The fun continues to fly unfettered at everyone's favorite mediator of media regulation mayhem: the Federal Communications Commission. Time for your rundown of some of the week's activities and future frolic.

Second net neutrality showdown

If you happen to be in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley region this Thursday, you might want to check out the FCC's second hearing on Internet network management, to be held at everyone's favorite educational theme park for the hyper-rich: Stanford University. The speakers for the event's two panels have not been named, but the names of the panels have been named: "Network Management and Consumer Expectations" and "Consumer Access to Emerging Internet Technologies and Applications."

To recap: the FCC began investigating whether to enact some serious net neutrality rules after Associated Press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation proved that Comcast's ISP system interferes with the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol. At the FCC's Harvard Law School hearing on this matter, Comcast insisted that it did not do anything wrong and it will never do it again. The cable giant's VP David Cohen said the company just does some fiddling around with downloads at periods of high volume; no big deal.

Since then the FCC's Chair Kevin Martin has showed some backbone on this matter, insisting that the agency will finish its investigation of Comcast by late June, and sounding pretty critical of Comcast too sometimes. Comcast, however, has proven to be a rather formidable opponent: cutting a rather superficial press conference type deal with the BitTorrent company (as opposed to the protocol) and hailing so-called P4P advances as reasons why the agency need not press on with this issue.

All this will doubtless get tossed around at Stanford this week, hopefully with toilet paper handy. I have every expectation that all the Big Gods will be there, maybe even His True Holiness Lawrence Lessig. You can expect Comcast to explain that they've fixed everything up even more than the company fixed everything up just prior to the Harvard circus, at which it was revealed that Comcast paid people to come to the event and sleep, thus keeping some activists out of the room. You can probably listen to the festivities on the FCC's Web site here (but they haven't posted the link yet). My favorite moment at the last hearing was when one of the Commissioners (Robert M. McDowell) said he'd keep his questions brief because he'd drunk a lot of coffee and water and needed a break.

DTV spanking

On the 10th, a whole bunch of retailers got fined by the FCC for doing digital transition (DTV) related bad stuff they should have known better than to do.  They're still selling and shipping analog TV sets that will be completely obsolete after February 17th, 2009, the last day of analog broadcasting. We're talking Best Buy, Fry's, Circuit City, CompUSA, Sears, Polaroid, Precor, Proview, and Walmart.

Best Buy got socked $280,000 for selling analog TVs. Circuit City got hit with a $712,000 bill. Walmart took the prize with a $992,000 head noogie. They could have avoided this fate by just putting a teeny weeny label on the clunker saying "Dear Consumer: After February 17th 2009 this television set will be a useless piece of furniture sitting in your bedroom. And why are you putting a TV set in your bedroom anyway? Don't you know that studies indicate that couples who don't put TV sets in their bedrooms have more sex?" Ok. Something more moderate, like what the FCC mandates:

"This television receiver has only an analog broadcast tuner and will require a converter box after
February 17, 2009, to receive over-the-air broadcasts with an antenna because of the Nation's
transition to digital broadcasting. Analog-only TVs should continue to work as before with cable
and satellite TV services, gaming consoles, VCRs, DVD players, and similar products. For more
information, call the Federal Communications Commission at 1-888-225-5322 (TTY: 1-888-835-5322) or visit the Commission's digital television web site at: www.dtv.gov."

All this continues to indicate that nobody gives a rodent's rump about the DTV transition, least of all the broadcasting industry and its suppliers. I can't wait for February 18th of next year, when at least ten million people by my estimation go for their video fix and discover that the dealer got hit with a digital drive-by.

Then there are a bunch of scofflaws making TV sets without V-Chips, those little programming add-ons that allow our nation's parents to program their tubes to filter out indecency. Not that most of them do, but they should, if for no other reason than to relieve the FCC of the task of applying its moronic community decency standards to the broadcast industry. Here's the rogue's gallery and their penance:

· LG Electronics $1,700,000
· Philips Consumer Electronics $450,000
· Sanyo Corporation $375,000
· Vizio, Inc. $370,000
· Panasonic Corporation $320,000
· Westinghouse Digital Electronics $210,000
· Audiovox Corporation $20,000
· Total $3,445,000

Mind you, these are all consent deals. The company is exonerated and voluntarily agrees to pay a bunch of money and get its act together. In exchange: no bad marks on the firm's record. All is forgiven. Everybody wins, especially the United States Treasury, which gets all the money and sends it forthwith to Iraq.

