..-....-.....YXXX.-YY.-XY-....--.YXYX..-..YY..-YXYYYY.---..-. .--.----.---.....--.-....--..-.-.---.-...---..--..-.---.....-.-. 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