Consumers are best served when commodities are delivered in standard ways. And because monopolies tend to act in the best interests of shareholders rather than consumers I would argue, in disagreement with my friend Mark, that when the market reaches a point where competition is not being served, standards should be dictated.
I think we can agree on that point. When competition is not being served, standards should be dictated and government intervention is warranted.
Our discord may be over that point where competition is not being served. That is where competition law can provide such guidance.
I’ll be addressing the issue of Open Access, raised by Alec a few weeks ago, in my Monday morning posting.
The OECD is conducting a survey and they are seeking your input.
This type of survey is hardly random and it is not a scientific public opinion survey, so this isn’t a matter of stacking the votes. No “click here” to add your name to the petition. Rather, the effort is part of a global consultation on a variety of issues in advance of a 2008 Ministerial meeting scheduled to take place in Seoul.
We are inviting public comment on the themes for the Future of the Internet Economy Ministerial to help ensure that the meeting will be relevant in addressing the views and concerns of all stakeholders, and will benefit from a wide-range of viewpoints and expertise.
The public consultation is open to all parties wishing to contribute, including in particular civil society groups, representatives of the Internet technical community, individual experts, and business. Members of the general public are also invited to comment.
The questionnaire is structured around four main questions. The first question addresses key principles for the Future of the Internet Economy, and the following three refer to the main themes of the Ministerial: Convergence, Creativity, Confidence.
I have had today’s posting under development for a few weeks now, so it was surprising to see an article in yesterday’s Toronto Star about the same subject: micro-chips for humans.
A few events have taken place over the past few weeks that can be linked with a common solution, if you will grant me a little time to connect the chain.
First event: over the holiday weekend, my son had three entire households turned upside down in a frantic search for his passport. He had not seen it since he went to a concert in Buffalo this past winter. As it turns out, it was found in a pocket of his winter jacket [the one he wore to the concert], but not before we went through every drawer, every pocket of every suitcase and knapsack in our house, and our cottage. Luckily, he went to visit his school buddies this weekend so he could check his college apartment;
Next event: I discovered that in the rush to load the car for the holiday weekend trip to the north, I left my wallet behind. No driver’s license. No credit cards. No debit cards.
Final link: our dog went to the vet for a check up and annual dog license. In our area, the license fee is waived if the dog is micro-chipped. We had him ‘chipped‘ when he was a puppy. However, his chip stopped working, so we needed to get it replaced.
How do these events get tied together?
There are a number of folks in the telecom and other industries looking at the possibilities of digital wallets – whether on our cell-phones or in smarter pieces of ID [driver’s licenses, passports, etc.]. There are numerous advantages but some clear privacy challenges from such a system.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a single ID system – issued by the government – but loaded with any other commercial transaction numbers? Why couldn’t an enhanced driver’s license also serve as my passport, my credit cards, my frequent flyer card and other other number?
Scan the card, up pops my picture and biometric information for the border. Indeed, why even have a card? Perform an eye scan and know you have standing in front of you. Think of the possibilities for homeland security. Think of the benefits for medical treatment if all of your history could be accessible where ever you happen to be.
Merchants could access the credit information and be comforted that there is positive identity confirmation, lowering the cost of fraud.
Drivers? Such a system could eliminate the need for keys. Cars wouldn’t even start for drivers with suspended licenses.
But then we look at our dog’s chip that failed to remind us that such systems need to have back up procedures. Five nines [99.999% reliability] just would not be enough for such critical systems that affect every aspect of our lives.
And such an all-purpose system of identification raises the personal privacy concerns. As my friend Alan Borovoy likes to say, there should be a fundamental right, in a civilized, democratic society, for an individual to get lost. To keep to themselves. To wander around without government keeping tabs on us. Who is defining the reasonable balance of privacy considerations?
In the meantime, I’ll have to remember to pack my wallet and my son will have to find a better place to store his passport.
And we’ll make sure the dog’s micro-chip is working. Because as much as he wants to have a right to get lost, we want to get him back.
This afternoon’s cabinet shuffle means that there is work to be done by Ottawa’s GR firms in forging new relationships with the new portfolio holders. Senior staffers at Industry Canada will need to dust off and update the briefing packages for their new Ministers in order to get them prepared for the next session.
For those of us in the telecommunications industry, here are some initial thoughts.
The new Industry Minister, Jim Prentice, will need to get up to speed right away on spectrum auction issues. This was a file that many thought would be Minister Bernier’s to clear. There are a lot of difficult issues to examine and with a new Minister, it is likely that the Department’s timetable will now be delayed.
One of the other telecom issues that Minister Bernier had been looking at was foreign ownership restrictions. Foreign ownership, Foreign Affairs? See the link?
You do the math…
Michael Geist has further comment on the changes at Industry and Heritage. He asks “What does this mean for copyright, telecommunications, and other digital issues?“.
It has been almost a year since we filed an application with the CRTC to ask for carriers to have the authority to block certain illegal content on their networks. It has been two years since TELUS got into trouble for blocking access to a website without the permission of the CRTC.
The issues are different, but related.
Why did we go to the CRTC in the first place? The basis of our application was to seek CRTC approval under Section 36 of the Telecom Act, which states:
[Content of messages]
36. Except where the Commission approves otherwise, a Canadian carrier shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommunications carried by it for the public.
So, Section 36 tells us that the CRTC has the authority to intervene on content being carried and further, the Commission has to approve any control of the content that carriers handle for the public.
The Commission had never before [nor since] been asked to approve such an application, even though carriers are already blocking content identified by Cybertip as containing illegal child abuse images. We are breaking new ground on this section of the Act.
We did not ask for carriers to be ordered to block the illegal content. Simply that they be authorized to do so.
We have not dropped the issue. For the past two years, The Canadian Telecom Summit has examined Illegal Content on the Internet and we are continuing to explore both the technology and policy solutions as well as appropriate mechanisms for regulatory and judicial oversight.