The New York Times reports that about a quarter of United States high school students and a third of eighth graders write proficiently. The word "proficient" is not very clearly defined in the article, unfortunately. The news item says that educators came to these percentages following a nationwide test that asked students to write short essays in a "short period of time," as the story put it. So there is quite a bit of vaguitude in the result. But one supposes that these proficient kids can crank out words and sentences relatively quickly.

You can celebrate or lament this news, of course, depending on how you read the percentages. A quarter of high school kids isn't bad, from where I sit. Apparently girls ruled and boys drooled on the test: 41 percent of eighth grade girls reached the proficiency threshold, as opposed to 20 percent of boys.

But the question remains what these allegedly proficient writers will do as adults. Will they continue to write? Interesting things happen to people after they leave school. Some discover skills unnoticed (or suppressed) during their K-12 and college years. Others sadly drop promising abilities that needed the discipline of the classroom to survive. The fate of writing figures prominently in this transitional period.

I know lots of adult people who want to write. The problem is that they can't seem to get past the writing part of the task. They like being recognized as writers, making money as writers, enjoying the identity associated with being a writer. It's just that they don't/won't write, mostly because various negative messages in their head block them. Most of these paralyzing impulses can be refuted rather easily. If you have trouble writing, I offer my refutations here.

1. Wrongness is inevitable

First there are the folks who don't write because they're afraid they will say something exposed as wrong. That, of course, doesn't stop Christopher Hitchens from writing. Here's a guy who managed to convince a huge portion of liberal/left America to support (or at least not oppose) what is probably the worst foreign policy/military disaster in United States history: Bush II's horrendous invasion of Iraq.

But does that slow him down? Hell no. Hitch just keeps cranking them out: a book about Orwell. a tome about Jefferson - then yet another book about why religion sucks. God only knows (heh heh) what he'll come up with next.

What "I might be wrong" writers' block sufferers don't get is that of course you'll be wrong . A lot of being a writer is about being wrong. Everybody is wrong at least half the time. The only difference is that writers put their wrongness on the public record.

Speaking personally, I appreciate it when people point out that I'm wrong, because it means

• They're paying attention. I admit it. I like attention. Don't you? That's at least part of why you want to be a writer, right?
• I'm entertaining them. People love it when you're wrong, or at least when they're sure you're wrong. Think about it: what's more fun than reading about somebody else being wrong? Well, perhaps somebody you don't like losing all their money in an investment scam, but somebody just being wrong comes close.
• I might learn something, like, why I was wrong.

So take the "I might be wrong" excuse off your list. As a writer, you have an obligation to be wrong. Your wrongness will entertain people, help them clarify their thinking, improve your thinking, and draw attention to your writing.

Come to think about it, you're wrong for not writing because you might be wrong. So even if you don't write, you're wrong anyway. You can't win. You may as well write.

2. Indecision does not equal silence

Then there are the writers who fear to write because they aren't sure about something. What makes you so sure that you have to be sure about what you think to write? In fact, your lack of surety on some subject is probably one of the most interesting things you can write about.

The chances are that your reasons for not being certain about some political or social question are very sound. You can see contradictions in various positions on the problem. You can perceive a need for further investigation of the issue. The plain fact is that an exposition on your lack of clarity will improve the clarity of others, as well as yours.

The world is stuffed to the gizzards with people who are absolutely sure about everything. I think it was Voltaire who said that they're the most dangerous people (although I'm not sure it was him). So whatever your motives for writing, in the interest of world peace and harmony, you have a solemn duty to write down and publish your lack of sureness on some matter.

3. I don't write because I don't write well

Join the crowd. Most people don't write well. They don't write well because they don't practice their writing. Having left their writing skills unpracticed, they don't write well.

So you have to break the loop. First, I recommend that you join the International Association of Bad Writers. It's a very large organization. Its most prominent members include Shirley MacLain, Michel Foucault, the Dalai Lama, most tech writers, half of all journalists, and about ninety percent of all college professors, especially the lit professors.

These people have had absolutely no compunction about inflicting their lousy writing on the world. Safely embedded within their ranks, hardly anyone will notice your comparatively modest literary shortcomings. You thus have found excellent cover to practice your writing until it improves.

4. The time management excuse

Then there are the folks who say they don't have to the time to write. To this I say baloney.

