A Hunter alumnus asked me (on Facebook, no less):

Any thoughts on the most recent “privacy concerns” regarding facebook?

For starters, let’s put it this way: I gave the Diaspora project $25 and will soon proudly be rocking their T-shirt.

Also, you can drop the scare quotes. It should creep everyone out how easy it is to cyber-stalk anybody with a FB profile who doesn’t watch the company’s privacy moves like a hawk. People who joined early and kept everything limited to “just friends” but didn’t update their settings have now had what they thought was private information laid bare for the world to see. This is not just immoral; it borders on fraudulent, and it’s potentially dangerous.

Lokman Tsui, a dear friend and U Penn classmate, killed his FB profile, and I fully support and understand his decision. I’m thinking about doing the same, but the costs and benefits are diminished in my case; my wife will continue updating me about our family and friends, as well as telling the world when we’re out of state.

This issue isn’t going away. In his public statements on the issue, FB chief Mark Zuckerberg is incredibly cavalier and uncaring about his users’ privacy. (Listen to this interview on NPR. The opening exchange is incredibly revealing:

Melissa Block: We’ve been hearing these protests getting louder and louder. There’s a “We’re quitting Facebook” campaign on the net. Did this level of user anger catch you off guard?

Mark Zuckerberg: You know, whenever we launch products, a lot of people like the products, and a lot of people are critical, and I think that’s just something that comes with having more than 400 million people using your service. So what we try to do is we try to build the products that we think are best, and then we listen to what people are saying, how people are talking to their friends about the product, what they tell us, the emails that they send us.

What we heard loud and clear this time was that people wanted simpler controls for how to share their information. We spent the last few weeks building those. It was a pretty big effort, but we really wanted to make sure that we were responding to the feedback that we were hearing, so that’s what we rolled out.

This is an amazingly sketchy dodge of the actual question and the real issue. People were and are mad because Facebook began with a simple privacy policy, simple privacy settings, and privacy as the default. In the years since, they’ve violated the expectation of privacy that they created by publicizing info that was formerly private, by defaulting people into public settings, by making some information (including the list of your FB friends) impossible to hide, and (last and least importantly) making it increasingly difficult to change one’s privacy settings.

For Zuckerberg to describe their moving target of a privacy policy as a “new product” is beyond disingenuous–it’s callous and shows wanton disregard for his users’ wishes and the expectations that he helped create, only to violate.

By the way, I’m still on Facebook for 2 reasons. First, I’ve always tried not to post things I consider truly private. This is because I was a Ph.D. candidate before the service launched, so my friends have always included a large number of colleagues, making me think twice before I post.

Second, and more importantly from a policy perspective, is the problem of network effects; the service is much more valuable than its competitors because many more of my friends and family use Facebook–and they keep using it because their friends and family keep using it, and so on. Walking away from Facebook is basically walking away from the social networking hub.

The size of the network and the centrality it plays in so many people’s lives makes it really scary that somebody with such apparent disregard for users’ best interests is in charge.

Still from a recent Apple launch

In his iconic novel “1984”, George Orwell envisioned omnipresent “telescreens” in every home, business and on every street that could be monitored by the government.  These screens were especially powerful because the subject never knew when the screen was being monitored or if, in fact, monitoring ever occurred.  One had to live as though one were watched at all times.

As is often the case, truth seems to lie somewhere between the totalitarianism of Orwell’s “1984” and the hedonistic consumer dystopia of Huxley’s “Brave New World.” As two recent stories point out, our actual telescreens cost hundreds of dollars and have designer labels.

The useful GPS technology that allows us to navigate our way through city streets also allows government agencies to track our movements.  Not in theory, but in practice.  A recent story notes that agencies have made rampant use of cellphones to track the physical movements and identities of individuals.  As long as we are not up to any wrongdoing, who cares?  Except that the definition of “wrongdoing” is a tricky one.  One Alabama sheriff used the technology to track his daughter’s whereabouts when she stayed out too late.  Even more unsettling is the story of Michigan police who used the technology to note the identities of protesters at a labor union rally.  And these are just the abuses that had been reported thus far.

