Marvin Ammori

A couple of interesting pieces from the folks over at Kings of War.  The first, by Thomas Rid, asks some practical questions about the worm and who is possibly responsible.  The second, by David Betz, tackles some broader questions about what Stuxnet means for the future of cyberspace and warfare.  Betz closes his piece with a compelling reflection:

Still, I can’t help but think that some watershed has been passed, that Stuxnet of September 2010 will be remembered rather in the way we do the aerial bombings of civilian centres by Zeppelin airships–not as particularly strategically significant at the time but as a harbinger of what is still to come.

The Washington Post quotes me today in a story about “cord-cutting.” This is a term used by cable companies to refer to people canceling their cable TV subscriptions and watching their favorite shows through the Internet. This could cost the cable companies a lot of money in cable TV subscriptions.

Cord-cutting is enabled, some think, by people being able to watch TV through devices like AppleTV and Roku, which rely on Internet connections to stream high-quality video onto a big screen in the living room.

The story quotes some of my views and links to a paper I wrote on the topic:

Marvin Ammori, a consumer advocate and professor of communications law at the University of Nebraska, said that even though better content options are available today, cable and telecom firms will be loath to make the best content available online for free. Content firms aren’t getting as much advertising revenue online as they are through fees and advertising from cable firms.

And, in a paper he wrote about “TV Everywhere,” a cable industry strategy to offer content only to broadband and cable subscribers, Ammori said consumers will be reluctant to take up new offerings online.

I have two more thoughts on the day’s news.

First, I think the deal between Hulu (which provides TV content online) and Roku (an inexpensive device allowing you to watch it on your TV) will be good for consumers, whether or not it leads to cord-cutting.

Second, I should note that, whatever the real threat of cord-cutting, cable companies have been frightened of cord-cutting since the dawn of high-speed Internet services.  Time Warner Cable’s CEO made this point recently:

He also noted that Time Warner Cable is not just turning a blind eye to the threat posed by cord cutting. “History is full of corporate managements who were living high on the hog and something came … and they didn’t see it, and all the sudden the world changed,” he said. “We are not in that mode; we pay a lot of attention to this. In fact, pretty much from the day we launched broadband, which is in 1996, we’ve been focused on: ‘Would this become a way that video was transmitted?'”

If that sounds like yesterday’s technology fearing disruptive innovators, that’s what it is. But, f Time Warner Cable responds by innovating in its own right, rather than engaging in anti-competitive actions, consumers would be better off. And I’m guessing, so would Time Warner Cable.

Darren Pauli of ZDNet Australia reports on an Australian government official declaring that unless the cyber attack presents a threat to national security interests, private companies will be left to defend themselves from cyber attacks.  It remains unclear how the Australian government’s policy will mesh with existing international relationships and further efforts to collaboratively combat cyber threats.

BBC story here:

An Iranian court has sentenced a prominent Iranian-Canadian blogger to more than 19 years in jail, rights groups and Iranian media say.

Hossein Derakhshan was charged with “propagating against the regime” and “co-operating with hostile states”.

He was arrested on a 2008 visit to the country.

He is credited with launching Iran’s blogging revolution. Originally critical of the government, he later supported President Ahmadinejad.

The Cyber Storm series simulates large-scale cyber events and attacks on the government and the nation’s critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR)—so that collective cyber preparedness and response capabilities can be measured against realistic and credible national-level events.

Dan Williams from Reuters AlertNet discusses the increasing shift in focus to the cyber battlefield in Israel’s military strategy, and notes some of the “benefits” of an offensive cyber strategy when compared to conventional kinetic measures.

Or a summary of at least the declassified portions.

This is produced by our friends at the Federalist Society–you know, the “conservative American Constitution Society.” (Or vice versa.)

Abstract:

This brief paper summarizes recently declassified provisions of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, and the efforts across the federal government to protect the integrity of our nation’s information and communications infrastructure, as of April 2010.

Grant Gross at IT World reports on the increasing demand for online privacy rules, the role that private enterprise plays in supplying those rules, and the underlying tension between the desire for privacy and developing technology that continues to be geared towards the personalization of data for users.

Peter Apps at Reuters discusses Iran’s potential retaliatory responses to the Stuxnet worm.  Experts warn that although Iran’s cyber warfare abilities are not well known and are likely less sophisticated than other countries, Iran could resort to kinetic responses through asymmetric warfare against vulnerable targets, all the while improving its cyber capabilities for future use.

Tim Wu, speaking about Net Neutrality, Verizon/Google, and other big thoughts. Thanks BoingBoing.