In DC, a majority of my friends are corporate lawyers. I can’t believe the craziness that happens with regards to reputation, hiring, and a general brand perception revolving around their perceived health and the perceived quality and rank of their associates.  Here’s another amusing example from Jim Horton, The Power Of Reputation:

Law firms know they have been paying too much to new associates but no one wants to go first in cutting associates starting pay. They are afraid of the reputation they will get in the marketplace and among the law schools where they recruit their new talent.

I guarantee this is true.  All of my K Street associate friends tell me that it is almost impossible to get fired if you make it into a firm as an associate because of the potential blowback a firm will incur if it gets out that the firm actually hired a dirty dud.  So amusing, so interesting, and so beautiful. Lawyers have their firms over a barrel and I love it.

Again, to quote Jim, ” It would be nice if it were the same in PR.”

Fresh off the wire and directly from the Supreme Court, Via the Chicago Tribune:

“The Supreme Court says individuals have a right to own guns, and so has struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C.”

“Chicago’s handgun ban has lasted for more than a quarter-century, but it’s under threat after the Supreme Court on Thursday decided that Washington D.C.’s law against handgun ownership is unconstitutional.”

I am amazed. I am speechless. I am honored. I am pleased. I am embarrassed. No matter what the rush of feelings I may experience in response to the kindest of words expressed on my behalf by Mr. Dan Hull in Our Wunderkind in Berlin, the most meaningful thing Dan reminded me of was that “under 40″ is still young. Via Chris Abraham Online.

One often forgets that when surrounded by Überwunderkind who are “under 30.” Thank you, Dan, my mentor. All I can say in response is that we really should trade jobs — that was a gorgeous bit of publicity, mate. Are you sure I need to attend Law School? Either way, please check out What About Clients?, Dan’s “blawg” — law blog.

Dan, I hope you’re attending New Year’s Renaissance Weekend in Charleston. I would love to buy you a car for that amazing testimonial. Or, maybe just a beer — you have a new car.

Michael Bernstein popped me an IM after reading my article, The Culture of “Acting White” Anti-Intellectualism Will Kill America, with a link to Cosby, Race and Escaping The Downside, which reveals America’s dirty secret, “in America, being poor, ignorant, desperate and unable to escape your situation has absolutely nothing to do with the color of your skin. It is universal.”

Before coming to NLADA I received a Jury summons in the mail. Not being worldly enough to know that there was such a massive difference between petit jury and grand jury, I really didn’t make much of it. It would be a couple days at most, and I am sure I would be passed over. I was, after all, working for an association known for its position helping poor folks find good legal assistance. What prosecutor would want to put up with such a loose cannon?

The answer to that is the Grand Jury system of Washington, D.C., which doesn’t care much about who or what you are in the world, just that you are eligible. Unlike most juries, the Grand Jury is an investigative group, voting not on sentencing or penalties, but the legitimacy of a case to proceed from the US Attorney’s Office to the Court and Jury.

And since there are four Grand Juries convened at overlapping start- and end-dates, each with twenty-three Jurors, only 16 of whom are needed to form a quorum allowing a vote, the system can afford to be draconian. By draconian, I mean to say that no matter how much I hinted as to my compassion and passion for the equal service under the law for the poor and indigent, it was all for naught; in fact, I could have well twitched wildly and hinted that I was receiving messaged from Betelgeuse and it would have really mattered little. Since there are so many, attrition and poor voting have been assumed and I was sadly too square to really subvert such a stalwart system.

It took three weeks for my fellow Jurors and I to realize that our job as Grand Jurists was not to do what the Prosecuting Attorneys told us to do. From the beginning of our five-week commitment, we were told that the Assistant United States Attorneys were our legal counsel and there to help us decide the fate of upwards of 125 lives: would the case be indicted and end up in court or would the case be thrown out. We were never advised that the personal lives of anyone we indicted would never be the same again; we were never warned that these private investigations would in fact become public record if we made a choice to pursue the case in the courts. We were constantly being reinforced that it was in fact about the victims and about the case; we were insured that our decisions were a formality and were an indictment in fact made against an innocent man, the court would be able to discern the truth and justice would be upheld. The innocent would go free and the guilty would pay their price to society. All we had to do was decide that there was a possibility that there might have been a viable crime committed and that was good enough because it was not our job to deal with sentencing or particulars.

I indicted a majority of the cases we investigated during the first few weeks. It took two weeks for us to become conversant in the acronyms and lingo of criminal law. For example, ADW/WA is short of Assault with a Dangerous Weapon While Armed and PWID-PCP is short for Possession With Intent to Distribute PCP. During the last couple weeks I became better at recognizing the different moods of the AUSAs.

