What I would describe as curious and worrisome news out of the UK is circulating the blogosphere these days. That is because the UK government is considering a new internet model where websites would be rated (similar to how movies are already), and those which contain offensive or otherwise inappropriate material would not be shown. In other-words: censorship. I firmly believe that if no laws are being broken, that the internet should remain a free place for information to be shared.

Now that’s not to say the UK government has bad intentions, in fact, quite the opposite. They are clearly trying to protect minors from unwelcome and non-age appropriate material. However, in my opinion, the internet is not for kids, but rather adults. It should be up to the parents of web-using minors to police what their children do online, and install the necessary safeguards in order to protect them from dangerous websites. Or, you know, they could tell their children to go outside and play.

As for teenagers, somehow I think there are a lot more dangerous places for them to be hanging out than the internet. Rather than censoring everyone, why don’t we go back to teaching our kids common sense, and responsibility?

                                                    
On a recent call to Cox about a billing issue I was having I stumbled across a very interesting finding: Cox is already implementing data transfer caps. The rep on the phone told me about it, and acted like it was no big deal. Intrigued, I looked into this further and found some interesting insights.

The rep I talked to mentioned the data transfer caps when he was telling me about the difference between a couple of the plans he was talking about. I mentioned that I was surprised they had caps and said what they were. He was surprised I said that and nonchalantly said that everyone does it. I mentioned that it has been big news that Comcast is acknowledging their network management practices including bandwidth caps, and applauded the rep and Cox for being more straight forward about their caps.

After getting off the phone, I went to Cox.com to see what all of the caps were and surprise, surprise, I couldn’t find it. Their Internet service page lists upload and download speeds, the type of IP address you’ll get, whether the plan has “PowerBoost” or not, how much webspace you get, and even how large the e-mail accounts can be, but it doesn’t list caps. I looked all over the site and couldn’t find it anywhere. So I searched Cox for download caps using Live Search a few times and it came up.

Turns out it is <sarcasm>really easy</sarcasm> to find. Just click on the 4pt font “Policies” link at the bottom of the page, then click on #13 “Bandwidth, Data Storage and Other Limitations” and then in the middle of that paragraph click “Limitations of Service”. Isn’t it so obvious? The Policies page is the only page on Cox.com that actually links to the caps (that I could find). To be fair, once you finally find it, the page is quite clear on what each service plan allows.

For the record, I am not against the idea of consumption caps actually. There are just three major problems with the current implementations I’ve seen in the marketplace.

#1: They are very unclear to consumers. On Cox.com it is buried in a series of pages that only attorneys would be attracted to. The consumption caps need to be shown on the same pages as the bandwidth speeds.

Comcast is even worse than Cox, they don’t even say exactly what the caps are. How much data is 40 million e-mails really? While their examples are a little more understandable to average users, they really need to list the actual cap.

Oddly enough when I used their benchmarks with the averages for my files/emails to calculate their caps, their caps are much higher than Cox’s, so you’d think they wouldn’t be shy about it. Although the difference between the examples is a joke. The effective cap is about 64GB/month using the photo example with my pictures (and I have an 8MP Canon 20D so my pictures are actually quite large), but it is a whopping 4TB (yes, terabytes) if you use the 40 million e-mail example. Talk about unclear.

There also needs to be a way for consumers to check their consumption. There is no place (at least that I could find) where consumers can see how much they are consuming (ala cell phone minutes). Even if you track your own consumption somehow (DD-WRT can do it on a number of routers) the ISPs conveniently don’t recognize anyone’s numbers but their own.

#2: There is a wide disparity between plans (at least at Cox). This is really a byproduct of #1; they don’t make it easy to find what each plan allows.

When I recently signed up for Internet with Cox they tried to sign me up on some combo promotion deal for Cable TV and Internet. It included their Value Internet plan (1.5Mbit/256kbit @ $29.99/month). I opted to upgrade to the Preferred plan (7mbit/512kbit @ $43.99) mostly for the higher uplink for online gaming and VoIP.

It turns out that the Value plan only includes 4GB of downstream and 1GB of upstream traffic per month versus 40GB and 10GB (respectively) for the Preferred. So for 47% more per month I get 1000% more transfer allowance. Who would think that the difference would be so large?

I can easily download 2-3GB in game demos in one day over Xbox Live on a regular basis. I would have blown past my cap in less than a week for sure. I wouldn’t have known the difference until my Internet got cut off or I got a threatening letter. Hence the need for clarity in listing what is included in the Internet packages.

Some examples at Cox are even worse. They have Preferred on a special for $19.99 and Economy (the lowest tier) for $14.99 right now. Economy only includes 3GB of downstream traffic. For an extra $5 you’ll get over 13 times more download capacity. Why can’t this be more obvious?

#3: The caps are ridiculously low. I analyzed how much you could utilize your connection for 24 hours a day, and for an adjusted day of 16 hours (to account for sleep) and here is what I found. I looked at what I call acceptable average utilization (AAU). It is the average bandwidth expressed as a percentage (acceptable speed / rated speed of plan) you can consume without exceeding the bandwidth caps imposed by an ISP.

Every plan allows less than a 2% AAU rate at their rated speeds. On the Value plan (read: not even the lowest tier) you can only average 13kbps! If you account for sleep (not that BitTorrent or my backup software sleeps) then the top adjusted AAU rate of any plan is still only 2.7%.

To put that in perspective, on the higher Preferred plan, streaming music from an online radio at 192kbps constantly everyday would use up your entire consumption cap by itself. If you live with a couple of other people who stream music too, then you can each only do 8 hours per day. In my book that is hardly “excessive usage” for someone paying for the second highest tier plan.

I think I’ll have to check out what DSL and Fiber are offering in my neighborhood to see if I can find a company who agrees.

*Here is a link to my spreadsheet with all of my numbers in more detail.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

Paul’s Soapbox is a regular feature of TechConsumer where I sound off on various tech topics/products that I’m interested in (or hate). This is just my $.02, so consider yourself warned. This week’s subjects are all over the place: DRM, “3G” Wireless, and Playstation Home.

First award winner goes to DRM (digital restrictions rights management) for “How not to create a sustainable business model.” I don’t know how many of you consumers out there saw this, but Microsoft has decided to turn off the DRM services for the MSN Music Store. This means that anyone who bought leased music from MSN is effectively screwed. The music will still play on the machines they have authorized already, but when the computer stops, so will the music. And just like musical chairs, anyone who paid for that music will be left without a chair.

Now you may be saying to yourself, “Well who bought music from MSN? I want to know who these two people are.” But this has already happened with Google Video, Major League Baseball, MTV URGE, AOL Music Now, and Virgin Music Club. Somehow the mainstream technology media isn’t quite catching on to the realities of DRM. I don’t think that there is a sustainable business model for music ownership that includes DRM. Music subscription services are an exception because they don’t ever act like you own anything. Maybe that’s why I get my digital music elsewhere.

If DRM was the winner of the anti-business model, so-called 3G wireless service is the runner up. ComputerWorld recently reported on 3G data networks and while most of the review is generally positive there was one thing that stood out to me. AT&T and Verizon both cap their services at 5GB of data received per month, and word is Sprint will be following suit (they are actually capping it at 300MB if you are roaming!). At first 5GB might seem like a lot of data, but when you break it down that is not the case.

If a business user were to use the 3G service for 8 hours a day only on weekdays, they could average only 29MB per hour of data without going over. Considering that the TechCrunch homepage is 1.8MB by itself or about 1/16 of the hourly quota for a business user. Or put another way, your connection can only average 8KB/sec or you’ll go over. That is for only 20 days a month, for only 8 hours of the day. Heaven forbid someone used it everyday because then that is only 169MB for the whole day!

Last but not least is Playstation Home, which is soon to join Duke Nukem Forever as the world’s most famous vaporware (yes, I’ve heard some people have actually seen it, supposedly). For those not familiar with Playstation Home (also referred to as just Home), it is Sony’s total copy interpretation of Second Life The Sims Online a virtual world. It was originally announced in March 2007 and scheduled to come out in open beta in August 2007 and public release in October 2007.

Now I’m not really good at math yes I am but August is only five months after March, and we are now about fifteen months past that date, and there still hasn’t been a public beta. Later they promised a “Spring 2008″ delivery, only to announce in Spring 2008 that it would be coming out in Fall 2008. I don’t know if there is a solution to this problem for Sony other than to ship Home sooner rather than later, but you have to wonder what they were thinking when they made the announcement(s) about Home’s development timeframe. Any takers on it actually coming out in Fall 2008? Much less whether it will have been worth the wait?

The really amazing thing is, through all of the troubles the PS3 has gone through (and it really couldn’t be much worse) it is still a system people will consider buying. Talk about a powerful brand.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

                                                    
I know this will seem like another “me too” post after the well publicized Comcast story at TechCrunch, but I actually wrote about 95% of this a couple of weeks ago, mostly while I was on hold with “tech” “support.” I was going to wait until the issue was resolved, but I’ve decided to post it now. This is my story of how Comcast took over the cable services of my lowly regional cable provider, and how bad things can get worse. Read the rest after the jump.

I am currently attending grad school at Purdue University, which is located in the relatively small town/city of West Lafayette, Indiana. When I first moved here the cable provider was Insight, and I thought they were terrible (relative to my last cable company Cox). Latency (ping times) were high, channel selection and quality of service (bad picture, dropped sound, extra-crappy DVR) were a joke, and the prices weren’t great. I did however get close (~95%) to the advertised throughput of the Internet package (10Mbit/1Mbit) I paid for.

That changed when Insight sold the Indiana area to Comcast. Initially I was looking forward to a bit larger company hoping the selection and quality of service would improve; it didn’t. Literally the day Comcast took over the network (as shown by the IP address range and DNS servers I was pulling down) my max download speed dropped to 4,250 kbit/sec (less than half the speed of what I was paying for).

I could test at a variety of sites (Chicago, New York, Dallas, etc.) over different networks (Sprint, Speakeasy, etc.), and they would always max out at 4,250kbit/sec usually within a 6kbit/sec variance. Look like my connection is being capped? Yeah, that’s my hypothesis. Oh, and FYI, I don’t use any P2P; I actually buy my music (shock!).

When I first noticed the problem, I tried calling Comcast. Their system would try to transfer me to a customer service representative (CSR) for about 30 seconds and then just tell me that they were all busy, try again later, click. I couldn’t believe it would just hang up on me. So I tried it a few more times and it happened every time, even if I requested cable TV support instead, even the next day.

It was after this that I went to Comcast’s website and filed a complaint. It is worth noting that their feedback form says it sends an e-mail to “Rick Germano – SVP Customer Operations, Comcast.” I left a brief complaint basically stating what had happened and that I’m not happy with it.

After a day or two, I got a phone call from a “local” (they left the local number, but it just went to the same system as the 800 number) Comcast employee. She sounded like her short-term job security depended on taking care of my issue. Unfortunately she called in the middle of the day, so obviously I wasn’t home. When I would get home, however, their call center would already be closed. They called two other times (yeah, still in the middle of the day) and left messages.

Finally, they sent me a letter saying that if I didn’t call within the next two or three days that they were going to consider the matter rectified. I don’t know how they really thought anything could be rectified, as I still hadn’t been able to talk to a single Comcast employee.

The next day I made a point of getting home early to call Comcast so that my issue wouldn’t get swept under the rug. What happened next really surprised me. I encountered the two least qualified IT people I have ever dealt with, literally. As a very competent network guy, I’m used to knowing more about the problem than the first line support, but this was a new low.

The first “tech” would interrupt me every time I said something because she heard a slight echo. The first time was fine, after the twentieth time I was losing my patience. She would not check anything out on my connection unless I first:

1. Plugged straight into my cable modem
2. Turn off my firewall
3. Clear my browser cookies (yeah…seriously…those cookies can drop your speed by 60% or more…)

She said that I wouldn’t get my rated speed if I had a firewall on. You know, because modern dual-core CPUs can’t handle a 10Mbit/sec connection through a firewall, right?

To top it off, as I use VoIP for my “home” phone service (which I was using for the tech support call), I would have to use my cell phone. Problem is, they can’t call out, so I had to call back in and wait on hold to get another technician.

Before I ended the call she asked me if it was raining, because that could affect the speeds. I told her it was perfect blue skies outside. Then she asked if it had rained at all lately to which I replied that it is Indiana, it rains at least once a week. So she said that was probably the problem. <sarcasm>That explains why the Internet is always so slow in Seattle.</sarcasm>

So I called back in, and the second “tech” asked me which site I had performed my speed tests on (dslreports.com, flash and java versions). He then went to the site to run a speed test. He didn’t want his speed though, he was trying to check my connection’s speed through dslreports. He was completely puzzled that it kept returning the speed of his connection.

He actually couldn’t run any tests basically. He could see it was connected and that was about it. He told me that a technician would need to come out to check the wiring outside, and that the soonest they could schedule me for was in a week-and-a-half.

I’m moving in about 6 weeks, and I’m about 95% sure it isn’t the wiring outside, so it would just be a week-and-a-half delay to finding the real solution. I told him to forget it, I would just downgrade my service so that I at least wasn’t paying extra anymore.

These two people were by far the least qualified “tech” “support” people I have ever encountered (even worse that my worst Dell experience). And before you jump on the “India Tech Support” crap, realize that these people were all American.

I want to make it really clear that both reps acted like they really wanted to help me, but they were completely incompetent. It really was a lot like when a two-year-old wants to help you cook in the kitchen. I don’t blame them for their failings however, I blame whoever hired them. My mom could give me equally good bad good bad good (read: bad) tech support tips, no joke.

After waiting for about ten minutes, I finally got transferred to someone in billing who could downgrade my service. When I explained why I was downgrading (incompetent techs can’t fix my connection) and explained some of the “techs” actions, she was completely dumb-founded. She said she doesn’t know anything about computers, but even she knew you can’t do a speed test of someone else’s computer via a website like dslreports.com.

Turns out there is a 6Mbit/sec down 1-2Mbit/sec up package that would cost me $15 less per month. As the uplink is still good (my uplink gets maxed out a lot between online gaming, VoIP, Orb, Foldershare, FTP, XMPP, and Mozy), I decided I would switch. She told me it would probably take 15 minutes to become active and after that I would need to power-cycle my cable modem.

She called me back (apparently billing can call out?) about an hour later to inform me that she looked into things further, and my issue had to be escalated. There was some problem with “the codes” for my account or something. It sounded like my account never got provisioned for the right service level (which is what I suspected all along). She said she would call me back in a week to see how things were (which didn’t happen). With the exception of her not following up a week later, she was the only helpful and qualified person I dealt with.

I mentioned my issues in our post about Comcast rewarding you if you publicly complain and two Comcast employees made comments and one has contacted me via e-mail. I’ll do a follow-up post on the outcome.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

For more on these kind of issues, check out The State of Phone Support: Not Good, How To: Provide Phone Support That Doesn’t Suck, and Why Are Companies So Horrible At Pre-sales Customer Service?

                                                    
Good ol’ Michael Arrington of TechCrunch had an interesting weekend in which he learned how to minimize the classic ISP runaround (i.e., the customer service you get when your Internet stops working). He had 36 hours of downtime before, as he puts it, he lost his cool and posted to Twitter this message: “I am going to expend significant energy over the next three weeks trashing comcast.”

It only took 20 minutes after his Twitter message for a Comcast executive in Philadelphia to call him asking the “how can I help” question. The executive explained that he monitors Twitter and blogs to get an understanding of what people are saying about Comcast. Soon after the call, a team was dispatched to Arrington’s place and the issue was resolved. This sure beats what he experienced earlier with the automated phone system and misleading customer service.

The whole episode reminds me of the time last year when I had to go without Internet for two months. Lots of factors were to blame, but Verizon did not handle the situation very well. Next time anything like this happens, it seems that I should know exactly what to do. I’ll give them one chance to fix it and then start blogging / tweeting from a friend’s house.

When you use the Internet more than practically anything else at home (it’s my phone book / maps / weather / driving directions / calendar / dictionary / encyclopedia / banking / movie show times / reviews / credit cards / bills / shopping / streaming movies / music downloads / pictures / email / news / order tracking), the lifestyle change even for a short period of time is a huge pain.

But before I get too excited with this new found ISP customer service solution, I wonder, will it work for those who aren’t big shots? And even if it does, how sustainable is that kind of model? If only the regular customer service were good enough in the first place so that this kind of work around wouldn’t be necessary…

[phpbay]laptop(s), 10[/phpbay]

This past week a national cable and high-speed Internet provider by the name of Charter Communications accidentally deleted all the contents of 14,000 active email accounts. A spokeswoman for the company explained that there is no way for them to retrieve anything that was erased. The spokeswoman offered this explanation and apology:

“We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error… During this maintenance we erroneously deleted active accounts along with the others. It’s never happened before. They are taking steps to make sure it never happens again.”

As a result, the company has decided to give every affected customer a $50 credit on their bill. So there you have it: according to Charter, at least, your online email account and data is worth about $50. The company, which has around 2.6 million high-speed Internet subscribers, could have done worse than taking a $700,000 hit. But the irresponsibility of the situation shows that they could have done much, much better.

Indeed, how can a multi-million dollar company with millions of subscribers not have any sort of data backup? But then again, who’s really to blame here? Charter offers this “free” email account to any of its customers who pay for Internet service. And it’s likely to have the same terms of service as all the freebie email accounts available online: you know, the “we provide no guarantee and accept no liability, use at your risk” type of agreement no one actually reads.

The point is that, in many ways, $50 is quite generous even if obviously undervaluing most anyone’s personal value of all emails. But imagine if this was Google (Gmail), Yahoo, or Microsoft (Hotmail) making the mistake. Would they give you anything? Answer: No.

So the moral of the story is just how much we take for granted products or services we pay nothing for. Perhaps I’m alone here, but I would actually pay something reasonable for an online email account if the repercussions of a screw up valued my collective emails at a price well above $0 to $50. But that reality doesn’t exist and is part of the reason I still use a desktop email client (Thunderbird) to download and save all my emails locally.

                                                    
It hasn’t even been two days since Marion explained how World of Warcraft could teach us a thing or two on education, but the Chinese government apparently is not convinced of the benefits. Beginning April 15, gamers in China under the age of 18 will receive only half the normal "points" if they play for more than three hours in a day. National game companies have been given three months to implement the system fully. And there’s even talks of the regulation extending to any western games (such as World of Warcraft) played in China.

Kids can continue to play beyond the three hour mark but after five hours, points possible drop to 0 and the following message is displayed every 15 minutes:

"You have entered unhealthy game time, please go offline immediately to rest. If you do not, your health will be damaged and your points will be cut to zero."

Ah, so governments intuitively know when kids’ "health will be damaged." No matter how good the intentions, the whole concept makes me want to run out and organize a World of Warcraft party for kids that lasts for five hours and one minute. Of course, since I live in the U.S., it may come across as an oddity if I start rebelling against other governments’ laws which annoy me. In the end: not my country, not my problem, I suppose.

But still, it makes me reflect. Growing up, I participated in many a game party that lasted more than 3-5 hours. That’s not to say that I did so every day or every week even. It’s just that I already feel like I’ve been a pretty obvious exception to this new arbitrary rule. And I’m not addicted to games. Heck, nowadays, I’m lucky if I get 3-5 hours of gaming time in a month. But if I want it all in one day, no one (especially not a government) better stand in my way.

Oh, and let’s not forget that in order for all this to work, gamers in China above the age of 18 must verify their age by registering for games using their real names and identity card number. Great. Don’t get me started on the issues/implications associated with that requirement…

The apartment complex I live in forces me to use whatever Internet connection the whole complex is on. Since I moved here last year, it’s been a local provider until that company went bankrupt. Service stopped on January 25. Not to worry, the apartment complex switched to using Verizon DSL. But that service went live on March 22.

I’m back in school getting my MBA while running TechConsumer. Here’s my story of doing both without Internet at home:

My first thought was to switch to dial-up Internet. But that wasn’t possible; the local provider that went bankrupt also handled phones for the entire complex. So I had no phone and couldn’t get one until Verizon came in (same two months later).

Plan B revolved around my brother Tom mailing me a spare Motorola Razr phone with a Bluetooth USB adapter. That way, I could use a dial-up Internet service (in this case, Juno) to connect to the Internet through my cellphone via the Bluetooth adapter.

But it ended up being something I used only if I absolutely had to. Not only did it use my cellphone minutes, but also the speed was unbearable. For example, I could use it to get basic email but if I was sent an attachment, there was little to no chance I’d get it before the connection timed out.

Plan C became my reality: planning my life such that all my Internet time was in chunks before or after class at school. This taught me just how reliant I was on the Internet. I mean, I could get to it every day, but it was 20 minutes away. How inconvenient!

As I’ve told this story to friends, it’s sometimes hard for them to grasp just how annoying it is. Big deal, you have to go somewhere to get Internet. So I pose the following question as a means to get my point across: How would watching TV be for you if you had to take 20 minutes to get to it? I find many (maybe most?) people still watch TV more than they use the Internet. For me it’s the opposite. But even that doesn’t really get the point across.

I use the Internet for oh-so-many reasons: phone book / maps / weather / driving directions / calendar / dictionary / encyclopedia / banking / movie show times / reviews / credit cards / bills / shopping / streaming movies / music downloads / pictures / email / news / order tracking, etc.

Not having any of that available in my apartment made life seem very difficult. It was my biggest exercise in planning ahead. It’s amazing how differently you have to structure your day when a huge convenience is taken away.

In any event, I now have the Internet and find myself relying on it again as if nothing happened. I felt like I should I write down my thoughts for future reference to remind myself that life isn’t, and hasn’t always been, this convenient…

The Wall Street Journal (this article now free) has an interesting piece on the coming amenities for travelers in the sky. U.S. airlines plan to offer in-flight Internet connections within 12 months. Think of it as the airplane cabin becoming a WiFi “hotspot.” Carriers will begin making announcements within a few months, and service will begin early next year.

Using your cellphone in the air, on the other hand, may take longer to be implemented. This is mostly due to strong consumer opposition. Apparently, most of us (Americans, at least) don’t want chatty cellphone neighbors while flying.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considered lifting a ban on cellphones in the sky but recently recommended ending that consideration after more than 8,000 consumer complaints. Interestingly enough, airlines in Europe and the Middle East may offer cellphone services aboard airplanes later this year. While Internet access in-flight is the priority in the U.S., cellular service is likely to come even earlier in Europe, the Middle East and Asia where opposition seems to be minimal.