If you've got the time to watch lousy movies and TV shows, write long emails to friends, endlessly argue the same issues with your spouse for years, have screaming matches about politics over the telephone, go to dumb political events where famous people say stuff that you'll forget in ten minutes, read other people's blogs, faithfully read every David Brooks and Thomas Friedman column in The New York Times and then gripe about them, constantly threaten to go to graduate school next year or the year after that, listen daily to All Things Considered cozy up to whoever is in charge at the moment, or constantly threaten to learn Farsi or Arabic, then you've jolly well got the time to write a five to nine paragraph essay about something once a week.

At the least the other reasons have some semblance of complexity. This one is pretty unconvincing.

5. Last reason: writing doesn't matter

In the end, many people don't write because it feels like it doesn't matter what they say.

I think that this is an authentic feeling, but chances are most people feel this way because they are surrounded by people who say and write lots of things, but do not tell the truth. When I say "truth," I mean their truth, that is, what they really think, inside. They write a lot, but they do not say what they really think, creating a vast, vacuous discourse that depresses everyone and fosters an atmosphere of pointlessness.

Here is the good news: People who tell their honest truth are in extremely short supply. Their honest truths are rarely earth shattering and profound. They often amount to little more than modest expressions of doubt, curiosity, uncertainty, or changes of heart. But when writers articulate these truths, people pay attention, sometimes with anger, but often with gratitude, because we are all starved for honesty.

Your job as a writer is to strive for that clear expression of honesty. You won't hit the mark often. But you'll get there now and then. And yes, your doing that will matter. Try it and you will see.

6. Reasons number six to infinity (fill in the blank):

My experience is that most reasons for not writing are rooted in a fear that some cherished part of the individuals' self-image will be shattered; that s/he will be exposed as a fraud.

Well, guess what? If you're lucky, you will. And what's so bad about that? We're all frauds to some degree or other. Life's profoundest moments often involve being exposed to one's inner fraudulence. And what better way to invite such revelations on oneself than by public writing?

There is, of course, That Other Matter. You only go around once, probably. Writing represents the easiest and most affordable means of documenting not only your brief stay on this plane of existence, but chronicling the evolution of that amazing gift that you accidentally or purposefully received, your consciousness.

So fool yourself. Think and feel about writing as not writing. Think of it as just another thing that you just do that you happen to have always wanted to do even though it is something you already do. Think and feel about writing like flossing, crossword puzzling, lawn mowing, nail clipping, pencil sharpening, car washing, dish washing, dog walking, tea drinking, snack sneaking, or bike riding.

But please don't think of writing as something that has to be eternally true, absolutely certain, picture eloquent, exquisitely framed, and book length to boot. Writing never has to be any of these things. It can be chaotic, unbalanced, uncertain, plainly false, and amazingly short and still be writing, gifted writing at that.

So feel free to be a writer . . . while you still have time.

I'm enjoying the Federal Trade Commission's new videos about "phishing"—Web sites that try to trick you into disclosing information about your bank account, social security number, security passwords and such so they can steal your identity and rob you silly. The little skits are simple and funny. And the fat phishy guy is sort of cute with his fin getting in the way of his efforts to rob people in person.

Mr. Phish's attempt to snooker a business executive in her office is especially funny.

"Something here doesn't seem . . . right," she says as he waits for her to give him her bank account password.

"What?" he asks innocently.

"I can't quite put my finger on it!" she exclaims.

"Trust issues, eh?" he deftly replies, hovering over her chair. "You know once we figure this whole thing out maybe we could grab a cup of coffee?"

By then she and her security guard notice something—the fin on his back. "This isn't what it looks like!" he exclaims as the guard ushers him out of the office.

Obvious warnings you're likely to slip on

At the end of the segment, watchers are directed towards an FTC Web site: OnGuardOnLine.gov. They might have come up with a shorter domain name, but the site has lots of good tips on protecting your digital security. Some of these pointers may appear to you to qualify for the "duh" category, but I know plenty of people who have slipped and paid the price. Here are a few advisories:

Just good stuff to keep in mind. The biggest problem with phishing, of course, is that it comes in the form of spam. And spam has gone beyond just irritating, the Federal Trade Commission warns. It has become downright dangerous.

"This new generation of spam is no longer a mere annoyance to email recipients and a burden to ISPs; often it is a vector for criminal activity," the FTC's Spam Summit report, released on December 28th, concludes. The document summarizes the findings of the Commission's Division of Marketing Practices on spam and phishing.

