India May Restrict Skype and Google

India may ask Google, Skype, and other online service providers to allow the country's law enforcement agencies to access communications on their networks, the head of an Internet association said on Friday.

On Thursday the government said it will ask service providers in the country to ensure that some RIM BlackBerry services should be made accessible to its law enforcement agencies by Aug. 31, or face a block of these services.

Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI), said that at a meeting he attended about a month ago of the country's Department of Telecommunications, it was discussed that other online services besides BlackBerry would also be asked to provide access to India's security agencies.

The Indian government's public threat against BlackBerry is running in parallel with an as yet unannounced decision to pursue similar concerns with Google, Skype, and other communications services, The Financial Times said in a report on Friday, citing a government report.

A spokesman for the Department of Telecommunications said he was unaware of the decision.

Google said it had heard nothing from the government.

The Indian government is asking for access to BlackBerry's enterprise server and its instant messaging application.

India wants to intercept mobile and online communications as part of its work against terrorist groups. Security agencies in the country have found that terrorists are increasingly using e-mail, instant messenger, and mobile phones to plan attacks.

RIM has recently fielded similar requests from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Although ISPAI is in favor of self-regulation of the Internet, Chharia said that given the threats India faced, it was reasonable for some of these online services to provide access to law enforcement agencies, under certain conditions. Some of the technology providers tend to take Indian law very lightly, he added.

Under Indian law, service providers have to give law enforcement agencies access to communications on their networks, under certain conditions, including by providing the keys for their decryption.

The government appears to be planning to clamp down on all services that bypass its monitoring system, starting with BlackBerry, Chharia said.

BlackBerry vendor Research in Motion said in a statement on Thursday that it did not want to be singled out by the Indian government.

RIM said that carriers must be technology and vendor neutral and not provide greater access to BlackBerry data compared to other communications companies.

The carriers' capabilities should "be limited to the strict context of lawful access and national security requirements as governed by the country's judicial oversight and rules of law," RIM said. The company maintains a consistent global standard for lawful access that does not include special deals for specific countries, it added.

Google, Apple, Boxee Battle for Living Room Real Estate

After hearing that Apple is (rumored to be) retiring the existing Apple TV and replacing it with a $99 iTV device based on iOS, I took a long hard look at my entertainment center and realized something: the war for the living room/home theater is going to be as much about geography as it is about price.

My first thought about iTV was something along the lines of "$99!? How can I not buy it at that price!?" but the difficulty isn't going to be in paying for it, it's going to be in placing it. Now I'm a skirmisher in this war for the living room. Most people don't have as much junk hanging off their TV as I do (3 game consoles, a Roku Player and a STB from FIOS), but in the next few months alone we're going to see the launch of Logitech's Google TV box, the Revue; D-Link's Boxee Box; and now this iTV gizmo. None of these will be very expensive and each appears to do something slightly different, so home theater fans could easily wind up wanting all three, plus their existing STBs, Blu-ray players and whatever else they have.

The challenge will come down to physical space and HDMI ports.

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Let's look at physical space first. I wouldn't expect these devices to be very big. The Roku box is a tiny little thing that will tuck in almost anywhere and I expect the Revue to be only slightly larger. The iTV is anyone's guess, but we know how big an iPhone is, right? Expect iTV to be pretty small, too. Now D-Link's Boxee Box is another story. It isn't that it's big so much that it has that odd 'sunken cube' design that means it'll take up a lot more space than it ought to. And forget about stacking anything on top of it (and I wonder if that isn't the real reason for the odd design). The Boxee Box isn't going into a rack, that's for sure. It's going to have to sit on a shelf or on top of the top-most component in your 'stack.' I really wish D-Link would produce a second version of the Boxee Box in a plain rectangular case that I can place neatly into some nook or cranny of my home entertainment system.

Before I get to the HDMI challenge, let me diverge a bit and talk to hardcore gamers. Imagine what your TV will look like if you have a Nintendo Wii and both the Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 and their new motion-control systems. The Wii's 'motion sensor' is probably on top of your TV, or sitting right in front of it. Microsoft's Kinect camera array looks like it'll also have to sit front and center, just in front of the TV; it looks too big to sit on top of a thin-screen. And Sony's Move needs the Playstation Eye camera, which again expects to be centered in front of the TV. And oh by the way, many of us already have a center channel speaker sitting in that coveted spot. So we can move the Wii's Sensor bar to the top of the TV; that still leaves a 3-way fight between Kinect, Eye and center speaker for that one sweet spot in front of the TV. I have no solution for that other than switching gear in and out. Maybe there'll be enough 'looseness' in the placement to put the two cameras side by side in front of the center speaker?

But the biggest battle in this war for the living room comes down to HDMI ports. How many do you have? Personally I only have two even though my TV (a 52" Sharp Aquos) is only a few years old. My receiver is ancient and has no HDMI so I have to run video to the TV and audio to the receiver via TOS cables. But even the newest receivers generally have four HDMI ports, at most. And you're probably already using 3 of them for a STB, Blu-ray/DVD player, and a game system. What will you do when you want to add iTV, Google TV and a Boxee Box? Plus any kind of portable device you might own that outputs 720P video via HDMI (like some of the newer phones do).

