SaschaMeinrath.com

I recently wrote a piece for the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) discussing the importance of White Space Devices and remaining a critical consumer of the so-called "information" being fed to them by Shure and the NAB. Due to space constraints, I did have to cut one of my favorite (though a bit wonky) parts from the article. I've included the original text below the article -- it illustrates how hypocritical and duplicitous Shure and the NAB have been in their dealings with cultural organizations.

From www.namac.org/node/5051:

White Space Devices and the Battle over Innovation: Public Access vs. Industry Control of the Airwaves

by Sascha D. Meinrath

The Washington Post just ran an article about Shared Spectrum, a company that's been developing white space devices for many years for DARPA. I've been following Shared Spectrum's work for awhile now -- the most interesting element about it is that they're already doing what the National Association of Broadcasters says isn't possible. Here's more from the Post:

An engineer, Mark A. McHenry litters his speech with dizzying terms like gigahertz and cognitive radio. But on one topic in the national news he is plain-spoken: the claim by the broadcast networks, the NBCs and CBSs of the world, that a new technology to provide Internet service over the air will interfere with TV viewing.

"They're wrong," says McHenry, the chief executive of Shared Spectrum, a Vienna technology company.

The Federal Communications Commission is weighing a proposal that would allow companies to share airwaves. McHenry said his eight-year-old, 30-person firm has already received $30 million from the Defense Department to develop the concept. The broadcasters' position is "not what the DoD thinks," McHenry said. "It works in the harshest environments."

My colleague, Benn Kobb, sent me a fascinating article from 1991 where the National Association of Broadcasters is engaging is a massive misinformation and lobbying campaign against (I kid you not), data communications via cellular telephone networks. That's right, NAB fought to prevent technologies like Blackberries and iPhones from ever being allowed.

Today, the NAB is at it again -- this time targeting white space devices. But the notion is exactly the same -- any new wireless technology, no matter how useful to consumers or innocuous, will be fought against if NAB sees it as somehow against their own self-interests. In fact, as their own record illustrates (and being anti-smart phone is only the tip of the iceberg, NAB has systematically fought against innovations in the field of communications for decades.

But read on, this will certainly resonate with anyone who's ever sent a text message:

From: www.findarticles.com.

Mobile Phone News
Dec. 19, 1991
Copyright 1991 Access Intelligence LLC

NAB protests cellular operators offering information services

Here in DC we're gearing up for One Web Day and it's looking to be the most extravagant OWD party I've helped organize yet! Want to learn more -- check out:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT
Nathaniel James
DC OWD Ambassador
Campaign Coordinator, Media and Democracy Coalition
njames@media-democracy.net
p: 202 736 5757
c: 206 954 3040

Morgan Weiland
DC OWD Ambassador
morganweiland@gmail.com
c: 202 256 7480

DC ONE WEB DAY: BLOGGER PREVIEW
Teleconference with One Web Day founder, ICANN Board Member and cyberlaw scholar Susan Crawford, and DC ambassadors

Wednesday, August 20, 3:30pm and 8pm.

Washington, DC—OneWebDay (OWD) is a global event held September 22 celebrating the Web and highlighting key issues about the future of the Internet, with a focus in its third year on online political participation. To celebrate and document the recent flourishing of online political participation in what has become a new "town square," the DC OWD Planning Committee is creating an E-Democracy Time Capsule that will go live online on August 22, one month before OWD. We are building a site where anyone, from all corners of the United States and the world, can mark history by contributing text, images, sound, and video to a tricked-out WordPress blog describing their favorite E-Democracy tools, letters to the future about their hopes for Web-powered politics, and profiles of E-Democracy Heroes.

Back in March 2007, I wrote that "the worst state franchise bill I've ever read has just been introduced in Illinois". At the time, there was a united front among community activists and community media producers to kill this bill (HB1500). As I wrote, "In taking away home rule power for local communities [HB1500] creates situations whereby local disruptions (e.g., digging up streets, sidewalks, front yards, etc.) are taken completely out of local hands."

And then a remarkable thing happened -- on May 30, 2007, AT&T holed up with legislators to create a "compromise" bill. The plot seemed straight from a Hollywood movie:

I've just learned that AT&T lobbyists are holed up in state legislators offices and are rewriting state laws that they will attempt to get passed in the dead of night. One might think that this is some sort of nefarious plot to some Gotham City corruption scandal, but it's happening right now in the State of Illinois. With massive public opposition to HB1500, it appears likely that AT&T and it's legislators will attempt to attach amendments to SB 678.

Here's the kicker, however, AT&T and its political cronies wouldn't have been able to pass this bill without the avid support of community media producers. While folks like myself were writing:

Since posting several concerns with the future of Meraki's pricing structure I've heard that Meraki is planning discontinue their Meraki Mini $49 mesh router on August 12, 2008. If true (I've now heard it from a few different sources), this means that Meraki users have only a few more days to buy hardware before the minimal price goes up by 300%.

Once or twice a week I get the question, "I'm thinking about using Meraki's equipment, what do you think?" And I always start my answer much the same way. [As a disclaimer, I've known the Meraki folks since their time back at MIT -- my development teams used to collaborate actively with them.]

Meraki is a great system for quick do-it-yourself networking. The technology is elegant and the graphical user interface (mostly) intuitive. If you want a plug-and-play technology immediately deployed, it's a good solution. But that is far from the whole story.

As many of my readers know, I've been advocating for open tech for years and years -- so how does Meraki stack up? The core technologies in Meraki are open source -- but they've been smothered in a proprietary wrapper that makes Meraki little different from most "black box" solutions. Users can't easily view the code, change features (or add features, for that matter), fix bugs, or otherwise adapt the technology for their own uses. As a number of open source projects have discovered, even gaining access to information that was covered by existing open source licenses has become increasingly difficult as Meraki has become increasingly proprietary.

The New York Times is now reporting on the hacking of the websites of ICANN and IANA. For many of the folks who've been attempting to conduct research on the Internet and make improvements to its structure, this comes as no surprise. And yet, the scientific community faces a continuing data acquisition crisis -- they're prevented from collecting the information they need to know how the Internet works and how we might improve it. At the heart of the matter is an utter disregard by regulators and policy makers to mandate that companies make information available that had been in the public domain previously, but which they now claim to be proprietary. Until that's done, the security and structure of the Internet will continue to face failures, with the degree of chaos only certain to grow in coming years.

The recent FCC spectrum auctions netted $19.6 billion. In essence a group of companies paid for exclusive licensure of several bands of the public airwaves. Which begs the question, if they have exclusive licensure (guaranteed by law and by the enforcement powers of the FCC), what happens with all those wireless microphones currently operating (both legally, but mostly illegally) in those bands?

The only solution is going to be that they will have to vacate those bands -- thus far, there's been nothing but silence on the issue. Personally, I plan to grab some popcorn and watch how the telcos and FCC deal with the problem. Meanwhile, devices are, even today, being sold that use this band -- basically, it's pirate radio equipment being manufactured and sold by major corporations. This is going to get interesting.

New broadband statistics from the OECD (through the last quarter of 2007) point to the complete and continuing failure of the United States to reclaim its prior successes, much less, even keep up with a growing list of other countries. Even the Wall Street Journal is jumping into the fray:

"Once the undisputed leader in the technological revolution, the U.S. now lags a growing number of countries in the speed, cost and availability of high-speed Internet. While cable and telecom companies are spending billions to upgrade their service, they're focusing their efforts mostly on larger U.S. cities for now."

The Wall Street Journal article contains some real gems -- pointing to historical precedents that mirror today's broadband situation and debates: