IP3 The Commons Continued

Political Economy Classification of Goods (Hess and Ostrom) The distinction between public and private Private – those things the market can solve most efficiently Public - those that require government involvement

Types of Goods (H&O) LowHigh DifficultPublic Goods Sunset Common Knowledge Common-Pool Resources Irrigation Systems Libraries Easy Roll or Club Goods Day Care Centers Country Clubs Private Goods Doughnuts Personal Computers SUBTRACTIBILITY EXCLUSIONEXCLUSION

Ownership Rights (H&O) Access – The right to enter a defined physical area and enjoy nonsubtractive benefits Extraction – The rights to obtain resource units or products of a resource system Management – The right to regulate internal use patterns and transform the resource by making improvements Exclusion – The right to determine who will have access rights and extraction rights Alienation – The right to sell or lease management and exclusion rights

Wireless Commons What if there were unlimited bandwidth available? Communications Act of 1934 empowered the FCC to decide how best to use spectrum in the public interest Ronald Coase, Nobel laureate economist argued that spectrum should not be regulated, it should be auctioned off.

Spectrum Access Key issue is which regime for spectrum allocation will stimulate creativity Key role of Powell in history (Michael not Colin)

The History of Cognitive Radios Ethernet protocol – Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detect (CSMA/CD) Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil submarine communication scheme Joseph Mitola

Cognitive Radio Terms Cognitive radio – Different parameters set within the network are taken into consideration concerning transmission or reception Spectrum sensing cognitive radio – The only parameter observed is frequency First commercially available cognitive radio

Two Cowboys David Hughes DeWayne Hendricks Regulatory issues are the biggest problem in the way of a paradigm shift for wireless! More technology available than we know what to do with! Need to find a place where wireless regulatory issues are absent!! – Goldberg protocol

Kingdom of Tonga Project Island group in the South Pacific About 171 islands, 70 inhabited 100K people in Tonga, about the same number outside Tonga Agricultural exports main source of income One of the last true monarchies

Kingdom of Tonga

Islands of Tonga

Tongatapu

Tonga Project Objectives Implement Goldberg Protocol (Find a place where wireless regulatory issues are absent) Deliver all services over wireless infrastructure at new price points Develop/Deploy new wideband technologies

NSF Past/Current Initiatives Sovereign nations on the Net –Mongolia in ‘96 Wireless Technology R&D and Deployment –HPWREN (High Performance Wireless Research & Education Network) at the Pala Indian Reservation

Services to be offered VoIP for telephony Internet data Video (two MPEG-2 streams) Deliver 30 Mbps symmetric to each home Wireless Mobility

Keeping Resources in the Commons Examples – public roads, rights of way, navigable waterways, town squares Susceptible to monopolization Properties are valuable when usage is shared Participation actually enhances the resource’s value Metcalf’s Law – The value of a network = n(n-1)/2 where n = the number of nodes

Disruptive Technologies “The milk of disruptive technologies doesn’t flow from cash cows.” Examples – disk drives, Apple OS The Internet is an incubator of innovation

Favoring Disruptive Technology Favoring disruptive technology will lead to a more prosperous and efficient economy Giant firms with vested interests will resist by: –Controlling and resisting technological change –Using the government to protect their interests

Jefferson’s View of Patents 1)Ideas can only retain their exclusivity when not shared. 2)Ideas are nonrivalrous 3)Sharing ideas is a good thing 4)Inventions cannot be a subject of property

Control of Resources If a resource is rivalrous, a system of control is necessary to ensure that it is not depleted If a resource is nonrivalrous, a system of control is necessary to ensure that it is created

Trends in the Arts Content – The trend is toward greater control of content by copyright holders Control over appropriation of content via new technologies – Cable TV, Napster

Trends in Commerce Coding is controlled via the physical layer. In the past it was controlled by access to expensive machines. Control in the Market – Everyone’s a publisher, but concentration and homogeneity in the media are on the upswing

Colonizing Cyberspace When Al Gore invented the “Information Superhighway” in 1992, this led to increased regulation of the Internet Bruce Lehman, Patent Commissioner under Clinton chaired Working Group on Intellectual Property that produced a ‘Green Paper’ and a ‘White Paper’ that were precursors to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Lehman now works for WIPO

Green and White Paper Assertions and Recommendations A work is reproduced when it is read into RAM First sale doctrine doesn’t apply to transmissions Copyright law should have provisions for technological copy protection and enforcement for circumvention As long as the meaning of current copyright law and the way it should be read to apply to new technology is clarified, it is “fundamentally adequate and effective.”

Argument for “Strong Copyright Protection” Without this kind of protection, content producers will not disseminate their material via the NII, and the NII will fail Au contraire – many authors supply their content willingly Note also the success of the Open Source movement What is the relationship between copyright protection and industry growth?

Licensing End users don’t bother with copyright laws. Lehman’s solution a)Apply law’s full force to individuals b)Make enforcement easier through technology c)Include stiffer penalties d)Education through a ‘just say yes’ to licensing program

Why Laws Are Not Followed They are difficult to understand We don’t believe in them – e.g. various consensual sex acts, Prohibition, 55 mph speed limit Will education work for the DMCA or would a better crafted law be more effective?

Patenting Life (Kevles) What is patentable in the US? “…any new and useful art (process), machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new or useful improvement thereof.” Patenting life – rejected a patent to cover a fiber in pine tree needles

Patents on Lifeforms The Plant Patent Act –Asexually reproduced plants Patents on micro-organisms –Bacterium to consume oil slicks –Recombinant DNA

Additional Patents and Issues Oncomouse Craig Venter and mapping the human genome – first as an employee of the NIH and later as a stakeholder in Celera a for profit firm Other gene patents – breast cancer gene

Legal Issues European law – –Prohibits patents on any invention contrary to public order or morality –Prohibits patents on plant or animal varieties, or anything produced by a natural biological process, except for microbiological products European law and US law are inconsistent

Ethical Issues Biotech advocates argued that issues of political economy were relevant to patent policy, but ethical issues were not. Ownership of the human genome could permit –License fees to researchers –High prices for diagnostic tests Genome map developed at public expense Are our genes our birthright?