Updates from the Hedgie on the Hill

First and foremost, it has been happily rumored that the Senate will not even take up a vote on CISPA, which passed in the House earlier this month.   Diligence is still needed to make sure that any legislation being brought forth in either the House or the Senate preservers the rights of Internet users.

To that end, we are very pleased of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s unanimous decision to advance the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2013, S. 607:  Hedgehog Hosting was one of over 100 companies that signed a letter addressed to Senate Judiciary lawmakers urging the committee to adopt the Leahy-Lee amendment ensuring that law enforcement officials “can obtain electronic communications in all appropriate cases while protecting Americans’ constitutional rights.” 

These two great steps forward will help us to protect our client's interests with regards to their online data privacy while still doing all we can to help law enforcement if the need should arise.

Take action to help defeat CISPA in the Senate.

The House of Representatives passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) today.  As we move on to the Senate, (where it previously failed in February of 2012) we must be diligent in reminding our lawmakers to be mindful of the numerous privacy concerns raised by the bill in its current form. While the goal of CISPA is to increase security online and make it easier to identify potential cyber threats, any reform must be made in an open manner and in a manner that preserves the civil liberties of everyone.

Last week, the House Intelligence Committee passed CISPA in a closed door hearing. It is imparative that any discussions on privacy and accessibility be transparent and include all stakeholders involved in the process to build consensus.  Hedgehog Hosting and other i2Coalition members will continue to push for this transparency.

While there is anticipation that the White House will veto CISPA if it passes the Senate, we must all continue to speak out against this legislation in its current form.  As has been shown in past efforts with SOPA and PIPA, contacting your members of Congress to show your opposition will have an impact.

Compared to past years, pro-CISPA forces have spent upwards of 140 times more in lobbying that their opponents.  If you share our privacy concerns and want to help, please contact your Representative today and ask him/her to vote no on CISPA!

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How do I contact my elected officials?  There is an app for that! - "Contact Congress" by Airship Software on your apple device or visit http://www.congress.org/news/communicating-with-congress/

CES on the Hill was a showcase of great startup talent and our elected officials took notice!

What I found after attending the CES on the Hill event this week is that the startup community is still booming and their range of products and services are still so very exciting. I am also pleased that the Consumer Electronics Association, of which Hedgehog is a proud member, is actively engaging our elected officials on the Hill to provide startups with new legislation that will help foster the growth of these vital new companies.

 With their continued support of the Startup Act, now in version 3.0, companies like ours have joined the efforts and are providing support for this bipartisan bill that will jumpstart our economy through the creation and growth of new businesses, especially in the much needed STEM field.

 While there is much debate on the Hill about the best way to grow our economy, I think we can all agree that making it easier for companies such as the ones that were represented at CES on the Hill to grow and flourish will surely help. I am sure the next great company lies somewhere in this mix of budding young startups.

Why I am so happy that Hedgehog Hosting and other infrastructure companies exist

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of travelling with some business colleagues to a meeting in Pittsburgh, PA.  Now, most of the time business trips are not considered "pleasurable," but in this case we had just finished up two and half great days of meetings and I was fortunate to be travelling not only with business associates, but with people I consider some of my very good friends.  On top of that, we all represent the web hosting community and this made the drive back to Washington DC a lot more productive from a work standpoint.  AND it was the ultimate four hour "geek-out" session on so many different tech subjects. I am sure all of you would have wanted to be a fly on the wall... Or maybe on the windshield at some points in the drive. :)

So about halfway into the drive our stomachs started to rumble.  With Breezewood, PA rapidly approaching I came to realization that if we trudged on and ate at any of the few dinner-esque types of establishments there, the second half of the car ride may not be as enjoyable as the first half.  That being said, we decided we would rather stop in Bedford, PA to have a bite.  Now as convincing (and as numerous) as the billboards were leading up to Bedford, Ed's Steakhouse was not my first choice for the afternoon.  After about two minutes of back and forth, and being that I was the driver, I had to lay down the law and request that my riding companions stop watching the latest YouTube sensation and use their Internet connected devices (cell phones to the layperson) to find us a decent place to eat lunch.  

As the options started to come up, we found an interesting review on TripAdvisor for a restaurant called Horn O Plenty.  After a little chuckle about the name (it was all guys in the car) we were slowly getting sold on trying this restaurant.  There were nothing but amazing reviews showing up!   DONE.  This was our stop and after about 2 miles off the beaten path, we arrived.  And not a moment too soon... I was about to eat my shoe I was so hungry after hearing all these rave reviews.

Now I could go into all the reasons why this is one of my new favorite restaurants in the USA, but then this blog post would be three times as long and I'd risk losing even more readers than I already have.  Let me just say that this restaurant lived up to every review and every expectation that we had, even before we had the first bite of food.  