Not your grandfather's spam

In the relatively innocent 1990s, spammers used automated search software to "harvest" e-mail addresses off Web sites, then dumped them into scripts to mass market products via email. The messages used phony headers so you couldn't trace them to their source.

But those were the good old days, the FTC report explains. Today's New and Improved spam sends you malicious "bots" that implant software in your computer, turning it into part of a network of hosts that send unprecedented quantities of spam into cyberspace.

And the spam doesn't just try to get you to buy V1a@ra; it directs you to "phishing" sites—phony Web pages that look like your banking, credit card, or cell phone account site—then tells you the site crashed and needs you to submit your account information again in the hope that you'll fall for this dodge and the spammer can rob you silly.

Other types of "malware," the FTC warns, can dramatically slow down your computer, or even worse, install key recording software that will record your every keystroke—that's right, including the strokes that spell out your credit card and banking account number.

Fast flux

One million Internet Protocol (IP) addresses get shanghaied into coordinated spam attacks every day, the FTC survey says, assaulting 50,000 computers in any single instance.

Spam experts call the phenomenon "fast flux," and say that about 12 million computers world wide are compromised by malicious bots, most of them located outside the United States. With so many computers under their control, spammers can quickly switch the infected computer IP addresses that they use in order to evade detection by authorities.

And it's getting easier to become a malicious spammer, the FTC reports. Rogue software developers are offering spam/spyware programs for less than $20 a copy; some even come with technical support.

U.S. consumers paid seven billion dollars in costs due to malicious spam in 2007, the Spam Summit report says. 850,000 households had to replace their computers after being spammed or phished. The Federal Bureau of Investigation discloses that over 200 government Web sites have been compromised and turned into spam delivery systems.

Fighting spam

Consumers can protect themselves from malicious spam, the FTC says. Spam filters work and every e-mail user should get one. Studies repeatedly show that using such filters effectively blocks most spam.

"The implication of this finding is that ISP spam filtering technologies continue to play an integral role in reducing the amount of spam messages delivered to consumers’ inboxes," the FTC concludes.

The Commission also warns that listing your e-mail address on a Web site puts that address at high risk of getting plucked, "but that postings on other website locations, such as chatrooms, message boards, social network sites, and video posting sites were far less likely to be harvested."

The cable giant and peer-to-peer innovator whose conflict triggered a renewed debate over net neutrality have announced that they will work together now, or at least adjust some of their rhetoric. Comcast and BitTorrent issued a press release this morning promising "a collaborative effort with one another and with the broader Internet and ISP community to more effectively address issues associated with rich media content and network capacity management."

It's unclear what impact this news will have on the Federal Communications Commission's investigation of what Comcast calls its 'network management practices' and critics call crude efforts to block or significantly slow down P2P use. Today Comcast promised that by the end of this year it will move to a capacity management system that is "protocol agnostic." This phrase, may suggest to the literal minded that Comcast would like to believe in Internet protocols, but needs to see some evidence that they exist first. Those hoping for a more precise definition could be disappointed by Comcast Chief Technology Officer Tony Werner's definition of the term. "This means that we will have to rapidly reconfigure our network management systems," the press release quotes Werner as saying, "but the outcome will be a traffic management technique that is more appropriate for today's emerging Internet trends."

BitTorrent matched this vagueness by assuring the public that it has kinder feelings now for Comcast's past ISP behavior. "While we think there were other management techniques that could have been deployed," declared Eric Klinker, BitTorrent's CTO, "we understand why Comcast and other ISPs adopted the approach that they did initially." Klinker added that he is pleased that "Comcast understands these changing traffic patterns and wants to collaborate with us to migrate to techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent."

The two groups say that they will work with each other, other ISPs and technology companies, and with the Internet Engineering Task Force "to explore and develop a new distribution architecture" for rich content delivery. BitTorrent President Ashwin Navin promises that they will publish their work in open forums.

Obviously this news will have an impact on the debate over to what extent the FCC should establish clear net neutrality based guidelines over ISP management. The most outspoken advocates of what they call a "light regulatory touch" on the Commission have already hailed today's announcement. FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate praised the agreement. "I have consistently favored competition and market forces rather than government regulation across all platforms and especially in this dynamic, highly-technical marketplace," she declared this morning. Ditto for her fellow Republican Robert M. McDowell. "As I have said for a long time," McDowell said yet again, "it is precisely this kind of private sector solution that has been the bedrock of Internet governance since its inception. Government mandates cannot possibly contemplate the myriad complexities and nuances of the Internet market place."

Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein took a more skeptical stance, declaring that the Commission "will need to learn more details about the recent agreement between BitTorrent and Comcast, but it is encouraging that broadband providers are listening to the chorus of consumer calls for open and neutral broadband Internet access."

The Comcast/BitTorrent press release also assures the public that both parties are discussing the creation of a friendly environment for "legal" P2P use, Comcast CFO Werner declaring that P2P protocols have "matured as an enabler for legal content distribution." The FCC's Tate added in her press statement that she wants "all interested parties to redouble their efforts to address the growing problem of illegal content distribution, from pirated movies and music, to online child pornography, as well as the issue of child online safety." How will Comcast do this without content filtering? Not very clear.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded not guilty today to civil charges that he lied under oath about an affair and spent taxpayer funds to conceal the relationship with his staff member, Christine Beatty. The counts against him all add up to an absurd 90 years in prison. I have no way of knowing whether Mr. Kilpatrick is innocent or guilty of the charges that he faces. But I'll say this about the man, a couple of years ago he stood up to AT&T.

When AT&T first proposed merging with BellSouth, a union that would create an entity controlling half the land lines in the United States, most minority advocates supported the merger.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Jesse Jackson's Operation Rainbow Push, and other regional civil rights groups all submitted statements on behalf of the $67.1 billion deal.

"Our mission is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economical equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination," the NAACP wrote to the FCC in October of 2006. "This merger has the potential to contribute to the achievement of our mission by reducing the economic and technological barriers confronting people living in underserved rural and low income communities."

But three prominent inner city mayors didn't see it that way.

Two days before the NAACP's filing, Kwame Kilpatrick, Ray Nagin of New Orleans, and Eric Perrodin of Compton, California, submitted comments, for the second time, expressing concerns about AT&T and BellSouth's performance in inner-city areas. The first time they filed, on June 5th, they charged that the proposed merger could "exacerbate the differences in access to telecommunications services based on race, income level, and geography."

Calling themselves the Concerned Mayors Alliance (CMA), Kilpatrick, Nagin, and Perrodin cited studies and newspaper reports suggesting that AT&T redlines minority neighborhoods—systematically denying or delaying service to low-income ethnic areas. Their comments described these regions as the "last wired and the last hired," and expressed concern that the merger could reduce opportunities for minority contractors.

Their filing also charged that minority neighborhood residents often receive shoddy service from AT&T. "In deciding whether to approve this proposed merger," the mayors wrote, "the Commission should consider the past practices of AT&T's cable and telephone affiliated companies and impose conditions on the merger to ensure that these illegal practices do not continue." The mayors asked for a redlining assessment from the FCC or a designated third party investigator.

The NAACP FCC submission, in contrast, took AT&T at its word. Their statement disclosed that they met with AT&T executives and received commitments that 30 percent of AT&T's upcoming high speed broadband rollout would be reserved for low income neighborhoods and that opportunities for minority contractors would receive "priority attention."

The NAACP's letter did offer one note of skepticism about the acquisition: the nearly 10,000 estimated jobs that would be eliminated because of the merger. But: "we were heartened to learn that the proposed merger company may reclaim approximately 3,000 formerly out-source jobs," their statement concluded. The civil rights group received support in this stance from the Asian Pacific Legal Center, Jesse Jackson's Operation Rainbow Push, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, and the Urban League of Greater Miami.

But Kilpatrick, Nagin, Perrodin asked the FCC to take a closer look at AT&T's promises. Their second filing asked the Commission to get more details on that 30% broadband commitment.

"The CMA proposes an agreement that specifically identifies low-income areas in Detroit, New Orleans and Compton and other municipalities for incremental deployment by AT&T/BellSouth," they wrote, "and establishes definitive goals and timelines for such deployment."

Kilpatrick and his fellow mayors didn't get everything they wanted when the FCC finally approved the AT&T/BellSouth deal, but their critical stance had to count as one of the factors that forced AT&T to commit to a faster rate of broadband rollout to low income areas. AT&T also promised not to raise prices on broadband upgrades of dial up service.

Kilpatrick didn't have to take this kind of leadership. He could have just gone along with the NAACP's sanguine endorsement of the deal. Instead, he stood up for his residents, and that showed character. Again, I have no way of knowing how this latest ordeal will dispense with the Mayor of Detroit. But I hope that he comes out all right.