Having taken part in many marches and protests during the Bush years, I observed that police utilized cameras as weapons of intimidation, recording the faces of each and every protester for purposes that remain unknown.  Did they do this to create a record or merely the belief that such a record might exist?  Was their object to record identities, prevent illegal activity or to intimidate peaceful protesters?  In any event, it seems that these tactics have moved from digital cameras to mobile telephony.  So while tools like Twitter and text messaging have been used by protesters around the world to organize and mobilize, mobile telephony may be just as useful for officials to monitor protest and “chill” dissent.  

 Meanwhile, do you know that little camera that sits on top of your computer screen or laptop–the one that may be pointed at you right now?  How do you know that nobody can see you through it?  If that seems silly, then you should read this story from CBS News about a high school sophomore who was spied on in his home by his school using the webcam in a school issued laptop.  In this case, the danger is that this technology is not only exploitable by overeager officials, but by child predators either within the school system or who may hack into the school’s system.  That is, it might not only be Big Brother who is watching, but Big Pervert.  The FBI is investigating the incident, but it is unclear if they are looking for wrongdoing or pointers.  

 When a Philadelphia mainline school district starts taking pages from the playbook of Orwell’s Oceania, privacy advocates and consumers should take note.  With mobile computing on the rise, hundreds of millions of Americans are using objects that may be used to track their movements and to view their lives.  As cameras and GPS systems become more prominent in these devices, there is every reason to suspect that our personal devices may not be as personal as they seem.

It’s an official US government document, so copyright does not apply–at least not in the US. (See 17 USC § 105.) It’s galling, then, that the official White House Flickr account has been adding language incorrectly claiming copyright-like restrictions on pictures.

The language reads:

This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

The only true part of the statement is that the photo may not be used to suggest commercial or political endorsement. The rest is balderdash.

You can print a thousand posters of this picture and sell them for profit. [Ed. Feb. 13: MAYBE. See below.] You can crop out Joe Biden’s face, insert your own, and use that for your Facebook profile picture. You can print a photobook using this and dozens of other official photos. It would be polite to credit photographer Pete Souza, but even that’s not required.

Just don’t do anything that implies endorsement of your product or political cause. (For instance, don’t sell your poster as an official White House poster.)

I’m sad to see yet another instance of the administration not delivering the government transparency we were promised. Willfully misrepresenting the law to constituents is bad form indeed.

Of course, it’s nothing compared to the fiasco that is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The negotiations continue, with the goal of a signed treaty this year, but ACTA draft proposals remain “classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12598.”

It’s enough to make willful misrepresentation of the law look downright charming.

[Ed. Feb. 13: Here's where "I'm not a lawyer" should just be auto-added to the top of all my posts. There's no FEDERAL law that would keep you from reproducing and even selling government document photographs. There is, however, a state law issue of the "Right of Publicity."

I think some applications of this right can be troublesome, but others make good sense. In any case, I failed to account for it in the first version of this post. Here's a good post discussing the frequent uses of Obama's image as a question of the right of publicity.

Short version: Politicians have a right of publicity according to state rights, though uses are more likely to raise First Amendment concerns, and enforcement is such a PR nightmare that it almost never happens. Which is why I was able to buy Obama handpuppets at the inauguration--and why you'd still be effectively able to sell your posters, but it may technically be illegal depending on your state's law, and an attorney would likely discourage you from doing so.

But it's still 100% legal to photoshop your face over Biden's and use that as your Facebook profile. In fact, I have Photoshop...]

Academic associations tend to be politically conservative.

I don’t mean they revere Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman, though plenty of scholars do. Rather, each group–representing a field’s professors and graduate students–tends to evade controversy, rarely taking a public stance on an issue that might divide the membership.

