Fiber to the People: Lessig, IEEE & AFNs

Codeine writes "Larry Lessig articulates some infrastructure observations based on work by the IEEE & Cornell AFN Institute regarding 'end-user-as owner' (EUO) advanced fibre networks."

Comments

Fiber to the people?

[addikt10]

First thing I thought was Metamucil

Shame on the IEEE

[possible]

Lately they've been acting like racists and moral cowards. They proactively withdrew membership privileges and publishing rights for Iranian students and researchers. See also this article for an explanation.

Re:Shame on the IEEE

[bronaugh]

That's kind of shocking considering what the IEEE stands for. The points made on shameonieee.org are good points; they're going against their own regulations to cover their ass, in typical cowardly I'm-afraid-of-lawyers fashion.

If you're so afraid of US law, why don't you relocate to, say, Germany or France or even Canada? If this is such a big issue, why don't you serve your members better by moving to the Free World...

Reminds me of a line from an old song... "You are living in the free world, and in the free world you must stay"

Dragging the nationality of their organization into the debate will not serve to promote their organization.

Re:Shame on the IEEE

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get it. Often times, scientific and technical societies are one of the few ways that students in these countries can interact with the outside world. Students are usually in the vanguard of pro-democracy movements (as in China and in fact Iran too) and it's a *good* idea to keep communications open with them.

Re:Shame on the IEEE

[bronaugh]

It is not the role of a supposedly apolitical organization to get involved in politics. Traditionally, academia has crossed borders without restrictions; why should it be any different now?

By accepting people who are from such countries as Iran, you're giving them a window on the outside world; at least then they can see that perhaps their own country isn't a perfect world, and that other countries (like the US) aren't necessarily evil either. Broadening minds is a very effective tool; it works much better than blocking countries off so that everyone inside is narrow-minded and follows the government's line.

Hatred and isolation, on the other hand, are totally counterproductive.

Re:Shame on the IEEE

[EinarH]

IEEE should not act proctively in a case like this. So far there are no UN sanctions against these countries regarding WMD.

IEEE took action to fulfill the U.S. Treasury Department trade regulations administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). This shows that:
1.IEEE is a organization that to a large degree is influenced by US policy and interests.

2. In this case the OFAC regulations could result in the opposite of the intended effect:
Restricting the ability for researchers in these countries to communicate with western researchers will only make it more difficault for them to do their job and participating in legitimate research. That could make some of them less sympatethic to western ideas and harder to find legitimate jobs.
And getting the information in these IEEE papers is not rocket science even in a banned country. I bet that Iranian researchers allready send money to Pakistan or Turkey so someone there can set up a false member account or copy the papers. And the OFAC regulations were constructed without Internet in mind...Today you can't expect published information to stay out of North Korea just becasue you no longer send it directly to them by mail.

IEEE's policy in this case is stupid and short sighted. In a *worst case* scenario this could lead some engineers and researchers to the governmental WMD programs instead of other work.

Re:Shame on the IEEE

[IM6100]

Reminds me of a line from an old song... "You are living in the free world, and in the free world you must stay"

I didn't know Fidel Castro was a songwriter.

Re:Shame on the IEEE

[josephpate]

I'd rather they not get ahold of anything remotely related to NBC technology if at all possible.

<Seinfeld>
What's the deal with those American devils and their harlot women??
</Seinfeld>

Still dangerous to work with fiber?

[Phoenixhunter]

Last time I read up on bringing Fiber to the small business/consumer environment, one of the biggest problems was splicing the cable, as the tiny filiments could easily become embedded in the skin, and by accidentally or otherwise looking into the fiber you could damage your retina....have these fundamental problems been resolve?

Re:Still dangerous to work with fiber?

[BuckaBooBob]

Problems? Splicing a Fiber cable a Problem? Its about as much of a problem as electricity.. They both have possible dangers but that didn't stop electricity from catching on... As far as looking into a lit fiber... Umm... Why would you do that... Only multi mode fiber uses a wavelength that is visible. But still who in their right mind would run the risk of permanently damaging their eye by looking into a fiber when you have tools made to do with out risk to your self. Thats like a electrician using his tounge to test for voltage instead of a proper meter... When you look around a Fiber Termination Panel you see all sorts of warning about looking into the end of the fiber with/without magnifying lenses...

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[Pingular]

Larry Lessig articulates some infrastructure observations based on work by the IEEE & Cornell AFN Institute regarding 'end-user-as owner' (EUO) advanced fibre networks.

To that Stuntman guy

[coolmacdude]

Just because you decided to annoy the hell out of me by bitching about piracy during my legally paid viewings of the last 2 movies I went to see, I am going to download your next movie 5 times one I get my fiber connection set up.

