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."

Shame on the IEEE

[possible]

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

Discussing this in Reykjavik

[Hjallli]

Coincidentally, I am working day in and out these days in finalizing a conference called Digital Reykjavik [digitalreykjavik.com]. 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.

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: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 [bigbad.com] 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

[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: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?

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 [njtpa.org] and here [bilderberg.org].