Thus, it is remarkable that the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has declared its support for network neutrality.

The issue is too important to stay on the sideline any longer.

AEJMC represents a diverse group of scholars who research and teach nearly everything related to mass media. Based on our research–and, in some cases, years of industry experience–we know the media business, and letting ISPs pick online winners and losers is bad policy.

Nearly all revolutionary internet ideas–from Amazon and Google to Skype and Twitter–came from cash-strapped outsiders. Somewhere in the world right now, another tinkerer is developing what might become the next big idea. Before it catches on, though, ISP demands for a broadband toll might strangle this idea in its crib.

Also, some of the best stuff online never turns a profit. Imagine if, in 2001, Wikipedia had to pay through the nose just to compete on a level playing field with Encarta. It may have stalled, and even today, forcing Wikipedia into the slow lane would harm and might kill the project.

AEJMC is also concerned about the slow death of the daily newspaper’s business model. We embrace the internet age, but we also hope to ensure financial viability for “print” journalism. ISP tolls would make this much harder.

MSNBC and FoxNews could afford to pay extra for the rapid delivery of rich, interactive media. Most newspapers could not, forcing them to choose between deeper debts and worse user experience. Citizen journalists and exciting nonprofit experiments would also be muted by ISPs.

In addition to concern about the media system in general, we also have a selfish motivation to support network neutrality: Our roles as scholars and teachers. Academics in all disciplines depend heavily on the internet, and most of the educationally valuable content is not backed by big corporations.

If ISPs choose winners and losers online, the online content we professors assign would not often win. Would ISPs bend over backward to ensure my students’ access to the PDF of James Boyle’s Creative Commons-licensed book? Or the Internet Archive audio of WWII-era radio broadcasts?

Boyle and Archive.org are great, but I don’t expect them to pay off Verizon just to make my students’ downloads faster. This means my students have less access to educationally valuable content, they learn less, and the educational value of the internet drops. The same will be true of my research productivity.

As students of the media system and as researchers and educators, we have deep value and respect for the neutral internet. It is a privilege to have contributed to the drafting of the AEJMC statement, and I thank AEJMC President Carol Pardun for having the courage to lead this charge.

P.S. As if ISP profiteering weren’t enough, other interested parties are muddying the issue. The copyright industries, for instance, are desperately trying to force and cajole ISPs into serving as the copyright cops.

P.P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, I am the co-author (along with Minjeong Kim of Colorado State) of a research project examining the online framing of network neutrality. This project won a competitive research grant from AEJMC, though this is in no way related to my long-established opinions on this issue.

Now, the statement is out, and I’m listed as a contact. Later today, thanks to the good eye of Josh Stearns at Free Press, I’ll be writing a post for the SaveTheInternet blog.

Here’s the text of AEJMC’s statement on net neutrality:

AEJMC Supports Net Neutrality

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 26, 2010

Contacts:
Carol Pardun, AEJMC President (803) 777-3244, pardunc@mailbox.sc.edu
Bill Herman, AEJMC Member and Media Law Scholar, (215) 715.3507 (mobile), billdherman@gmail.com

AEJMC Supports Net Neutrality

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) urges the Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules preserving open and nondiscriminatory access to the internet.

The debate about network neutrality is complex and contentious, but we wish to address a specific myth advanced by network neutrality opponents: that this regulation would stifle innovation and create disincentives for investment in next-generation broadband networks.

The AEJMC rejects this claim.

The most important internet innovations have not come from network providers, but from creative outsiders who built their inventions on top of a neutral network. Requiring network neutrality is vital to preserve competition and investment in internet content, services, and applications.

The FCC should codify the internet openness principles that already guide the agency, and Congress and the courts should support this move. The rules would protect both consumers and innovators of content, services, and applications from unfair discrimination by internet service providers. Perhaps most importantly, these rules would help preserve and develop the internet as a key tool for communication that serves our democracy.