Re:To that Stuntman guy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's especially annoying when you work in the industry, and know that the jobs for stuntmen, wardrobe, camera, carpentry, etc. are going away, not due to piracy, but because the producers are cutting costs and taking foreign incentives to shoot outside the US.

If they're going to blame job loss on something, blame it on the execs (who would have shot for cheaper elsewhere anyways.) Illegal copies are just a red herring - if copies ate into the profits of good movies, how did Finding Nemo set new records for the box office?

Personally, I think the industry should get a clue - if people are willing to spend an hour of computer time, and an hour of their own time, watching some crappy Kaaza version of a film that they weren't going to go to theatres to watch anyways, doesn't that point to a potential market for them to exploit? The next time a big movie comes out, USE Kaaza to sell a screener version of the movie, formatted for 4:3 at 320x480, for like $3.50 per download, starting the first Monday after the opening weekend. Consider any losses due to people seeing it as part of the marketing budget...

Re:To that Stuntman guy

[fermion]

The Matrix was the first popular film I have seen in quite a while. I paid my full entry to the movie. And then I had to sit there an hear some loser stunt man whine about hard he works and how dangerous the job is.

All I could think is 'you sir are a moron'. All jobs are hard and dangerous. Has he really ever been at work at three in the morning working hard to fix some problem to meet an immovable launch deadline, and i don't mean the whiny ass hollywood kind? Has he really ever been in front of a hundred kids a day, knowing that just down the street one of them beat up a teacher? Has he ever done an honest days work that involved more than fooling the masses? Well, many other people have, many other work hard, and many other people lost their job. And you don't see then wasting our time by whining during time that I paid to be entertained. It was like bring up Sally Struthers for save the whining men campaign.

I would think the industry would try to build up some good relations at blockbusters such as this instead of turning our stomaches.

It can be done

[duvel]

I would welcome fiber to my home. It's not like it's technologically or economically impossible.

NTT and other companies have already been offering 100Mbs fiberoptic lines to homes in Japan for quite awhile now.

The best part is it's cheap, They usually cost a little more than $40 a month.

Of course, it's still twice the price of 12Mbs ADSL lines in Japan like Yahoo BB who offers 12Mbs speed for $21/month. Not that most people would know what to do with 100Mbs anyways (except for some stuff that RIAA doesn't really approve of).

Re:It can be done

[SuperBanana]

would welcome fiber to my home. It's not like it's technologically or economically impossible. NTT and other companies have already been offering 100Mbs fiberoptic lines to homes in Japan for quite awhile now.

Siiiiigh...when are you people going to realize it's about POPULATION DENSITY? When you have 50 customers in one building- it's rather practical to run a T3 to them. If you have 5- no way.

Case and point- when I worked in south boston, we had a 256kbit T1 installed because it was the only option- no cable, no DSL because the phone company apparently ripped out all the copper in the area. Mind you- this is a 5 minute walk from DOWNTOWN FINANCIAL CENTER in Boston. Not the boondocks.

The Verizon engineer was beside himself over what it was going to cost them- they had to have 3 crew spend a week running fiber to us, installed $100k worth of equipment...and "even if everyone in your building bought two full T1's, we would never break even on this over the next 20 years". We were a 6-floor building, and one of two companies that could afford to have such a line- the rest were artists who hated our guts(incidentally, the only other guy was a high-on-himself content producer who tried to blackmail us into sharing our line by making a fuss when Verizon wanted to run the fiber cable across the ceiling of his loft space. Verizon told him to go fuck himself(and threatened to press legal action for violating state law), and he shut up and left us alone.

Right now, I live out in the burbs near boston. 30 minutes away. I have ONE choice in internet access save dialup. That would be the cable company. Our CO has been wired for DSL for many many years- at least 4- but you can't get DSL, because Verizon won't do it. If I were ONE town over, I'd have 10 DSL companies to choose from.

Even if Verizon did decide to flip on DSL in our town, we'd get about 1mbit down, 96kbit up- yes, you read that right- 96kbit up. Not much better that dialup, now is it?

As is right now, our cable company has in their AUP that we are "consumers" of an "entertainment service". We're prohibited from hosting ANY kind of server, but in particular any IRC, news server, or webboard. Yet they happily advertise work-at-home, kids-doing-homework-research type crap. One or the other please...

Re:It can be done

[KrispyKringle]

This is just a tad offtopic. Read the article.

Lessig's point, as tends to be the case with him, is not that fiber is good because its fast. He's not a technologist first and foremost (thankfully). His point is that shared-ownership is far better than corporate competition or limited monopolies (as is the current state in telecom).

