Open Technology Initiative

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= project from the New America Foundation

URL = http://oti.newamerica.net/home


Description

"The Open Technology Initiative formulates policy and regulatory reforms to support open architectures and open source innovations and facilitates the development and implementation of open technologies and communications networks. OTI promotes affordable, universal, and ubiquitous communications networks through partnerships with communities, researchers, industry, and public interest groups and is committed to maximizing the potentials of innovative open technologies by studying their social and economic impacts – particularly for poor, rural, and other underserved constituencies. OTI provides in-depth, objective research, analysis, and findings for policy decision-makers and the general public."

The Media Policy Initiative, part of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative, formulates policy and regulatory reforms to foster the development of a healthy media that satisfies the needs of democracy in the 21st century. MPI’s fellows and staff research, analyze, and promote policies that are committed to maximizing the public interest potential of innovative media, supported by partnerships with communities, researchers, industry, and public interest groups. By studying the social and economic ramifications of policymaking – particularly on poor, rural, and other underserved constituencies – MPI provides in-depth, objective research, analysis, and findings for policy decisionmakers and the general public. (http://oti.newamerica.net/home)


Discussion

What kind of projects the OTI is working on?


Sacha Meinrath:


The Open Technology Initiative is working on a number of projects around open source, open architecture, and open API systems. I work at a think-tank so a lot of what we do is looking at what are the differential assessments of open versus proprietary systems or architectures. How will these affect people, generally, and to concretize that a bit more?


One of the things we're looking at is the different architectures of wireless telephony systems and the hardware that runs on that. That might be a comparison between the openness of a BlackBerry versus a Google phone, versus an iPhone versus an Openmoko phone, and the pros and cons of each endeavor. Or, for example, we might be looking at something that's very big yet has not been looked at here in the United States - our healthcare system and portability of patient records, and interoperability of medical equipment. We might be looking at things like how can we make more efficient use of the public airwaves, and open those up?


It's really this intersection of technology and policy. It's an area where, in D.C., you pretty much can't walk three feet without bumping into a lawyer. We've realized that legal help is fundamentally important to being effective here, in D.C. In the same way that's true, we need technologists to help us understand what's coming down the pipes, and what's happening with new technologies and the intersections of these new technologies, with the policies and regulations that we're passing.


This might be looking at what are ISP's doing, in terms of throttling user services and applications? A classic example would be Comcast, which is a major cable provider, really blocked BitTorrent, file-sharing protocol. Comcast claimed they were not, and we needed technologists to step in and document exactly what Comcast was doing. They eventually capitulated [laughs] and agreed, in fact, "Yes, fine, you caught us. We are blocking BitTorrent, and we will stop now".


It might also be that we're looking at various ways in which fair-use rights, in terms of copyright, are being curtailed in next generation operating systems. Windows 7 is the new one that's coming down the pipes, and may have a lot of digital rights management that doesn't just protect copyright holders, but actually infringes upon our constitutionally, guaranteed fair-use rights as a populace.


These are all areas where, until you really take a deep dive into the technologies themselves, it's very difficult to understand the impacts that these technologies have on regulations and policies that are being put in place." (http://blog.ecomm.ec/2009/01/spectrum-20-future-telecom-networks.html)