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Is the New York Times a Confused Company?

August 11, 2008 by

Over lunch I did something old-fashioned—I picked up and read a print copy of the New York Times. I was startled to find, on the front of the business section, a large, colorfully decorated feature headlined “Is Google a Media Company?” The graphic accompanying the story shows a newspaper masthead titled “Google Today,” followed by a list of current and imagined future offerings, from Google Maps and Google Earth to Google Drink and Google Pancake. Citing the new, wikipedia-esque service Knol, and using the example of that service’s wonderful entry on buttermilk pancakes, the Times story argues that Knol’s launch has “rekindled fears among some media companies that Google is increasingly becoming a competitor. They foresee Google’s becoming a powerful rival that not only owns a growing number of content properties, including YouTube, the top online video site, and Blogger, a leading blogging service, but also holds the keys to directing users around the Web.”

I hope the Times’s internal business staff is better grounded than its reporters and editors appear to be—otherwise, the Times is in even deeper trouble than its flagging performance suggests. Google isn’t becoming a media company—it is one now and always has been. From the beginning, it has sold the same thing that the Times and other media outlets do: Audiences. Unlike the traditional media outlets, though, online media firms like Google and Yahoo have decoupled content production from audience sales. Whether selling ads alongside search results, or alongside user-generated content on Knol or YouTube, or displaying ads on a third party blog or even a traditional media web site, Google acts as a broker, selling audiences that others have worked to attract. In so doing, they’ve thrown the competition for ad dollars wide open, allowing any blog to sap revenue (proportionately to audience share) from the big guys. The whole infrastructure is self-service and scales down to be economical for any publisher, no matter how small. It’s a far cry from an advertising marketplace that relies, as the newspaper business traditionally has, on human add sales. In the new environment, it’s a buyer’s market for audiences, and nobody is likely to make the kinds of killings that newspapers once did. As I’ve argued before, the worrying and plausible future for high-cost outlets like the Times is a death of a thousand cuts as revenues get fractured among content sources.

One might argue that sites like Knol or Blogger are a competitive threat to established media outlets because they draw users away from those outlets. But Google’s decision to add these sites hurts its media partners only to the (small) extent that the new sites increase the total amount of competing ad inventory on the web—that is, the supply of people-reading-things to whom advertisements can be displayed. To top it all off, Knol lets authors, including any participating old-media producers, capture revenue from the eyeballs they draw. The revenues in settings like these are slimmer because they are shared with Google, as opposed to being sold directly by NYTimes.com or some other establishment media outlet. But it’s hard to judge whether the Knol reimbursement would be higher or lower than the equivalent payment if an ad were displayed on the established outlet’s site, since Google does not disclose the fraction of ad revenue in shares with publishers in either case. But the addition of one more user-generated content site, whether from Google or anyone else, is at most a footnote to the media industry trend: Google’s revenues come from ads, and that makes it a media company, pure and simple.

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Comcast Gets Slapped, But the FCC Wisely Leaves its Options Open

August 6, 2008 by

The FCC’s recent Comcast action—whose full text is unavailable as yet, though it was described in a press release and statements from each comissioner—is a lesson in the importance of technological literacy for policymaking. The five commissioners’ views, as reflected in their statements, are strongly correlated to the degree of understanding of the fact pattern that each commissioner’s statement reveals. Both dissenting commissioners, it turns out, materially misunderstood the technical facts on which they assert their decisions were based. But the majority, despite technical competence, avoided a bright line rule—and that might itself turn out to be great policy.