They were all rock stars, each with his or her own stage presence. One female attorney showboated and I referred to her as a pit bull. She seemed indefatigable as he worked the system hard, making sure her cases received priority attention; she was a real rock star, but one Jurist made the observation that she seemed to be putting is on: she was neither our ally nor our counsel, she was a state employee trying to move cases through the system past nameless, faceless Grand Juries, none of which really knew what was going on. It seemed to me that over time, the system has really come to forget about the true nature of what the Grand Jury is there for. Funnily enough, I was told by the Liaison to the Grand Jurists that the Attorneys preferred the mature Grand Juries much more than the greenhorns. That sounded plausible to me since there would be less frustrating hand-holding and remediation. It seemed true enough until I saw how we voted over time. As the end of our duty approached, we challenged the AUSAs over details, the detectives over their credibility, the witnesses over their consistency, and oftentimes kept the interrogations focused and on-track.

My Grand Jury was a fast track Grand Jury. We were given priority to homicide, sexual abuse, childhood sexual abuse, and domestic cases. By the end of the five weeks, my fellow Jurists and I were rubbed raw. We watched as other Grand Juries planned parties for the last days, a two hour lunch. We were so burdened by the proceedings that we rejected the party and used our time to get the hell out of 555 4th Street, NW, and into small groups and away to lunch. Even our Secretary, who worked in a methadone clinic, started to burn out. I asked the court reporter how he was able to release the emotions of listening to so many worse-case-scenarios; firstly, he said he ran ran ran, secondly, he said that the rotation for most of the court reporters and attorney’s was pretty short. Even so, there were lifers. So I started going to the gym for a couple hours every night.

I wanted to explode; I wanted my innocence back! The streets were darker, the news stories less gray scale and more black and white, and my sweet liberal nature was starting to calcify, chip and crack. I am not na’ve and have been a backpacker and photographer through many of the world’s cities; even so, I felt a lot less safe in my own DC than I had felt before. Now, it is less severe since I have been sharing my feelings, fears, and some of my venting with friends and family. I am one of the lucky ones. What happens to the witnesses after their usefulness is expired’ What happens to them in their community, in their family, and in their home’ What services, support, and trust can one find after taking upon one’s shoulders Herculean task of standing up to your abuser or the abuser of someone in your community; what support for the witness who comes to the courthouse to defend the reputation of an accused when he knows that there is little chance of it mattering. I can see now why so many communities have become insular: it doesn’t seem like the system is there to prevent crime or to protect them, it merely serves to clean up many of the messes that the system enabled in the first place. A lot of amputations happen, it seems to me, that were unnecessary were the limbs better cared for.

Although some of the Attorneys have excellent bedside manner with the witnesses, nobody thought to make sure there were boxes of Kleenex beside the witness stands. As Sergeant-at-Arms, I rushed downstairs to the convenience store before the first week and bought a large box that lasted the entire five-weeks.

Even though I am not at liberty to discuss any of what transpired in the secret investigative hearings, I will say that despite what Hollywood feeds us, one punch or one bullet or one beating usually doesn’t kill a man. The human body is amazingly ‘ if not too ‘ resilient. Some of the physical, mental, and sexual abuse was so massively destructive that I almost wished some of these victims would have at least blacked out or passed on; but no, there I was in a room with someone who had in them something unexplainable. Some sort of vacancy; some sort of resignation that did not take the body but removed some sort of essential flame from the eyes.

When all was said and done, I recognized the Grand Jury system as something amazing and awful to experience on one level; on another level, it is too secret, it is too powerful, and it is essentially a bureaucratic system that has fallen into a rut. There was no reason why our Grand Jury had to field all of the violent cases and there was no reason why we couldn’t have spent a full day with a third party educator who might have been a better job at priming us than the attorneys who’s job it was to make a case against the accused. It was always US vs. Accused; their prime agenda never veered: get violent criminals off the street. At what cost? Justice?

Posted Jul 22, 2002 – 10:43 AM

“If allowed to stand, this radical ruling will inevitably mean more people killed and wounded as keeping guns out of the city becomes harder. Moreover, if the legal principles used in the decision are applied nationally, every gun control law on the books would be imperiled.” Via the Washington Post.

Goodness me.

What’s more is that it doesn’t have any basis at all on facts. I mean, I hear gun fire in my neighborhood now.

Well, I guess it is clearly labeled “editorial,” eh?

What does editorial mean? I guess editorial means “blogging into the newspaper.”

No, actually, “an editorial is a statement or article by a news organization (generally a newspaper) that expresses an opinion rather than attempting to simply report news. Editorials are not written by the regular reporters; rather, they are collectively authored by a group of individuals called the editorial board. They represent the newspaper’s official positions on issues…” Via Wikipedia

I had an excellent boy’s night out tonight: Brian, Ben, Andrew, and Jon. Spending time at the Chinatown Red Roof Inn bar, The Irish Channel.

A very sound night, a very dive bar, and the requisite asshole who demanded our attention. How did I know he was an ass? Well, he used the word irregardless Fuckwit.

One line I made up and asked Jon to write down for me — since Brian, Jon, and Ben are Very Successful Lawyer working for Very Prestigious Firms — was, “whereas ad-men, PR executives, and marketers like me have to sell bullshit, lawyers turn bullshit into bible and it sells itself.” In other words, the power of Rabbis, Priests, and Lawyers is that they get to define what is Holy. So worthy of admiration. Lawyers are the modern-day paladin.

IRREGARDLESS

[Q] From Randall E Larson in Tucson: “I have more than once seen the corruption irregardless used in some standard writings and with a straight face. Has it become acceptable????

[A] The word is thoroughly and consistently condemned in all American references I can find. But it’s also surprisingly common. It’s formed from regardless by adding the negative prefix ir-; as regardless is already negative, the word is considered a logical absurdity.

It’s been around a while: the Oxford English Dictionary quotes a citation from Indiana that appeared in Harold Wentworth’s American Dialect Dictionary of 1912. And it turns up even in the better newspapers from time to time: as here from the New York Times of 8 February 1993: “Irregardless of the benefit to children from what he calls his ‘crusade to rescue American education,’ his own political miscalculations and sometimes deliberate artlessness have greatly contributed to his present difficulties???.

But, as I say, it’s still generally regarded by people with an informed opinion on the matter as unacceptable. The Third Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary states firmly that “the label ‘nonstandard’ does not begin to do justice to the status of this word??? and “it has no legitimate antecedents in either standard or nonstandard varieties of English???. Some writers even try to turn it into a non-word, virtually denying its existence, which is pretty hard to do in the face of the evidence. The level of abuse hurled at the poor thing is astonishingly high, almost as great as that once directed at hopefully. It seems to have become something of a linguistic shibboleth.

That’s strange because, as Professor Laurence Horn of Yale University points out, the duplication of negative affixes is actually quite common in English. Few users query words such as debone and unravel because they are so familiar. In earlier times there were even more such words, many recorded from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: unboundless, undauntless, uneffectless, unfathomless and many others.

Grammarians of the eighteenth century and after—who had a greater sense of logic than feel for the language—did much to stamp them out. They argued that, in language as in mathematics, two negatives make a positive: putting two negatives together cancels them out. This has been the basis for condemnation of statements like “I never said nothing to nobody???, which aren’t standard British or American English. But in many other languages—and in some local or dialectal forms of English both today and in earlier times—multiple negatives are intensifiers, adding emphasis.

Irregardless has a fine flow about it, with a stronger negative feel than regardless that some people obviously find attractive. Indeed, the stress pattern of the word probably influenced the addition of the prefix, as the stress in regardless is on gar, which makes it sound insufficiently negative, despite the -less suffix.

So the precedents are all on the side of irregardless and—despite the opinions of the experts—I suspect that the word will become even more popular in the US in the future. For the moment, though, it is best avoided in formal writing.

I believe that Albert Argibay proves the bravado with which he was accused by taking his suit against Planet Fitness national. Grunting, is your name extreme publicity?

I agree with Planet Fitness (the judgement free zone) when they suggest that grunting does intimidate the typical gym member. And it does.

Gold’s Gym is known for its serious weightlifters, and the grunting and plate clank is constant there; however, the WSC also has a freeweights room but the gym has less weightlifter culture, known more for its fitness and aerobic classes, its circuit training, and its treadmills and elliptical trainers.

When a fitness center like Planet Fitness has an alarm for grunting, plate bang, and showboating, what does Albert Argibay think.

That said, I have a feeling that this entire issue is an example of extreme publicity.

Planet Fitness is going through an aggressive-as-hell growth and expansion grab, so there is a high publicity that this whole thing is just a publicity stunt with Albert Argibay a willing participant.

Follow the grunting, follow the money.

Via Times,

May 19, 2002, Washington, DC – When you are 32 and charmed, its pretty difficult to leave the Mister Magoo world of happy obliviousness. Well, being on the Grand Jury with our focus on Murder, Mayhem, and Sexual Abuse is like a boot camp for getting out of my guilded carriage to see what it is down that dark alley.

Well, I have finished three-of-five weeks of being a Grand Jurist. I am the Sergeant-at-Arms and one of 23. We are down to 22, but a quorum is 16. Let me tell you, this job sucks and my soul has been a casualty. Thank God to have had this experience.

I have already made a comparison, although clumsily, between this Grand Jury experience and Buddha’s realization that his world was a charmed illusion, a manufactured gentility created by his rich family.

I don’t know who my rich family is, but its certainly a protected demographic. My racial profile protects me, I am sure. The world is not so gentle, I fear, in many places and in many ways that I have been totally unwilling to entertain until this unending and merciless barrage of hate, numbness, and desperation washed like Chinese water torture from a fire hose over me and I feel vaguely numb and vaguely nauseous.

I was pretty much in denial until I slept most of the weekend away. My body and mind and soul were punished. I have been drinking more and also smoking and looking around to hang out with friends almost every night. But I cannot say much because everything that goes on is Secret and Private.

And the lives of many people AKA witnesses are at risk. Many of these people take their lives into their own hands every time they come to sit in our arraignment hearing.

There might be around six rounds from a .380 with their name on it. Some people pop caps over some of the most stupid ass things. In many places in the world, one cannot assume that there is terribly much value associated with the human life. Luckily for some, the human body can really and surprisingly hold on to life through heightened levels of brutality I could not hitherto even imagine.

Ignorance is bliss. I have so much respect, admiration, and even Love for the system. Its an Emergent system. Each person genuinely have the common good in mind: cops (under cover, vice, drug, beat), advocates (some of whom are mighty cute and all are rock stars!), support staff, paralegals, security guards. I have yet to meet incompetence. Its very comforting.

It has been a year since What About Clients? opened it blawgy doors and I am happy to see Dan Hull’s law blog thriving. Happy birthday What About Clients?

“Today is the first anniversary of “What About Clients?” Thanks to Chicago lawyer Patrick Lamb, D.C. wunderkind consultant Chris Abraham and D.C. telecom lawyer Mark Del Bianco for getting us–Tom Welshonce of Hull McGuire in Pittsburgh, and me–started, and to the people (all 4 or 5 of them) who still read this blog. Our first post was one year ago today. It’s still our favorite, it’s what this blog’s about, and it’s here.” Via What About Clients?

Shucks, thanks Dan!

About What About Clients
“What About Clients? is a weblog which contains my personal ideas and thoughts on servicing business clients as valued customers in American law firms. I started it in 2005 because I think that (1) the level of service at even the best American law firms is often inattentive and erratic–and that troubles me–and (2) even where service is sound, it can be a lot better. See The First Post. The day-to-day content of anything in What About Clients? has nothing to do with Hull McGuire PC, a law firm in which I’m a shareholder.”

About Dan Hull
I am a member of the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and California bars. A litigator and lobbyist, I have life-long ties to the Washington, D.C. legal and government communities, and equally close ties to lawyers in Western Europe and Latin America. I practice in the areas of complex litigation (primarily U.S. federal courts and ADR abroad), environmental law, employment practices and legislative affairs. When I have time, I write about business litigation, natural resources law, the American legal profession and cultural aspects of international law practice. I also consult and speak about these topics.

What About Clients? is a weblog which contains my personal ideas and thoughts on servicing business clients as valued customers in American law firms. I started it in 2005 because I think that (1) the level of service at even the best American law firms is often inattentive and erratic–and that troubles me–and (2) even where service is sound, it can be a lot better. See The First Post. The day-to-day content of anything in What About Clients? has nothing to do with Hull McGuire PC, a law firm in which I’m a shareholder.

My clients are businesses my firm and I represent on a repeating basis throughout the U.S., Europe and Latin America. We take on only three or four new clients per year–typically Fortune 500 or publicly-traded companies, normally represented by large law firms, which need attentive representation in litigation, international business law, taxation, securities, intellectual property, telecommunications, environmental law, employment practices or legislative affairs (lobbying).

I was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Maryland, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. I am a graduate of Duke University, where I was a reporter and later an associate editor of The Chronicle, Duke’s daily newspaper, and the University of Cincinnati’s College of Law, where I was a student articles editor of the Law Review. I also attended Cincinnati’s Indian Hill High School, where I was Senior Class President and an Eagle Scout. During my last academic year in college, I worked as an intern in health and environmental policy for Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) in Washington, D.C. (93rd Congress) as part of course work at Duke’s Public Policy Institute.

After law school, I worked again at the U.S. Congress as a legislative assistant to Representative Bill Gradison (R-Ohio) in Washington, D.C. in the areas of energy and environment (95th, 96th Congresses). I later joined the Washington, D.C. office of Rose, Schmidt, & Dixon as an associate and, eventually, a partner in the firm’s litigation and environmental law groups. I’m listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in American Law. On March 17, 1992, Julie McGuire, a well-known and respected corporate tax and transactional attorney based in Pittsburgh, and I founded the firm now known as Hull McGuire PC. We have offices in Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, and San Diego.

Internationally, since 1997, I have attended, moderated or served as a speaker in conferences of the International Business Law Consortium in the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Canada, Mexico and Argentina. I am a member of the IBLC’s Business Development Group, the International Bar Association and the Congress of Fellow of The Center for International Legal Studies in Salzburg, Austria. I am also Co-General Editor, together with Dr. Hans-Joseph (“Hanjo”) Vogel, a German international lawyer who is a partner with the Bonn-based firm of Busse & Miessen, of the IBLC publication International Directory of Corporate Symbols and Terms (IBLC 2003) by the Member Firms of the IBLC, which is available through Mr. Vogel or the IBLC in Salzburg.

Locally, in San Diego, between 1998 and 2004 I was an active member or officer of the Rancho Bernardo Planning Board, a land use and zoning board chartered by the City and County of San Diego, and serving a community of 45,000.

I live in Rancho Bernardo, California. I’m interested in U.S politics (including raising money for candidates for national office), the workings of the new European Parliament, the histories of England and France, travel, running, fishing, airports which make sense, and a young lady who lives in Los Angeles.

What About Clients?™ has an excellent carnival of client services you have to check out. I have been remiss on talking about Dan Hull’s innovative and insightful “blawg,” What About Clients?™, but you really need to check it out even if you’re not a lawyer.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled President Bush overstepped his authority in creating military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.” I wonder what the blowback will be? Via MSNBC, SCOTUSBlog, & MetaFilter

“More associates at law firms across the U.S. are second guessing whether they want to sign over their lives to their jobs,” after they “earn as much as $170,000 with a year-end bonus.” Tough call. Via WSJ and NT Times

In response to John Carroll’s article, The Internet is Not Threatened by Net Neutrality Access Tiers, pooba comments,

“Great analysis. I’d take the market over the members of Congress any day (and twice on Sunday), especially since we’re talking about a medium and an industry very few Members understand well.”

“The Internet is not threatened by access tiers. In fact, it can be enhanced by making new bandwidth-heavy services more economical and reliable in ways that would be impossible given a naive enforcement of ‘net neutrality’ rules.” I dugg it and you should, too. Via digg and John Carroll

Net neutrality and politics
Posted by John Carroll @ 2:37 pm

Digg This Article!

Zoe Lofgren, representative of the 16th district of California (the region that contains Silicon Valley), recently wrote an article for ZDNet where she defended net neutrality rules as a means of preventing broadband companies from acting as gatekeepers to the Internet. From the article:

“Instead of continuing our freedom to use those connections with whatever content, devices and services we want, some corporations want to control what we access over the Internet. This would include giving better connections to their favored content and charging money for that privilege.”

What would the world look like if the Internet had been controlled in this way a few years ago? Imagine if the students who created Google or Yahoo had been charged a fee by a phone company for the privilege of letting their potential users have fast access. These small projects would not have turned into big ideas that revolutionized the World Wide Web.

That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Broadband providers, most notably AT&T, aren’t suggesting that they will “control what we access over the Internet.” Rather, they are saying that some content may be given “fast track” access into the home, access to which is contingent on a fee paid either by the provider of content or the consumer.

To consider why this might be useful, imagine 5-10 years down the road when the average size of the datapipe into the home is in the 25-50 megabit range (placing us still behind the South Koreans, but oh well). VoIP service might start to get enhanced by video that is not just the simple 320 by 240 image we are used to in the IM world, but in the Standard Definition, or even the High Definition range.

Given the time criticality of such data, not to mention the fact that such usage will vastly outweigh, from a network load standpoint, the simple text and image traffic that constitutes a large percentage of the current Internet, a fast track might not be just useful, but fair to boot. We charge ten ton trucks more for access to a toll road than standard-sized automobiles because of the extra wear and tear they cause on these roads. Why shouldn’t we make “bandwidth hogs” pay more?

That’s why the Google example is ill-considered. Even under a regime wherein standard tier access was at lower speeds than video or time-critical tiers, nobody would notice, and Google would still have grown to become the search juggernaut it is today. Most processing for Google’s search page happens at the server level, and search results are hardly a bandwidth hog. Providing faster access wouldn’t alter the usability of Google search one jot.