This statement was issued by the President of AEJMC and through the President’s Advisory Council.

Related links

* Federal Communications Commission
* Network Neutrality (Wikipedia)
* “Net Neutrality” in the news (Google)

About AEJMC

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication is a nonprofit, educational association of journalism and mass communication educators, students and media professionals. The Association’s mission is to advance education, foster scholarly research, cultivate better professional practice and promote the free flow of communication.

# # #

I had a rollicking good time, the questions were awesome, and the post-talk celebration was even better. If you want the Powerpoint, it’s here in all its 12.2 MB glory.

Further discussion welcome.

Professor Lessig likes to introduce three ideas to frame his talk today: 1) influence, 2) independence and 3) responsibility.

Relying on his framework of the four modalities of control that he used in Code, Professor Lessig explains how the law, markets, norms and architecture together exert influence, and that depending on your policy objectives, these four forces can be complementing or conflicting. He suggests that together they form an “economy of influence” that we need to understand if we want to make effective policy.

He continues to explain “independence”, in the sense that something is not dependent on something. Independence matters, because it means that you try to find the right answer for the right reason, as opposed to doing so for a wrong reason you might be dependent on.

Independence, however, does not mean dependence from everything. Lessig reframes independence as a “proper dependence”. In legal terms, it means that a judge depends on the law for her judgment. So independence is about defining proper dependence, and limiting improper dependence.

Responsibility is the third concept Lessig goes into. He tells us about a case he represented in 2006: Hardwicke vs ABS. It was a case that focused on a series of events concerning child abuse, all perpetrated by a single person. The question that was raised: Who is responsible? Lessig makes the argument that responsibility does not lie with the individual, that this individual has no power to reform, and that this is pathological. Instead, he makes the case that responsibility in this case is all the people who knew about the wrongdoings, but refused to pick up the phone. Nevertheless, the focus of the law was on the one pathological person. Lessig suggests it is more productive to focus responsibility on those who have the power to make changes, instead of those are pathological and are not in a position to reform. He notes it is ironic that the one person who is least likely to reform is held responsible, while the one entity who could do something about it, was immune.

He raises another example of “responsibility” gone awry. He cites Al Gore and his book “The Assault on Reason”, and lambasts its narrow perception of responsibility. It focuses on former president Bush, arguably the man least likely to reform, and instead forgets those who could have done something about it, suggesting that they also have been critically responsible.

His argument is one of “institutional corruption”. What it is not: what happened with Blagojevitch; it is not bribery, not “just politics”, not any violation of existing rules. Instead, institutional corruption is “a certain kind of influence situated within an economy of influence that has a certain effect, either it 1) weakens the effectiveness of the institution or 2) weakens public trust for the institution.

He explains the system of institutional corruption using the White House. Referring to Robert Kaiser’s book “So Damn Much Money”, he argues how the story of the government has dramatically changed in the past fifteen years and how the engine of this change has been the growth of the lobbying industry. He illustrates this with numbers: Lobbyists pay with cash which members use as support for their campaigns. The cost of campaigns have exploded over the years, and subsequently, members have become dependent on lobbyists for cash – he cites that lobbyists make up 30-70% of campaign budgets! This is not new, he carefully explains, but citing Kaiser again, what is new is the scale of this practice has gotten out of hand. Members /need/ and take /much more/, becoming /dependent/ on those who supply. This is only during the tenure, but institutional corruption also needs to be understood as something after tenure: 50% of senators translate their senate tenure into a career as lobbyist, while 42% of the house do the same. This suggests a business model, focused on life after government, that perpetuates itself, and influential people who end up becoming dependent on this system surviving, both during and after their time in Congress.

He goes on to give example after example of institutional corruption. He mentions the important work done by maplight.org that tracks money in politics, who have shown that members who voted to gut a bill had 3x times the contribution from lobbyists than those who voted against. Simply put, policies get bent to those who pay. He cites a study by Alexander, Scholz and Mazza measuring rates of return for lobbying expenditures, who conclude that ROI is a whopping 22,000%! He again cites Kaiser, who suggests that lobbying is a $9-12 billion industry.