A bunch of deals are in the works. Dubai-based Emirates plans to offer in-flight cellphone service on flights to Asia starting sometime during the summer. Qantas Airways has plans to begin an in-flight cellphone trial in Australia before June. And if the technology becomes popular, it might put U.S. airlines under pressure to keep up competitively.

But before you think this will mean a cabin full of cellphone conversations, the current technology is limited in capacity. Only 14 calls or fewer can take place simultaneously. So if you were the fifteen person to make a call, you’d get a variation of the “no signal” message.

Back to WiFi while flying: A company called AirCell paid $31.3 million at an FCC auction last year for radio frequency to be allocated for Internet service. And the Internet service already has the approval of both the FCC and the Federal Aviation Administration. The company is currently building out its network of 80 to 100 ground towers and is in talks with multiple airlines.

AirCell’s equipment can be installed in a plane overnight by airline maintenance workers and will act as a WiFi “hotspot” for the cabin. Laptops, BlackBerrys, and other PDAs will be able to connect. It will cost about $100,000 to implement per plane with less than 100 pounds of equipment.

The service is likely to be attractive to airlines, as AirCell plans to share revenues. The idea is for the service to cost about the same as existing WiFi offerings, something around $10 per day. And customers that are already part of existing service programs like T-Mobile, iPass and Boingo will receive additional discounts. Not many details are available on the speed, but it’s supposed to be about the same as WiFi service on the ground.

And it looks like AirCell plans to block voice calls over the Internet (i.e. Skype), except for pilots, flight attendants, and air marshals. The company did mention that it can expand its service to include cellular voice calls, though it’s unlikely to happen until a year or two after the implementation of Internet.

Whatever the case, you may consider buying stock in companies that produce noise-canceling headphones; I have a feeling that they’re going to get much more popular (especially for international flights)…

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN), the group in charge of setting Internet addressing guidelines, shot down a proposal to give adult websites their own “.xxx” domain. Apparently, certain groups from both the adult-entertainment industry and various religions (first time working together?) weren’t in favor.

This is the third time ICANN’s board rejected the idea since it the concept was introduced nearly seven years ago. Stuart Lawley, ICM’s president and CEO, wasn’t thrilled by the decision and explained that they will continue to push the issue:

“We are extremely disappointed by the board’s action today. It is not supportable for any of the reasons articulated by the board, ignores the rules Icann itself adopted for the RFP and makes a mockery of Icann bylaws’ prohibition of unjustifiable discriminatory treatment.”

Some board members appeared to be concerned that ICANN could become responsible for content regulation if the domain name was approved. And some members deferred to the opposition as reasoning enough to reject the “.xxx” domain.

Susan Crawford, a member of the board herself, does a fantastic job of shooting holes in all of these arguments:

“ICANN’s role in gTLD policy development is to seek to assess and articulate the broadly shared values of the internet community… real and “astroturf” comments (filed comments claiming to be grassroots opposition that have actually been generated by organized campaigns) have come in to ICANN that reflect opposition to this application… No applicant for any “sponsored” TLD could ever demonstrate unanimous, cheering approval for its application.”

She then goes on to discuss why ICANN and politics should be separate:

“If, after creation of an xxx TLD, certain governments of the world want to ensure that their citizens do not see xxx content, it is within their prerogative as sovereigns to instruct internet access providers physically located within their territory to block such content. Also, if certain governments want to ensure that *all* adult content providers with a physical presence in their country register exclusively within xxx, that is their prerogative as well. (I note that such a requirement in the U.S. would violate the First Amendment to our Constitution.) But this content-related censorship should not be ICANN’s concern, and ICANN should not allow itself to be used as a private lever for government chokepoint content control by making up reasons to avoid the creation of such a TLD in the first place.”

Especially after reading Crawford’s take, I have to admit that I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Let ICANN be ICANN and government be government; things get sticky when you mix the two. But, then again, I’ve never been one to stick a sign in my yard for such issues…