Where faster tiered access might affect things, however, is in Google’s new video service, the revenue for which will mostly be paid by ads. If broadband providers are allowed to tier access, companies such as Google might have to pay a bit of that money to broadband providers to get themselves onto a faster tier…unless they want end users to pay for the privilege.

That, to my mind, is the crux of the issue. Google and companies that support net neutrality rules (a group that may even include Microsoft, but I am John Carroll, not Microsoft, in case anybody was wondering) want to be able to continue as 18 wheelers who pay the same fees (if any) as standard automobiles, even though their traffic is responsible for most damage to the road. That’s one model, and is largely the way things work now, but that doesn’t mean it is a fair model.

Fairness aside, the current Internet works for the most part according to de facto net neutrality rules. Why change things? Well, I’ve already suggested some pragmatic reasons to have different tiers. Video streaming will take up a lot more bandwidth than standard text and image transfer.

The best reason, however, lies in fixing America’s lag with respect to the popularity of and bandwidth available to broadband service.

America is different, to be sure. South Korea, the current broadband global leader, is a much smaller and denser country (though has similar levels of urbanization). That doesn’t explain, however, why Canada is ahead of us in the provision of broadband. But, maybe Canada has some state-sponsored thingamajig that helped to spur broadband adoption.

Hey, state sponsored thingamajigs CAN do good things. However, it’s also a fact that America’s telecom industry has been strangled with regulations ever since America dismantled AT&T back in the early 80s. We’ve made progress since then, though often in baby steps with enough caveats to drive a gasoline truck through.

Even so, we are now at a point where we must prove whether we really believe the market can create the competition its supposed to create. I think it can, and here’s why.

If there’s one certainty in free market systems (with “free” being the critical adjective), it is that profits attract competition. Create profit opportunities, and competitors offering alternatives will arise. I STILL think that satellite, powerline and mobile networks can be third, fourth and fifth broadband options…assuming goverment doesn’t continue to try to find ways to drain profit potential from the provision of broadband (and they stop blocking mergers, as occurred with DirectTV and EchoStar).

Telcos and cable companies (the two primary sources of broadband cited by Rep. Lofgren) are spending billions in preparation for a battle royale between competing providers of broadband internet services. They are spending even more billions to consolidate their technologies to flow through those Internet data pipes (IPTV is one example). To justify those billions, they are seeking ways to monetize that investment.

If they do monetize that investment, then they can generate profits. And if they generate profits, then those other three potential sources of competition start to invest their own billions in order to steal some of those profits away.

That is how market systems work. And that is why it’s a good idea to let the cable companies and telcos figure out new revenue-generation schemes by which to profit from the billions they are sinking into the ground. After spending decades burrowing out from the regulatory pile, creating a new layer just as competition is starting to heat up makes little sense.

The Internet is not threatened by access tiers. In fact, it can be enhanced by making new bandwidth-heavy services more economical and reliable in ways that would be impossible given a naive enforcement of “net neutrality” rules.

John Carroll has delivered his opinion on ZDNet since the last millennium. Since May, he’s been a Microsoft employee.

I am pretty sure that most of the activists and proponents of so-called Net Neutrality legislation don’t have too much background knowledge in what the Internet is and how it is managed. maintained, and governed now. For those of you who don’t know much about the Internet, I did a huge brain dump that you should consider an Internet Primer.

The Internet is truly international. The internet is already managed democratically and there is already strict international oversight which is already under American stewardship. The US should really not “brand” the Internet as American any more than it does by trying to legislate all over it in the form of Net Neutrality.

Like I said before, the Internet is the result of a lot of incompatible private networks, "made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic, and government networks," that agreed to share information — to "debabelize" if you allow me to make a Tower of Babel analogy. 

There was an agreement, managed first by DARPA and then maintained by IANA and now ICANN, that agreed on a language (can you say Babel?) and a protocol (think of Diplomacy agreeing on French and Diplomatic protocol back in the day) that would allow these incompatible networks (Token Ring, TCP/IP, ect) to interconnect (to intercommunicate) with eachother, thus becomeing an Internet. Thus the name.

Diplomacy is another good analogy because if you want to be recognized internationally as a soverign nation-state, you need to agree to a language and a protocol. If you are unwilling, you are not acknowledged and will not have a diplomatic mission or Embassy in your "country." 

In the case of the Internet, you are considered a Nation State on the Internet if ICANN grands you a Top-Level Domain — the US has .us and France has .fr and Russia has .ru. (.COM, .NET, .ORG, .MIL,  .GOV .US, and some others, are also managed by the United States). 

To be granted a TLD (Top-Level Domain), you must strictly follow the protocol and standards of the Internet. TLDs can be broken down into ccTLD (country code TLDs such as .US) and gTLD (generic TLDs such as .COM). chrisabraham.com is considered to be a subdomain of .COM, also known as a domain name managed by the Domain Name System.

