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From the Associated Press via Sports Illustrated and Forbes: National Football League commissioner Roger Goddell has announced that the league will enact and enforce tougher regulations regarding technology and spying for the 2008 season. The NFL has allowed radios for offensive play-calling since 1994, but mobile computer and video technology have advanced far faster than the league’s regulations ever anticipated.

The three-time NFL champion New England Patriots have been the subject of intense scrutiny after a staff member was caught videotaping defensive coaching signals during the team’s 2007 season opener. The NFL and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) are each investigating multiple allegations that the Patriots had been videotaping opposing teams since coach Bill Belichick was hired in 2000.

Former Patriots employee Matt Walsh recently sent 8 video tapes of Patriots opponents to the NFL office for analysis. According to Mike Fish of ESPN, at least one tape included offensive coaches from another team. Previously, it was believed that the Patriots only taped defensive coaches.

What about the FCC?

Most of the discussions I have read about the so-called Spygate scandal have missed an important legal point. The NFL depends upon large multi-billion dollar contracts from US television networks for a significant portion of the league’s revenue and market power. Every regular-season and post-season game is televised. The NFL also owns and operates its own television network, which carries 8 regular season games, many pre-season games, and a 24/7 stream of interviews, documentaries, replays and other NFL content. See this article from CBS Sports for more details.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has specific regulations on how sports may be broadcast in the United States. One key rule is that live televised sporting events must be “free of artifice”. In other words, games cannot be rigged or fixed in any way.

This is one reason that professional wrestling broadcasts use a great deal of taped and edited content. Pro wrestling is marketed as , not a sporting event.

“When we met with [the] commissioner, the discussion was how we proceed in an era when technology is expanding exponentially,” Indianapolis Colts president Bill Polian said. “The question is how do we keep on top of that. This is far less about what happened in the past and how we deal with it in the future.”

Google is teaming up with Clearwire, Sprint, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Intel to build a national WiMAX network. See the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Branding Post for more details.

The new joint venture will retain the Clearwire brand name and Clearwire’s existing consumer WiMAX business. Sprint contributes its network infrastructure and 2.5 gHz frequency allocation. It’s possible this deal will clear the FCC and antitrust regulators, because Google isn’t a major owner in the JV.

Yesterday, a Wall Street journal blog referenced my billso.com article of 18 April 2008 in a discussion about Yahoo and Google’s possible cross-licensing deal. The Clearwire deal is a more direct combination that may help the JV partners lock in consumers, businesses and advertisers.

Too many partners?

I’m reluctant to believe if this large joint venture can actually work. Sprint is the lead partner with a 51 percent stake, and this seems like a desperation move to being acquired outright by Deutsche Telekom or another company.

Pricing and marketing may determine if consumers will pay any attention to this JV. Can Clearwire and Sprint can offer their existing customers some compelling reasons to get some new hardware and try WiMAX? Verizon earns 23 percent of its wireless revenue from data calls on that company’s EVDO and other networks.

Google does need a vast network in the US to support its Android smartphone platform, and the company can’t wait or afford to build it from scratch.

WiMAX would give Google an alternate medium for data service, instead of relying on one telecom carrier as Apple has done with AT&T. Even with 3G service, the iPhone’s data transfer rates will seem slow when the user can’t get WiFi access.

Yes, the iPhone does support WiFi. But I’m sure Clearwire and its partners will market Android phones that support WiFi as well as WiMAX and the sponsoring carrier’s cell phone service, but the battery drain for a typical mobile device user may be a serious problem.

Related posts on billso.com

• 6 May 2008: T-Mobile’s parent may buy Sprint
• 29 April 2008: New iPhone will be subsidized, faster and thinner
• 22 April 2008: Android vs iPhone
• 18 April 2008: Antitrust regulators would fight a Yahoo-Google combination
• 18 March 2008: The 700 mHz auction is over
• 28 February 2008: The Google cable
• 22 February 2008: Customer lock-in
• 20 January 2008: Nokia, Sprint announce layoffs
• 9 December 2007: The mobile office in Honolulu
• 12 September 2007: The Google Phone and the iPhone – both looking for software and spectrum
• 27 August 2007: Wireless providers gird themselves for battle
• 14 June 2007: Clearwire signs WiMax deal with DirecTV, EchoStar
• 5 February 2007: Wireless from the inside out

T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, seems interested in buying Sprint Nextel, according to this Engadget article, which is based on a report from German newspaper Der Spiegel.