Referring to what she introduces as the “BitTorrent-Comcast controversy,” dissenting Commissioner Tate writes that after the FCC began to look into the matter, “the two parties announced on March 27 an agreement to collaborate in managing web traffic and to work together to address network management and content distribution.” Where private parties can agree among themselves, Commissioner Tate sensibly argues, regulators ought to stand back. But as Ed and others have pointed out before, this has never been a two-party dispute. BitTorrent, Inc., which negotiated with Comcast, doesn’t have the power to redefine the open BitTorrent protocol whose name it shares. Anyone can write client software to share files using today’s version of the Bittorrent protocol – and no agreement between Comcast and BitTorrent, Inc. could change that. Indeed, if the protocoal were modified to buy overall traffic reductions by slowing downloads for individual users, one might expect many users to decline to switch. For this particular issue to be resolved among the parties, Comcast would have to negotiate with all (or at least most of) the present and future developers of Bittorrent clients. A private or mediated resolution among the primary actors involved in this dispute has not taken place and isn’t, as far as I know, currently being attempted. So while I share Ms. Tate’s wise preference for mediation and regulatory reticence, I don’t think her view in this particular case is available to anyone who fully understands the technical facts.

The other dissenting commissioner, Robert McDowell, shares Ms. Tate’s confusion about who the parties to the dispute are, chastising the majority for going forward after Comcast and BitTorrent, Inc. announced their differences settled. He’s also simply confused about the technology, writing that “the vast majority of consumers” “do not use P2P software to watch YouTube” when (a) YouTube isn’t delivered over P2P software, so its traffic numbers don’t speak to the P2P issue and (b) YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the web, making it very unlikely that the “vast majority of consumers” avoid the site. Likewise, he writes that network management allows companies to provide “online video without distortion, pops, and hisses,” analog problems that aren’t faced by digital media.

The majority decision, in finding Comcast’s activities collectively to be over the line from “reasonable network management,” leaves substantial uncertainty about where that line lies, which is another way of saying that the decision makes it hard for other ISPs to predict what kinds of network management, short of what Comcast did, would prompt sanctions in the future. For example, what if Comcast or another ISP were to use the same tools only to target BitTorrent files that appear, after deep packet inspection, to violate copyright? The commissioners were at pains to emphasize that networks are free to police their networks for illegal content. But a filter designed to impede transfer of most infringing video would be certain to generate a significant number of false positives, and the false positives (that is, transfers of legal video impeded by the filter) would act as a thumb on the scales in favor of traditional cable service, raising the same body of concerns about competition that the commissioners cite as a background factor informing their decision to sanction Comcast. We don’t know how that one would turn out.

McDowell’s brief highlights the ambiguity of the finding. He writes: “This matter would have had a better chance on appeal if we had put the horse before the cart and conducted a rulemaking, issued rules and then enforced them… The majority’s view of its ability to adjudicate this matter solely pursuant to ancillary authority is legally deficient as well. Under the analysis set forth in the order, the Commission apparently can do anything so long as it frames its actions in terms of promoting the Internet or broadband deployment.”

Should the commissioners have adopted a “bright line” rule, as McDowell’s dissent suggests? The Comcast ruling’s uncertainty guarantees a future of envelope-pushing and resource intensive, case-by-case adjudication, whether in regulatory proceedings or the courts. But I actually think that might be the best available alternative here. It preserves the Commission’s ability to make the right decision in future cases without having to guess, today, what precise rule would dictate those future results. (On the flip side, it also preserves the Commission’s ability to make bad choices in the future, especially if diminished public interest in the issue increases the odds of regulatory capture.) If Jim Harper is correct that Martin’s support is a strategic gambit to tie the issue up while broadband service expands, this suggests that Martin believes, as I do, that uncertainty about future interventions is a good way to keep ISPs on their best behavior.

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iPhone Apps Show Industry the Benefits of Openness

August 4, 2008 by

Today’s New York Times reports on the impact of Apple’s decision to allow third-party application software on the iPhone:

In the first 10 days after Apple opened its App Store for the iPhone, consumers downloaded more than 25 million applications, ranging from games like Super Monkey Ball to tools like New York City subway maps. It was nothing short of revolutionary, not only because the number was so high but also because iPhone users could do it at all.

Consumers have long been frustrated with how much control carriers — AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and the like — have exerted over what they could download to their mobile phones. But in the last nine months, carriers, software developers and cellphone makers have embraced a new attitude of openness toward consumers.