A top-level domain is misleading because there is a level of domain above the TLD, called root, or infrastructure top-level domain. .ARPA is the only true root infrastructure top-level domain.

The entire Internet is actually all based on IP addresses.  Unique numbers that represent each and every node and server on the Internet.  Each one, in most cases short of a subnetwork, requires a unique IP address. As an aside, we’re running out of IP address "blocks" and we are moving to a new format architecture of IP allocation, called IPv6:

"IPv6 is intended to provide more addresses for networked devices, allowing, for example, each cell phone and mobile electronic device to have its own address. IPv4 supports 4.3×109 (4.3 billion) addresses, which is inadequate to give one (or more if they possess more than one device) to every living person. IPv6 supports 3.4×1038 addresses, or 5×1028(50 octillion) for each of the roughly 6.5 billion people alive today."

The current oversight organization — the Internet is not a no man’s land — is called ICANN — ICANN "was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Government by other organizations, notably IANA"

More on ICANN from Wikipedia:

"ICANN (pronounced "I can") is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, ICANN is a California non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Government by other organizations, notably IANA. The tasks of ICANN include managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses. To date, much of its work has concerned the introduction of new generic top-level domains. The technical work of ICANN is referred to as the IANA function; the rest of ICANN is mostly about defining policy. Paul Twomey is the President/CEO of ICANN, since March 27, 2003. Vint Cerf is currently Chairman of the ICANN Board of Trustees."

"The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet protocol addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. A globally unified namespace (i.e., a system of names in which there is one and only one holder of each name) is essential for the Internet to function. ICANN is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, but is overseen by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and non-commercial communities. The US government continues to have the primary role in approving changes to the root zone file that lies at the heart of the domain name system. Because the Internet is a distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected networks, the Internet, as such, has no governing body. ICANN’s role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body on the global Internet, but the scope of its authority extends only to the Internet’s systems of domain names, Internet protocol addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. On Nov. 16, 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis, established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues."

“Democratic Representatives Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jay Inslee of Washington state, Anna Eshoo of California and Rick Boucher of Virginia in the House and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in the Senate,” I wonder if you have ever considered the fact that legislation always makes things more expensive. Net Neutrality is 1984 doublespeak!

Oh, and laws make lawyers rich, which always costs someone lots of money.

Since the founding documents from our founding fathers, there are very few legislations that make anything but more complex, more regulated, and more expensive.

Even if you are using the GNU Free Software definition of free, “a matter of liberty, not price . . .’free’ as in ‘free speech,’ not as in ‘free beer’”to define all the freedoms we will get from all the government oversight and legislation that Net Neutrality will offer, I daresay that liberty means the following: “autonomy: immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence,” “personal freedom from servitude or confinement or oppression,” “liberty, or freedom, is a condition in which an individual has immunity from the arbitrary exercise of authority,” and “political independence; freedom of choice.” All of these definitions of liberty suggest freedom from Net Neutrality legislation, Internet regulation, and undue oversight and enforcement of the World Wide Web.

Come on, it’s only logical! At least give me that much!

Via Slashdot

Passing the Net Neutrality legislation would raise the cost of being a carrier node on the Internet to a point where many of the smaller, independent, diverse networks would be priced out. The durability of the Internet is dependent upon “thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic, and government networks,” many of which cannot afford mandatory federal requirements and the exposure to getting sued.

Well, what makes the Internet durable, resilient, and democratic is its heterogeneous diversity. Every carrier node — network — comprising the Internet doesn’t have to have anything in common with any other carrier node except two things: communication standards and communication protocol. Basically, if a carrier node can talk in TCP/IP and is able to communicate in basic application protocol, then it is good to go.

Why would they be priced out? For two reasons: first, in order to meet federal standards each independent carrier node must maintain a minimum data transfer rate through its network, which is very expensive to build to and maintain (currently, good enough is good enough); and secondly, each carrier node that doesn’t meet or exceed federal requirements is legally liable for the rate that data travels through its network and can be sued.

What is the Internet?

The Internet as defined by Wikipedia: “The Internet, or simply the Net, is the publicly accessible worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP). It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic, and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web. Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections etc.; the Web is a collection of interconnected documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLs, and is accessible using the Internet.”

How does the Internet work now?

Each carrier node (private network) may participate in the Internet (inter-network) as much or as little as it can “afford,” which is to say how many resources (time, money, people, expertise, bandwidth, hardware, software, hard drive, memory, and interest) are available.