The solution for me has been an HDMI switchbox but those aren't really ubiquitous at this point. I got mine mail order (you can get a 5-port switch with a remote for $20-$30 or Best Buy will sell you one for $250; your call) but it'd be nice if they were widely available at places where you can buy other A/V cables and accessories. The switchbox solution works but of course it adds another component vying for space in your entertainment center. So is there a better solution? Not one that's available for you or me right now. Wouldn't it be nice if component makers added some kind of 'pass-through' HDMI port on their devices? I'm no engineer so I don't know how feasible this idea is, but I'm picturing having all the bits and pieces of my home theater connecting in one long daisy-chain of HDMI devices.

There's been some promising work done in wireless A/V delivery but so far it's kind of a one-to-one affair that won't help us too much, plus it tends to be fairly expensive. See for example Zinwell's Brite-View BV-2500 Wireless HD Video Transmitter and Receiver Kits (link is to Amazon where it sells for $286.54 for 1 pair). What I'd really like to see is a single wireless A/V receiver that connects to an HDMI port on your TV or receiver, then multiple wireless A/V transmitters that hook up to the HDMI out on your components. In other words, a many-to-one setup with the receiver intelligently switching depending on what is broadcasting. Turn on a device (which can be located anywhere in the room, or even in a nearby closet), it starts transmitting and the receiver tunes into it and starts displaying HD picture and sound. Oh, and it needs to be cheap enough that we can add a transmitter to a $100 device without tripling the cost of the install. As far as I know, nothing like this exists yet. (Please educate me if I'm wrong about that.)

So there is, I think, hope for the future but for the next couple of years we'll be stuck with stacks of switch boxes and rats' nests of cables (which some of us geeky types will put up with), or we'll have to pick and choose what we attach to our home theaters carefully. I don't think we'll make those decisions based on price so much as we'll make it based on what device gives us the most features per/HDMI port, rather than the most features/dollar.

I'm not sure how you spin your marketing campaign to circumvent these issues. Someone needs to speed up research into consumer-level HD wireless A/V, I think.

If you have a clever way to combat component sprawl, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

Google Defends Net Neutrality Plan

Despite a high degree of opposition, Google is defending its net neutrality proposal co-authored with broadband and wireless provider Verizon. The search giant on Thursday issued counterarguments on six points (Google calls them myths) that the company believes have been misunderstood about its proposal. Google says the proposed framework defends net neutrality, would protect the current Internet we enjoy today, and is definitely not about writing legislation from the boardroom.

Let's take a look at the highlights from Google's defense.

We're No Sell-Outs

Google says its proposal has not sold out the fundamental concept of net neutrality. The idea that an Internet provider should not be allowed to restrict Web data traffic based on the traffic's contents.

"No other company is working as tirelessly [as Google] for an open Internet," the company's statement says. Google goes on to explain how it felt compelled to negotiate a framework with Verizon, because of the stagnant political situation in Washington. The company then said the proposal has "key enforceable protections" for users, which is better than having no protection at all.

The problem is it's unclear whether the Google-Verizon proposal really would protect users. The proposal leaves wireless networks out of net neutrality regulation entirely. The agreement would also create a two-tiered Internet with a net neutral public Internet (the World Wide Web we use today), and a private non-neutral Internet for premium services that could be packaged similarly to cable television. Given the financial incentives from wireless and the private Internet, it's unclear whether the public Internet would survive under this system.

Doesn't Kill Wireless Neutrality

Google says its proposal would not eliminate network neutrality over wireless cellular networks. The company believes the proposal's transparency rules that force companies to publicly report wireless traffic management policies would ensure providers played fair. Google also stuck to its belief that the wireless market is competitive enough that it doesn't warrant net neutrality regulation. "Network and device openness is now beginning to take off as a significant business model in this [the wireless] space," Google says.

I'm not really sure what Google means when it says openness is taking off in the wireless market. Perhaps the company is referring to the fact that you can buy a variety of devices like the iPhone or any number of Android devices that are permanently locked to one carrier. Maybe it's the idea that all four major cellular providers are often criticized for their high early termination fees, device exclusivity contracts that cut out smaller vendors, uniform text messaging costs or other sneaky fees that tend to sneak up on users.

Google also says that managing a wireless network is different from a wired broadband network since Internet traffic sent over airwaves is less robust than its cabled counterpart.

Won't Cannibalize Public Internet

The regular Internet is not going anywhere, Google says. The Google-Verizon framework puts several safeguards in place to make sure the current Internet stays the way it is, according to the search giant. The proposal would force broadband providers to comply with "consumer protection and nondiscrimination standards" before offering private Internet services.

Private services must also be "distinguishable in purpose and scope" from what you get on the regular Internet. Finally, the FCC would be able to intervene and prevent carriers from reducing public Internet broadband capacity.

That last point sounds nice, but what about the first two? What exactly will those "nondiscrimination standards" be? How will they be defined to ensure fair play?

Google also says the private services are supposed to be different "in purpose and scope" from what you can get on the regular Internet. Google points to several examples of these new services such as gaming channels, home health monitoring, or more secure banking. The problem with this idea is that, as author Jeff Jarvis recently pointed out, it sounds like the private Internet could be reserved for "anything new." You're offering a new encryption standard on your Website? That's the private Internet. Got a new version of Halo? Private. A new 3D streaming service from Netflix? Private.

Where would this proposal draw the line between upgraded Web services and those that are truly different "in purpose and scope" from what you can get online right now?

Google defends several other points in its blog post. The company says the net neutrality framework was not influenced by business decisions surrounding Android, Google's mobile operating system. The search giant also says this proposal is about moving the debate forward not backward as some have contended.

You can find the entire post on Google's Public Policy Blog. Are you buying Google's defense or do you believe the company should reconsider its position? Let us know in the comments.