Why does this matter? It matters if it
1) weakens effectiveness of institution or
2) weakens public trust of institution

In the first case, he argues how lobbying can shift policy. He cites a study by Hall and Deardorff “Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy” on how the work of congresspersons shift as a result of lobbying. Imagine you’re a congressperson and you see it as your goal to work on two issues: one is to stop piracy, the other is to help mums on welfare. The line of lobbyists that will happily help you with stopping piracy is long, whereas not so many will help you with the latter – so work of the congressperson shifts, and thus work of Congress shifts.

Lessig suggests it also bends policies. Does money really not change results? Citing the Sonny Bono case of October 27, 1998, he shows how in copyright lobbying power had a powerful influence in getting the copyright term extended for another twenty years. Does this advance the public good? A clear no. Lessig backs this up by telling how in the challenge at the Supreme Court, an impressive line-up of Nobel Prize winning economists, including Milton Friedman, supported this and that it would be a “no brainer” to sign the support that copyright extension did not advance the public good. But he concludes that there were “no brains” in the House. An easy case of institutional corruption. There are two explanations: Either they are idiots, or they are guided by something other than reason. He suggests of course it’s the latter. It is not misunderstanding that explains these cases.

Lessig continues to explain how corruption can be seen as weakening public trust. He tells us about how the head of the committee in charge of deciding the future of healthcare is getting $4 million from the healthcare industry. Or how a congressperson ended up opposing the public option even though the majority of his constituency supports it. The idea is not that there might be a direct link between the money and the vote, but that if you take money to do something that is against the public interest, people will automatically make that link, and this weakens public trust. If you don’t take money and you go against the popular vote, that won’t reek of corruption.

Lessig goes on to discuss different fields: medicine and the healthcare industry, citing research by Drummond Rennie from UCSF that shows how there is an overwhelming bias in favor of sponsor’s company drugs. How there are 2.5 doctors to 1 detailer (a detailer being someone who is like a lobbyist for the pharmaceuticals, promoting the drugs to doctors, often giving “gifts”). How the budget for detailing tripled in the past ten years.

Lessig asks us: how can we find out whether these claims are true? Do detailing practices either weaken the effectiveness of medicine, or weaken the public trust for it? What would it take to know?

There is also the issue of “the structure of fact finding” that Lessig suggests is corrupt. Again, he argues we need to understand whether this is a process by which results are affected or trust is weakened. He cites how sponsor funded research can cause delay, and mentions the case of “popcorn lung”.

Lessig makes a strong case that we need more than intuition. That we need a framework or metric to know for sure. Because we all have ideological commitments, that we need to escape this in order to have a proper understanding of corruption. This is, in short, the aim of his new project: The Lab. It should be a neutral ground with a framework that determines whether and when institutional corruption exists, to develop remedies for institutional corruption when it exists. He sees the initial work having three dimensions: 1) data – necessary to describe influence and track its change; 2) perception of institutional corruption and understand how it has changed;
and 3) causation – what can we say about what causes what in these contexts in alleged corruption. Having this information, we can then design remedies.

Wilson issued an apology in less than an hour, probably after his colleagues took him aside and politely explained that this made the party look even worse than protesters showing up to town hall meetings with misspelled signs and assault rifles.  But of course, in 2009, the fun doesn’t stop there.

