Last fall, a coalition of American groups began to call for the establishment of a “Do Not Track List” to parallel the telemarketing Do Not Call List.

Their intent is to protect consumers from having their activities tracked and used by advertisers such as the cookies planted by various websites.

Across an ever-growing array of electronic devices, from the Internet to mobile devices and beyond, consumers leave behind a vast amount of behavioral information that is being tracked and targeted without their knowledge. This “behavioral tracking” — the practice of collecting and compiling a record of individual consumers’ activities, interests, preferences, and/or communications over time — places consumers’ privacy at risk, and is not covered by federal law.

Business Week had an article in November that described why such a law shouldn’t be necessary.

One of the concerns, of course, is that most free content on the web is supported by advertiser based business models. Advertisers will pay a premium to target the ‘right’ eyeballs.

The flip side is that people should be rightfully concerned about the ability to control the type of personal information that is available to strangers.

There is a balance of consumer interests at stake on this issue. Behavioral targeted advertising is a rapidly growing business for service providers, but it has attracted associated controversial policy issues. How do we establish an informed discussion of the issues?

Bob Dykes, CEO of NebuAd, will be participating on a panel at The Canadian Telecom Summit entitled Consumers in a Multi-screen World – examining the technologies, applications and issues associated with converged services.

Technorati Tags:
do not track, DNCL, behavioral tracking

Light Reading has an story that contrasts the views of AT&T; and Verizon on dealing with copyrighted material on their networks.

Verizon is said to reluctant to monitor what is traversing its network. Besides privacy and the risk of missing content that should be screened, Verizon is concerned about the slippery slope: having to identify what other types of content should be blocked.

Verizon’s executive vice president for public affairs Tom Tauke said:

We generally are reluctant to get into the business of examining content that flows across our networks and taking some action as a result of that content.

On the other hand, AT&T; CEO Randall Stephenson told the World Economic Forum that AT&T; was looking for ways to actively block unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material on its network. He told the conference in Davos:

It’s like being in a store and watching someone steal a DVD. Do you act?

If the state of deep packet inspection technology for traffic management provides information about the nature of the content, even the rightful ownership of the content, can service providers continue to turn a blind eye to their role in transmission of contraband material?

AT&T;’s official statement on the matter is:

We want to set the record straight that we have not said we are going to filter, and in fact, there is no technology solution available at this time. What we have said is that we are working with some in the content industry on the very real issue of piracy that has raised costs for all Internet users. It is our hope that this relationship leads to encouraging the legal downloads of movies, TV shows, and other entertainment and content.

We will be exploring the issue of net neutrality in a special session on Wednesday June 18 at The Canadian Telecom Summit in June.

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Update [February 11, 11:30 am]
Michael Geist’s column in the Toronto Star today speaks of cloud computing and raises the question of an legal protection for ISPs for hosted content but over which they have no knowledge or control.

Technorati Tags:
net neutrality, AT&T;, Verizon, Canadian Telecom Summit

I am noticing an increase in the number of calls from “Private Name / Private Number” that disconnect within a couple seconds of me answering the phone. As I write this posting, I was just hung up on again – all three of our lines have received similar calls in a span of 10 minutes.

Yes I have hang-ups. Anyone else experiencing this phenomenon?

I suspect that these calls are coming from a company that wants to leave a message on my voice mail – like Yanish the Mover, or some vacation promoter. I guess live humans aren’t as good a target for these folks as my voice mail box.

What is my point?

Well – it seems to me that these annoyance calls fall through the cracks in the CRTC’s rules for telemarketing. They aren’t “voice mail broadcasting” because that term is defined by the CRTC as:

a telecommunication whereby a recorded message is delivered directly into a person’s voice mailbox without interrupting that person’s activities in real time.

No recording was delivered and even if one was delivered, it did interrupt my activities in real time – so these calls don’t meet the definition of voice mail broadcasts.

It is possible the call should fall under the automatic dialer (ADAD) rules, but how would we find out who is offending? No message is left when a human answers the call.

Even if the call gets traced, there was no solicitation and therefore no telemarketing.

This appears to be yet another way the bad guys will work around the rules, while the good guys get stuck paying.

Technorati Tags:
CRTC, DNCL, telemarketing

Dov Moran is an Israeli inventor who created the USB memory key and sold his company, msystems, to Sandisk for $1.6B a little over a year ago.

The Jerusalem Post reports that his new company (with a management team composed of msystems alumni), Modu Mobile, is in the process of launching a small modular mobile handset that pops into interchangeable “jackets” to create a smarter phone. Alternatively the device can be plugged into other gadgets to provide those items with network connectivity.

The Modu is slightly smaller than an iPod Nano, weighing in at 1.5 ounces. It has its own small color screen and a limited keypad, sufficient to allow the Modu to work on its own with basic functionality.

The jackets transform the Modu into a variety of form factors, adding numeric keypads, GPS, cameras, MP3 players – perhaps you will be able to plug the Modu into a computer directly, or your car, security system or devices that have not yet been conceived. The Modu supplies the antenna and wireless network communications.

This strikes me as an iPod approach that could open up a huge after-market accessory industry. Consumers could then upgrade their accessories or their basic Modu without having to replace the other. For example. initially, the Modu is GPRS enabled; when the company releases the HSPA version, the jackets will still work.

Modu could facilitate a wave of third party mobile innovation. Think of the Amazon Kindle, without the applications developers needing to worry about the network side.

The phone will be launched in October with Telecom Italia, VimpelCom in Russia and Cellcom in Israel. The company claims that it hasn’t had time to speak with US carriers.

Will Canada have a chance to beat our neighbours to the south?

A CRTC decision issued yesterday seems to simultaneously be right and wrong in the wake of a week long service outage last October.

Under the CRTC’s competitor rate rebate plan, carriers have to compensate their wholesale customers when service levels are below certain standards. Among other instances, at issue in this case were a couple cable cuts caused by third parties – big ones: an 1800 pair/26 gauge cable and a 1200 pair/24 gauge cable cut by a sewer contractor in London.

No question that Bell Canada did not have control over the causes of the service outage to Primus. That confirms the correctness of the decision from the CRTC. But neither Primus nor its customers had control over the outage. Something is wrong if they aren’t compensated.

I hope the construction contractors are being held accountable for the damages.

Technorati Tags:
CRTC, Bell, Primus