Sprint already has enough problems trying to absorb Nextel’s incompatible network. The combined company has bled subscribers ever since the 2005 merger was announced. Check these articles from the Wall Street Journal and Engadget for more of the gory details, including this quote from February 2008:

Sprint lost more money in the fourth quarter of 2007 than the company is worth.

Add GSM to this mix and Sprint’s “deal from hell” would only get worse. However, DT has been rolling out UMTS, a 4G technology that supports GSM and CDMA, in its European and US markets.

The interesting part pf all this is that Nextel may not be included in the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal and Engadget. Spring may spin off Nextel, giving the push-to-talk provider its independence.

Related posts on billso.com

• 23 April 2008: Amazon’s Kindle hasn’t caught fire yet
• 22 Feburary 2008: Sprint and Boost vs Mobi PCS
• 20 January 2008: Nokia, Sprint announce layoffs
• 29 September 2006: ESPN sacked, Helio scrambling

Cnet has a report on a cellular base station that can switch among wind, solar and diesel generators. This Gizmodo article has a few more details about E-site.

It’s an interesting concept that would be useful in developing countries. In Africa, diesel generators are often used to provide coverage. A cleaner alternative would be welcome.

As I pointed out on 29 March 2008, power isn’t the only problem that mobile phone carriers face in developing countries. Terrorists, insurgents, and other groups may target cellular base stations to knock out coverage or make a political statement. On the other hand, these same groups often rely on mobile phones.

E-sites also make sense for Hawaii. Oahu has good mobile phone coverage, but there are many parts of this island and the neighbor islands that are served by one carrier, if coverage is even available. Adding wind and solar power generation capabilities to existing base stations can also improve reliability during brownouts, blackouts, and seismic events. The wind and solar generators can be used to charge backup batteries, or to provide primary power.

From ZDnet, the New York Times and TechDirt comes this story: New York City has subpoenaed a TXTmob server that was used to coordinate street protests during the 2004 Republican national Convention.

The city’s lawyers are litigating civil suits brought by hundreds of protesters who were arrested during the convention. All the city’s lawyers want are the records of every user and message sent on the system.

TXTmob can be used to resend text messages to hundreds of mobile phones in real time. The software is available on the Institute for Applied Autonomy’s web site. Wikipedia has a good article about the service.

Tad Hirsch, the creator of the TXTmob software, does not want to release the information on his server:

“There’s a principle at stake here,” he said recently by telephone. “I think I have a moral responsibility to the people who use my service to protect their privacy.”

Hirsch has appealed for donations on his web site. Hirsch says some of that data no longer exists. He’s been busy writing his dissertation at MIT.

Who’s got the data?

There are many web and mobile services like Facebook and Twitter that could be used to coordinate protests, according to this Wired article. Groups need to consider who operates their messaging servers and who controls the data for their web services. Hosting an application like TXTmob on one’s own server is one way to avoid a Web portal or service provider’s restrictions.

Even so, the server has to be connected to the Internet, and the text messages are resent to subscribers through the mobile phone carriers servers. The telecom carriers routinely archive text messages sent through their systems, as I mentioned on 3 February 2008, and the carriers will provide messages and logs if subpoenaed.

I may have to revisit the article I wrote last year for the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics & Society. Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology had the following response regarding the TXTmob subpoena in Wired’s article, and I agree with him:

“In civil cases, the law seems to prohibit the disclosure of stored communications in response to a civil discovery subpoena because the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 prohibits disclosure of stored messages of any kind,” he argues. “The subpoena clearly is not enforceable.”

But he adds that the case is a reminder that federal privacy law is in dire need of an update to reflect the new era of massive stored communications and web services.

“The notion that any litigant can get any information about any person is an 18th century rule that now can now encompass terabytes of information, and I think it also has an impact on service providers who don’t want to become one-stop shops for every litigant in the country,” he says.

A local example

On Monday, Two hundred protesters used email and phone calls to organize their event at Fort Street Mall in support of Aloha Airlines. The US Bankruptcy Court is in 1132 Bishop, above the MSIS classrooms in the Frear Center. My office is a few steps away. This Honolulu Advertiser article has details and a few pictures.

I didn’t see anything about the march at DontFlyGo. Their web site is difficult to navigate, and the domain name is missing an apostrophe on the banner. Based on this Honolulu Advertiser article, there’s little indication that local groups might try to use mobile messaging to boycott go! flights.