Much like Michele Bachmann (R-MN) before him, Wilson essentially volunteered to be the target of progressive mobilizers and activists.  DailyKos and other political blogs immediately launched an ActBlue fundraising page for his congressional challenger.  The Progressive Change Campaign Committee sent out an e-mailer to their over 200,000 members with a link to an e-petition calling for his censure.  They’ve already gathered over 30,000 signatures and raised $19,500 to fund the short-term campaign effort.  Someone anonymous blogger decided to take a more comedic route, setting up a phrase-generator for the web address www.joewilsonisyourpreexistingcondition.com At least within my various social networks, that one went viral.  Every time you click on the page, a different Joe Wilson-phrase showed up, all of them offensive (ex: “Joe Wilson peed in your soup”).  At the bottom of the page is the tagline, “you dissed America, we’ll diss you right the f*ck back” and a link to his opponents ActBlue page.

As with the Bachmann episode (which I wrote about for the YouTube conference… I’m waiting to hear back on the Revise&Resubmit suggestions; it will hopefully be published in a special issue of JITP), Joe Wilson is only going to be in the media spotlight for a few days.  Maybe he’ll be censured by Congress, I don’t know.  But by Monday, he’ll be a punchline.  It’s tempting for critics to therefore dismiss the blogstorms, YouTube clips, epetitions and twitter retweets as just a bunch of noise, signifying nothing.  That would be a mistake though.  It’s a bunch of noise that signifies one, very important, thing.

It signifies money.  Rob Miller (Wilson’s opponent) raised $614,487 in the 2008 election cycle.  In the past 36 hours, via ActBlue, he’s surpassed that with $768,006.  Wilson has launched his own counter-fundraiser, and is touring the Fox News and talk radio circuits to promote himself.  So far he’s at $200,000.  Charlie Cook has upgraded the competitiveness of the race as a result.

Will it make a difference in the end?  Hard to say.  Wilson won by 10 points in 2008, a year when Democratic motivation was at an historic high.  2010 will likely be the reverse.  All the youtube clips, blog posts, and activist ridicule in the world won’t knock a Representative out of his seat if his district is conservative enough.  But money, particularly early money, can have an impact on campaigns.  And a talented media consultant should be able to craft some dynamite ads of Wilson embarrasing his district, the Republican Party, and nation given the raw material now available on YouTube.  And the national media is going to be a little more interested in running stories about Wilson’s campaign from here on out.  And top political campaign staffers are a little more likely to find the race worth investing in.  So “maybe” seems about the right answer.

More broadly, I’d suggest that this is indicative of one of the positive effects of new media on American politics.  In the old media environment, the zanier members of Congress were good for an occassional soundbite, but beyond that they were backbenchers who kept safe seats because their districts were aligned with their particular brand of crazy.  In the new media environment, there is a serious cost associated with their outbursts.  In 1999, if an equivalent Congressmember had heckled Clinton in the same way, little would have happened.  Political organizations had email lists, but none of the single-issue groups would be activating their membership around this short-run campaign (and if they did, it would be as an organizational fundraising tool, not as a small donor-funnel to the congressional challenger).  The Sunday talk shows and 24-hour news networks would have discussed it a bit, but by November 2000 the whole episode would have faded from public memory.  In the new media environment, we get more types of activist group, stringing together media artifacts in a wider variety of ways.  And several of those new tactics generate money — lots of it.  And giving a challenger who was at a 2-to-1 fundraising disadvantage in the last election a 3-to-1 advantage early in this one can indeed make a difference.

This, by definition, can’t happen to every congressperson.  It’s a coordination game.  It happens only to the most offensive congresspeople — the ones whose words and deeds are so outlandish that they volunteer to be the tactic of opposition ire.  If new media is indeed making it easier to sanction the worst actors in congress, it’s hard to see how that’s anything but a public good.

That was news to me, but it wouldn’t have surprised anybody if it were true. Here’s what is:

On July 25, I uploaded this design to CafePress:

CafePress took down the design within 30 minutes (and over a weekend)–presumably before the MTA could contact them.

When I emailed CafePress, they helpfully provided me the name and contact info of the MTA lawyer with whom I could take up the matter. The fact that this info is available to the CafePress help desk is scary–it suggests that the MTA attorney is very regularly contacting them.