The App Store makes a big difference to me as a new iPhone user – the device would be much less useful without third-party applications. The value of third-party applications and the platforms that enable them is a commonplace outside the mobile phone world. It’s good to see it finally seeping into what Walt Mossberg famously calls “the Soviet Ministries”.

But before we declare victory in the fight for open mobile devices, let’s remember how far the iPhone still has to go. Although a broad range of applications is available in the App Store, the Store is still under Apple’s control and no app can appear there without Apple’s blessing. Apple has been fairly permissive so far, but that could change, and in any case there will inevitably be conflicts between what users and developers want and what Apple wants.

One of Apple’s reasons for opening the App Store must have been the popularity of unauthorized (by Apple) iPhone apps, and the phenomenon of iPhone jailbreaking to enable those apps. Apple’s previous attempt to limit iPhone apps just didn’t work. Faced with the possibility that jailbreaking would become the norm, Apple had little choice but to offer an authorized distribution path for third-party apps.

It’s interesting to note that this consumer push for openness came on the iPhone, which was already the most open of the market-leading mobile phones because it had an up-to-date Web browser. You might have expected less open phones to be jailbroken first, as their users had the most to gain from new applications.

Why was the iPhone the focus of openness efforts? For several reasons, I think. First, iPhone users were already more attuned to the advantages of good application software on mobile phones – that’s one of the reasons they bought iPhones in the first place. Second, Apple’s reputation for focusing on improving customer experience led people to expect more and better applications as the product matured. Third, the iPhone came with an all-you-can-eat Internet access plan, so users didn’t have to worry that new apps would run up their bandwidth bill. And finally, the fact that the iPhone was nearer to being open, having a more sophisticated operating system and browser, made it easier to jallbreak.

This last is an important point, and it argues against claims by people like Jonathan Zittrain that almost-open “appliances” will take the place of today’s open computers. Generally, the closer a system is to being open, the more practical autonomy end users will have to control it, and the more easily unauthorized third-party apps can be built for it. An almost-open system must necessarily be built by starting with an open technical infrastructure and then trying to lock it down; but given the limits of real-world lockdown technologies, this means that customers will be able to jailbreak the system.

In short, nature abhors a functionality vacuum. Design your system to remove functionality, and users will find a way to restore that functionality. Like Apple, appliance vendors are better off leading this parade than trying to stop it.

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Where are the Technologists on the EAC Advisory Board?

July 31, 2008 by

Barbara Simons, an accomplished computer scientist and e-voting expert, was recently appointed to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Board of Advisors. (The EAC is the U.S. Federal body responsible for voting technology standards, among other things.) This is good news.

The board has thirty-seven members, of which four positions are allocated for “members representing professionals in the field of science and technology”. These four positions are to be appointed by Majority and Minority leaders in the House and the Senate. (See page 2 of the Board’s charter.) Given the importance of voting technology issues to the EAC, it does seem like a good idea to reserve 10% of the advisory board positions for technologists. If anything, the number of technologist seats should be larger.

Barbara was appointed to the board position by the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. Kudos to Senator Reid for appointing a genuine voting technology expert.

What about the other three seats for “professionals in the field of science and technology?” Sadly, the board’s membership list shows that these seats are not actually held by technical people. Barbara Arnwine holds the House Speaker’s seat, Tom Fuentes holds the House Minority Leader’s seat, and Wesley R. Kliner, Jr. holds the Senate Minority Leader’s seat. All three appear to be accomplished people who have something to offer on the board. But as far as I can tell they are not “professionals in the field of science and technology”, so their appropriate positions on the board would be somewhere in the other thirty-three seats.

What can be done? I wouldn’t go so far as to kick any current members off the board, even if that were possible. But when vacancies do become available, they should be filled by scientists or technologists, as dictated by the charter’s requirement of having four such people on the board.

The EAC is struggling with voting technology issues. They could surely use the advice of three more expert technologists.

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License for an open-source voting system?

July 30, 2008 by

Back when we were putting together the grant proposal for ACCURATE, one of the questions that we asked ourselves, and which the NSF people asked us as well, was whether we would produce a “bright shiny object,” which is to say whether or not we would produce a functional voting machine that could ostensibly be put to use in a real election.  Our decision at the time, and it was certainly the correct decision, is that we would focus on innovating in the technology under the covers of a voting system, and we might produce, at most “research prototypes”.  The difference between a research prototype and a genuine, commercial system are typically quite substantial, in general, and it would be no different here with voting system prototypes.

At Rice we built a fairly substantial prototype that we call “VoteBox”; you can read more about it in a paper that will appear on Friday at Usenix Security.  To grossly summarize, our prototype feels a lot like a normal DRE voting system, but uses some nice cryptographic machinery to ensure that you don’t have to trust that the code is correct.  You can verify the correctness of a machine, on the fly, while the election is ongoing.  Our prototype is missing a couple features that you’d want from a commercial system, like write-in voting, but it’s far enough along that it’s been used in several human-factors experiments (CHI’08, Everett’07).

This summer, our mission is to get this thing shipped as some sort of “open source” project.  Now we have several goals in this:

  • Allow other researchers to benefit from our infrastructure as a platform to do their own research.
  • Inspire commercial voting system vendors to build better products (i.e., solving the hard design problems for them, to reduce their cost for adopting innovative techniques).
  • Allow commercial voting system vendors to build on our source code, itself.

All well and good.  Now the question is how we should actually license the thing.  There are many, many different models under which we could proceed:

  • Closed source + patents + licenses.  This may or may not yield revenues for our university, and may or may not be attractive to vendors.  It’s clearly unattractive to other researchers, and would limit uptake of our system in places where we might not even think to look, such as outside the U.S.
  • Open source + a “not for commercial use” license.  This makes it a little easier for other researchers to pick up and modify the software although ownership issues could get tricky.
  • Open source with a “BSD”-style license. A BSD-style license effectively says “do whatever you want, just give us credit for our work and you’re on your own if it doesn’t work.”   This sort of license tends to maximize the ease with which companies can adopt your work.
  • Open source with a “GPL”-style license.  The GPL has an interesting property for the voting system world: it makes any derivatives of the source code as open as the original code (unless a vendor reimplements it from scratch).  This sort of openness is something we want to encourage in voting system vendors, but it might reduce vendor willingness to use the codebase.
  • Open source with a “publication required” license.  Joe Hall suggested this as another option.  Like a BSD license, anybody can use it in a product, but the company would be compelled to publish the source code, like a book.  Unlike GPL, they would not be required to give up copyright or allow any downstream use of their code.

I did a quick survey of several open source voting systems.  Most are distributed under the GPL:

  • Adder
  • eVACS (old version is GPL; new version is proprietary)
  • Helios (code not yet released; most likely GPL according to Ben Adida)
  • OVC (GPL with extensions to require change histories be maintained)
  • Pvote

Civitas is distributed under a non-commercial-use only license.  VoteHere, at one point, opened its code for independent evaluation (but not reuse), but I can’t find it any more.  It was probably a variant on the non-commercial-use only theme.  Punchscan is distributed under a BSD-style license.

My question to the peanut gallery: what sort of license would you select for a bright, shiny new voting system project and why?

[Extra food for thought: The GPLv3 would have some interesting interactions with voting systems.  For starters, there’s a question of who, exactly, a “user” might be.  Is that the county clerk whose office bought it, or the person who ultimately votes on it?  Also, you have section 3, which forbids any attempt to limit reverse-engineering or “circumvention” of the product.  I suppose that means that garden-variety tampering with a voting machine would still violate various laws, but the vendor couldn’t sue you for it.  Perhaps more interesting is section 6, which talks about how source code must be made available when you ship compiled software.  A vendor could perhaps give the source code only to its “customers” without giving it to everybody (again, depending on who a “user” is).  Of course, any such customer is free under the GPL to redistribute the code to anybody else.  Voting vendors may be most scared away by section 11, which talks about compulsory patent licensing (depending, of course, on the particulars of their patent portfolios).]

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