If a carrier node fails, it might impact the users of that network, but it won’t effect the Internet proper.

The Internet itself is built to be absolutely reliable, carrier nodes were never expected to be. The Internet as seen from “space” is “always on” while still allowing its component parts to fail. The Internet was designed that way. To be more than the sum of its parts.

Again, from Wikipedia, “Many computer scientists see the Internet as a ‘prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly complex system’ (Willinger, et al). The Internet is extremely heterogeneous. (For instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of connections vary widely.) The Internet exhibits ‘emergent phenomena’ that depend on its large-scale organization. For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity.”

The more participants, the more carrier nodes, the more heterogeneous the networks, the better.

The durability of the network requires diversity of network. Legislating “under-performing” carrier network nodes off of the Internet might make the Internet more efficient, but it will surely make it weaker, less resilient, and certainly less reliable. In the case of the Internet, the more efficient you make it the less reliable it has a tendency to be.

How would it work under Net Neutrality?

The thing called Net Neutrality is neither about networks nor is it about neutrality, it is about legislation and it is about policy. If anything, it is about lawyers and law suits and money and power. Why?

Well, the Internet cannot be treated like the national highway system, which is what the legislation wants to do. It wants to make sure that every portion of the Internet — all the nodes of the Internet — are held to the same quality standard. This would change the Internet completely. I have a lot of questions:

Who would set the quality standards?

How would these standards evolve to keep pace with the ever changing technology?

What would happen to the smaller net work providers who could not keep pace?

Would the only remedy to hurried over reaching legislation . . . be more legislation?

All I know is that it would change the Internet.

What I fear is that it will make the Internet sickly, less robust, less diverse, and less responsive to true innovation, true evolution, and true growth. The Internet has been wildly successful as an healthy, growing, emergent system and there is really no reason to inoculate it (or medicate it) against something it was designed to be immune.

Yes, I did write Petroleum Oil An Organic Renewable Resource. Wouldn’t it be funny if oil prices were based on a false economy, a false scarcity, like diamonds?

What if oil were as plentiful and as easy to harness as compost? That the environmentalists are unwitting dupes who actually fuel inflated oil prices as an unintended consequence of crying “the sky is falling, the sky is falling.”

All markets desperately try to keep their product from being commoditized; or, they push to restrict production (a false scarcity) until profits stabilize (as in, become more profitable).

Commoditization kills profit margins.

Creating a sense of scarcity allows profits to improve just based on simple fear. And there is no end to where it can be ultimately pushed if the market is willing to remain flexible. Take agribusiness. Subsidies are not about paying farmers not to farm, it is about gaming the commodities market so that wheat is either easier to sell or more profitable to produce.

Let’s look at the diamond market.

This from Mark del Bianco when I popped him an IM looking for the world “false scarcity,” “DeBeers (South Africa) and the Russians have conspired to keep the worldwide supply low. The US DOJ has chased DeBeers for years on antitrust cases. DeBeers has to avoid the U.S. for that reason. They sell outside US.”

Same with oil. If you can push the profts of oil for a little while — or until the market fails or, more realistically, corrects itself — you can bring lots of other markets along for the ride, including precious metals (especially gold). It can be a real boon for the commodities broker and his brokerage.

I was moved to discuss this based both Anthony Citrano’s article, The Coming Islamic Superpowers?, and a missive I published from an unnamed journalist in an undisclosed location who had an interesting chat with a retired general, So a Retired General Walks up to a Journalist in a Bar….

So, this morning I go back to follow up on The Coming Islamic Superpowers? (thanks for the link, Anthony) and am happy to see some wonderful comments so I add my own:

Everything is ties together. Gold is flying as high as oil. Copper, too. The Chicago exchange is having a hayday. Don’t just look at who is making money on oil, look also at who is making money on contracts, on services, on shipping, and on commodities. That is where it is fun to look.

Follow the money.

Harry is right. Sustainable energy is just stealing from Peter to pay Paul.

It will aid the individuals who are early adopters, but when these initiatives become national or global solutions, there will be just the sort of blowback that Harry mentions.

The market is too smart — and is too interconnected — to fall for the “sustainable energy” solution.

Oh, and there is way too much money to be made to let the whole sustainable energy market become institutionalized. Agribusiness can ignore a lot of backyard personal gardens — can suffer them without the flattening of growth — but when the point of pain happens, then agribusiness might not be so kind.

The important thing to try to do is to find a replacement profit center for these investors — sort of a methadone — who are now invested in fossil fuel.

Organics worked for agribusiness. What will the methadone be for energy?

What do you think?

“United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pushing to require web publishers to rate their content.” Via Threadwatch and New.com