Did you ever wonder what the Internet looks like from deep inside the Beltway? And, to be perfectly reasonable, is there any reason why you should have?. This week at the State of the Net Conference sponsored by the bicameral Congressional Internet Caucus we got a chance to mix with staffers, Senators and Congressmen, industry (mostly lobbyists) and the odd media attendee. This was Washington meets K Street technology as only Washington can do it.
Luckily, having lived in the neighborhood for a while, we knew enough to doff a dark gray (or blue) suit, and select an equally conservative shirt and tie. And sure enough, among the 300 plus attendees we could spot nary a pair of chinos or a ponytail. For a brief moment, even armed with our name card, we had the vague sense we had perhaps shown up a day too early or late.
Only coincidentally, the Conference took place on the same day that Carly Fiorina, who was once said to have national political aspirations, was ousted at Hewlett Packard. Not too long ago, no one in Silicon Valley would have given a rat's backend for what anyone in Washington (or anywhere else except Seattle,) had to say about technology directions. Likewise, in the sea of dark suits in attendance at the Hyatt Regency Washington DC, it's safe to say that there was little more than a spittle of lip service given to the mainly libertarian, entrepreneurial, grassroots passions of the Valley. Through Left Coast eyes, this Conference could have been held post a takeover from outer space.
Equally interesting none of the co-chairs, Senators Conrad Burns (R-MT) andPatrick Leahy (D-VT), and Congressmen Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Rick Boucher(D-VA) are from California. The Keynote speaker was Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK).
More tellingly, and more than a little inconvenient for anyone hoping to do a live feed, was the lack of wireless connectivity for the event. This Hyatt, located at the foot of Capitol Hill, does have wireless connectivity but not in the areas where the Conference was held. For us, this meant shelling out $9.95 to have the privilege of going upstairs to the lobby between sessions. Imagine sitting at a well funded --the Planning Board included representatives from Microsoft, the RIAA, Verizon, Time Warner and Verisign --conference on the Internet in 2005 with no live audio or video Internet feed, no web access available and with hardly an attendee even sitting in front of an open laptop. Merge that with the dress code, and you could easily have looked up and thought the clock had been turned back to 1990.
These, of course, weren't the only oddities. The Panel on International Trends, second on the agenda, turned out to be made up entirely of UK Parliament members off on a junket. Their talking points may not have even mentioned China, Japan and India!
So who's irrelevant, is it us and our readers interspersed in the various tech enclaves spread around the globe, who are hopefully getting a chuckle out of this description, or the black hole that Washington DC has become in 2005. For that we have to take a closer look at the Conference's agenda and further out on the year's Congressional, Federal Agency and Supreme Court schedules. On the first day of the Year of the Rooster, panelists in the breakout sessions were discussing: Spyware, Spam, and Scams: How Are Consumers Coping?; DRM: How Will Content Be Delivered on the Internet?; Convergence and the Telecom Act; Cyber Security and Enabling the Next Round of Innovation on the Net; Intellectual Property and Innovation; Did the Internet Kill the Telecom Act?; Privacy, Trust, Security; Anticipating Grokster: A Betamax Standard for the Digital Age?; 100 mb by 2010: A Broadband Forecast or Fantasy?
Irrelevant? hardly, when it comes to influencing the flow of money and power, Washington sits like a black hole at the center of the galaxy. Frighteningly, the five members of the (FCC) Federal Communications Commission will have more to say about how convergence plays out in the coming years than any combination of technology and communications companies. And by the way, the Commissioner (Powell) and another member have just resigned. Those slots will be filled by Presidential appointments with the assent of Congress. Decisions regarding the flow of information through the major pipes, the airwaves, and satellite will be made right here in Washington. For instance, do the cable companies and telcos have to share their lines into the house? Should we be moving to IP6, how and when? This is, of course, the year of the Grokster case; the Supreme Court will decide whether the landmark Sony-Betamax decision will stand as was affirmed by the much maligned San Francisco based 9th Circuit court of Appeals. In case you don't recall, the Sony Betamax decision made it possible for VCR's to be sold against the wishes of the entertainment industry. Once again, the same forces, fattened by the very profits the video industry spawned, are trying to restrict the use of devices that only might be used to illegally copy protected materials. Last summer the Senate narrowly pushed aside an attempt to legislate the same restrictions in something that came to be called the INDUCE Act. INDUCE is sitting ready to be reintroduced and what the Supreme Court has to say in Grokster will greatly affect the outcome. Washington could also have a say as to whether the states and municipalities can build out their own Wi-Fi networks. It will be up to Washington to ultimately draw the lines on our rights to privacy on the Net, and on what can be kept out of the public domain through extended copyright, patents or censorship.
But Washington isn't just the regulator of the spirals in the galaxy, it also molds the shapes of change through the force of its money spigots. How fast the high speed internet gets built depends on government investment and incentives. Investments in securing the network and users from fraudulent activities that threaten to bring it down are also mainly in the hands of Congress.
The ways of Washington are indeed strange. At the post event reception held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building; there was a live IP video hook-up with the Marine base in Fallujah. Two young marines, pallid and gray on the screen, patiently sat through the event. All four of the co-chairs when they got to the mike directly addressed them; it was clear that the war weighs heavy on the minds of the Members who have to deal with its death, displacement, human and fiscal costs on a daily basis. Equally clear, for the hundreds of staffers and guests at the reception, very few wandered over to the screen to say a few words to the two guys. Their gray,distant, slightly jerky presences were little more than a ghostly flicker in the end of the large room full of chatter, tinkling glasses and the swish of passing business cards.