Intellectual Property Law

Mr. Martin

By Susan Crawford

So I’m a little lost in email these days - I fell behind a month ago, and since then it’s been like those game shows where people fight to stay on their feet as large objects roll inexorably towards them. They have to jump over these things, or swim under them, or whatever, but the large objects always seem to win. That’s me and email right now.

I’m grateful for all the lists I’m on. They’re particularly interesting these days, as we warm up for the FCC hearing on Friday and watch ICANN evolve. But, as I say, I’m a little overwhelmed.

So I’ll just go back to triage here and work through the box. Mr. Martin speaks to Saul Hansell, here:

For example, he said it would be acceptable for a network to give priority to Internet telephone calls over e-mail, because short delays affect the quality of voice conversations much more than e-mail.

?You have to have a very good reason for what you?re trying to do,? he said. ?Your solution has to be narrowly tailored.?

It’s so interesting that Mr. Martin chose “narrowly tailored” at that moment of the conversation.  That’s the test lawyers apply to content-based restrictions of speech by governments.

“Solution” is also an interesting word, because it implies there’s a problem.  Skype seems to work fine without quality-of-service guarantees.  This well-informed listserv message, from Dave Burstein, is persuasive on several key points:

1.  Verizon and AT&T don’t have any congestion issues

2.  Comcast does, but DOCSIS 3.0 may provide enough upstream bandwidth that congestion ceases to be an issue

3.  Video is the growth area, not P2P, and

4.  Much more sophisticated traffic shaping (and watching) gear is coming

So what’s the problem that Mr. Martin thinks the networkaccess providers should be solving?  If it’s “maintaining scarcity,” that’s probably the wrong question.

Back to the box.  More, and better, tomorrow.

Full post as published by Susan Crawford Blog on July 30, 2008 (boomark / email).