He argues that the reasons to support limited monopolies (which clearly defeat straight competition) are limited, because they still result in monopolistic pricing, but that shared ownership by the consumer gives all the benefits of competition without all the reasons it's unfeasable for telecom.

RTFA.

Re:It can be done

[BuckaBooBob]

Well.. You seem to forget about population density... In the US on avg 1 square Kilomotere only has about 50 people... in Japan thats 1500.. So cost of infastructure is really easy to recoup where the US isn't as dense.

Re:It can be done

[tzanger]

Perhaps, but I'd certainly settle for state-run cable/DSL with that same fibre running to every major subdivision instead of every house.

Re:It can be done

[Anonymous Coward]

Siiiiigh...when are you people going to realize it's about POPULATION DENSITY? When you have 50 customers in one building- it's rather practical to run a T3 to them. If you have 5- no way.

Case and point- when I worked in south boston, we had a 256kbit T1 installed because it was the only option- no cable, no DSL because the phone company apparently ripped out all the copper in the area. Mind you- this is a 5 minute walk from DOWNTOWN FINANCIAL CENTER in Boston. Not the boondocks.

It's not about density - Boston (like most US cities) is already very dense. It's about poor planning and monopoly extortion. Why did the phone company rip out all the copper? Did they leave empty conduits behind?

Re:It can be done

[Minna Kirai]

Mind you- this is a 5 minute walk from DOWNTOWN FINANCIAL CENTER in Boston. Not the boondocks.

That actually makes it MORE expensive. In the heart of an old, dense, poorly-planned city, the effort required to install any new cable is orders of magnitude bigger than just ripping through an empty field in a backhoe. And being in the financial district meant that all the other people inconvenienced by the work are high-wage broker-types whose time is expensive to waste. (Meaning the city will soak you on all the permits and police overtime)

Maybe, Boston is actually the worst US city for additional expense to infrastructure projects- big or small. The extreme example is how they just built $400,000,000 worth of tunnel for $10,800,000,000 (a 27x multiplier) because of all the uninterruptable activity above the dig site.

If you want cheap fiber to your building, try someplace more amenable, like Chicago.

Right now, I live out in the burbs near boston. 30 minutes away. I have ONE choice in internet access save dialup.

I've got relatives living in such areas (128 region), and they've got two cable companies selling ISP service. The effective speeds to in-state resources are an impressive 300Kb/s.

Discussing this in Reykjavik

[Hjallli]

Coincidentally, I am working day in and out these days in finalizing a conference called Digital Reykjavik. There we will have several influential people speaking about the business of fiber to the home, who should run the networks the technology behind it and the effects it will have on society.

We will keep our site updated after the event with key points from the conference, hopefully something juicy.

Ah fiber.

[psifishdot]

Fiber keeps my downloads regular...

Re:Makes a certain amount of sense

[bussdriver]

My city does the roads, and lets the car makers compete on them.
We don't have GM make the road than then insist you to only drive GM cars on it.

Cities should do the networks like they do the roads. Usage taxes help maintain the 'information superhighway'. Let the free market build the cars, gas stations, AAA, onstar, etc..

I do not need an ISP. I MUST pay them and I don't even like them. Our city would have saved more money in the long run doing it themselves than all that regulation waste. (including lawsuits, regulation boards, etc.)

Re:Makes a certain amount of sense

[blaberski]

On the surface that sounds like a good idea, and is rather tempting. But answer me this, do you want the same people that brought us the DMV and IRS to have control of you internet access?

Faster local loop != faster Internet

[erice]

I don't see a whole lot point to running fiber to the home until backhaul costs come down.

The speed of most consumer broadband services is limited by the cost of the backhaul, not the performance of the local loop. If my area, 6Mbps DSL is available for those who can afford it. It's the same wire and the same hardware at both ends. Most people stick with 1.5Mbps becuase that is all they can afford.

Re:gigabit ethernet on fiber?

[Wesley Felter]

Ethernet does not use ACKs; what are you talking about?

Re:Makes a certain amount of sense

[Red Rocket]

We don't have GM make the road...then insist you ...only drive GM cars on it.

If you really are a bus driver, you might be interested in this. Most cities used to have a privately-owned trolley system that was an excellent means of transportation for the people (I live in quite a small city and it did). GM (along with Standard Oil and Firestone) didn't really care for people to have access to quality mass transportation so they formed a holding company called National City Lines to buy up the trolley companies and shut them down. Of course, a lot of people still didn't own personal transportation (yet) so NCL was quick to supply GM busses rolling on Firestone tires and burning Standard Oil. So, in a way, GM is responsible for the way our transportation system is organized.

More detail here and here.