Then yesterday, I saw the following tweet from NYCPhotoRights: “New post: MTA Censors Another Parody (http://cli.gs/1X0XX)” That user had also just started following me, but Tina and I were busy getting ready for our Labor Day Weekend BBQ and I didn’t follow the link.

The link is to this NYC Photo Rights blog entry, which shows a picture of my design under the same headline. I may be misreading the post, but it appears the blogger thought the MTA played a direct role. I posted a comment there correcting the mistake.

For the record, I have not as of yet been contacted by the MTA. I hope (though I have absolutely no faith) that they will not contact me simply for posting my design as part of a discussion about their preposterous over-enforcement of their trademark rights.

I have, however, emailed attorney and blawger Ron Coleman. I can’t pay him to take the case, which puts a damper on the odds that he’ll take on the MTA for me, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. After all, he’s publicly grousing about other clients who wouldn’t take it to court.

I think this is already an interesting story on a number of levels… Being publicly labeled as a victim of MTA censorship is just the latest addition to the list.

Incidentally, I have other ideas for T shirts that are much more directly critical of the MTA:

*Where the (F) is my train?
*MTA to NYC: (F) (U)
*MTA to NYC: (W)(E) O(W)(N) (U)

I know, it ain’t Shakespeare, but I think it’s clearly protected speech.

I’m not opposed to tiered pricing in principle, though TW appears to have handled it rather badly, and it still fails to solve the root problem of weak competition in the wireline ISP market. Also, I’m skeptical that it’s necessary–rather than a way for TW to keep maintenance costs down and prices up in a market where consumers have few other options.

I really appreciate Topolski taking on the ever-invoked myth that the internet is about to become so choked up as to become unreliable. This is the threat that the “Internet Tubes” will get full, invoked by then-Senator, now-convict Ted Stevens was threatening all the way back in 2006.

Basically, this threat is still a bogeyman and looks to be so indefinitely. Last year, Telegeography concluded, “Internet traffic is growing fast, but capacity is keeping pace.”

Further, DSL Reports debunks the “exaflood myth” in their typical sharply opinionated style.

For a more detached, scholarly view of internet traffic, see the Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies (MINTS) site. Chief investigator Andrew Odlyzko and company are doing great work here. He also suggests that, if anything, the rate of growth in wireline broadband traffic is decreasing. The most recent MINTS post cites a Cogent estimate of 30% growth in internet traffic in Q4 2008 versus 2007.

Last February, Odlyzko argued that, at least as far as the network industries are concerned internet growth may be too slow. This was even based on higher estimates of growth; Odlyzko’s estimate at the time was that internet traffic grows at about 50% per year.

The key is that the cost of managing a network declines by about one third per year. Even exaflood believer Lawrence G. Roberts adopts the latter estimate, following Moore’s law.

If the cost of managing network traffic next year will be roughly 2/3 of this year’s per-bit price, and total traffic is around 3/2 of this year’s total, network providers spend about the same year-over-year for network maintenance (2/3 * 3/2 = 1) and thus make the same profit per subscriber.

Of course, it’s very un-sexy to tell your stockholders that per-subscriber profits will be the same as last year, especially considering the ever-decreasing potential for new subscribers in a broadband market that is approaching saturation.

Thus, dare I suggest: Maybe the exaflood threat is actually about broadband providers leveraging their way into a new business model–whether the Tony Soprano business model of “Charge Google,” or the wireless carriers’ model of tiered pricing.

To draw a comparison with the wireless industry is instructive; even when wireless data transmission is more than doubling every year, wireless carriers keep charging lower prices for better service and rolling out every more reasonably priced all-you-can-everything plans.

Where there’s even modest (and far from ideal) competition, customers come out far better than in the duopoly-at-best home broadband market.

But then again, maybe “global traffic will exceed the Internet’s capacity as soon as this year.” That is, if you listen to Phil Kerpen’s commentary at Forbes–from January 2007.