After one of the best meals I had ever eaten, we spent a considerable amount of time talking to Mandi Horn, the owner of the restaurant AND the farmer/grower of most everything we just ate.  It was one of the most pleasant dining experiences I have ever had.  The staff was "icing on the cake" to the great food we had just eaten.  I really felt like I was at someone's home for lunch rather than eating out.  And we had just met!  Needless to say, the entire second half of the ride home was spent talking about the fantastic experience we had just had. 

Now you are probably asking, "What does this all have to do with my love for Hedgehog and the importance of other infrastructure companies?"  Without us, this entire process could not have happened.  Now let me be clear that we do not host the websites for TripAdvisor or Horn O Plenty, but someone very similar to Hedgehog Hosting does. Infrastructure companies, like ours, are the facilitators of the applications that allowed us to find this "hidden gem."  How great is it that we have all this technology that can lead us somewhere that we had no idea existed?

Let us take this a step further to something a bit more important than our lunch that December day.  Non-profit groups like Amnesty International need people to find them even though they may be off the beaten path a bit.  They need to garner support for their efforts protecting human rights around the world. Many infrastructure companies, and Hedgehog Hosting specifically, allow Amnesty to spread their message all over the world.  These messages are not of the usual "Special of the Day," variety, but rather an appeal to save a person's life, or protect the rights of a group that is being persecuted.  Our infrastructure companies make these messages available to everyone at any time.  That, to me, makes every day worth going to work for.

In the end, I am so very excited that what we do makes a difference.  Now, maybe it makes a difference for a small, local farmer who decided to open a restaurant a few miles from her farm in Bedford, PA or maybe, just maybe, it makes a difference to a whole group of people fighting for basic human freedoms.  Either way, we will be here to help them and will be grateful for that opportunity!

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Finally, if you are ever in Bedford, PA you would be remiss if you did not visit Horn O Plenty (http://www.myhornoplenty.com) and have what I consider to be one of the best dining experiences ever!  Please tell Mandi her computer friends from Washington DC are still reading her recommended cookbooks and looking forward to our next visit to Bedford!

Bad policy makes for bad Internet

As a member of the i2Coalition and a supporter of Internet freedoms I, and the team here at Hedgehog Hosting, champion efforts that push for legislation that has a positive impact on the Internet.  As we continue to work with our elected officials we will no doubt have a voice when these future governance issues arise.  The positive note here is that all the stakeholders will have a place at the table.

Now pre-SOPA and pre-PIPA, there was not a place set at the table for the general public.  When it looked as if these bills were going to pass, the public outcry was so overwhelming that they had no choice but to listen to the will of the people and pull the bills from even getting a chance to be voted on.  The people spoke and the government and our elected officials listened.  Isn't this what our system of government should be?

Isn't that the way it should be with most situations.  Take a look at Instagram.  Here is a company that has a huge following.  They had approximately 16.3 million active daily users in mid December of 2012.  Then, in the course of one month, they upended their vibrant community of picture posters with the announcement of a new Terms of Service.  Part of this new ToS stated that Instagram now had the right to sell their users photos to advertisers. There was public outcry after this announcement and Instagram very quickly felt the backlash.  Some users suspended using the service and some users left the social networking site altogether.  Now, as of mid January 2013, Instagram currently has only about 7.6 million daily users.

Now to be fair, Instagram had 41.5 million monthly active users in mid-December 2012 and has grown to 46.1 million monthly active users presently.  And yes, this shows that more people are using Instagram.  But, clearly these users are not using the site as often.  And by the way, it also did not hurt that they reverted back to their old Terms of Service after only one week of constant backlash from their user base.

The issue here is that this one boneheaded decision caused an upheaval of a very loyal user base and now has directly impacted their business model. For a site that relies on ad revenues, it does not matter how many users they have, if those users are not using the service, the company is not making money.  While Instagram can boast almost 5 million new members in a month, they cannot boast increased usage.  Even worse, the usage is down over 50%.

While it can be said that there are other factors to take into account for the dip in usage, such as the holiday season being heightened in December and the  the return to work keeping people busier in January, it cannot be overlooked that this decision had a direct impact on Instagram.

To come back to my original point...  Bad policy makes for bad Internet, or in this case, bad business as well.  How is this combated?  By the people who use these services. Now, the government is a service.  We pay for these services through our tax dollars, much the same way that Instagram users pay for their services through dollars paid to advertisers.  If the collective will of the people wants to enact change, they CAN and WILL do it!  It has been shown with Instagram and even more vocally and publicly, it has been shown with the putting down of SOPA and PIPA a year ago yesterday.  Happy anniversary to Internet Freedom!

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The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. - Thomas Jefferson

Finding positives among a sea of negatives

If you have been following the publicity of WCIT-12 and are at all familiar with the Hedgehog Hosting and our affiliation with the I2Coalition, then you are probably also aware that both of our organizations strongly support the work of the Internet Society (ISOC) and their work leading up to the WCIT.  This should not come as breaking news as the matters under discussion by the ITU will potentially and directly impact my business and our industry.  I will continue to blog and to post about the importance of a multi-stakeholder model of governance rather than the ITU's proposed idea that they should direct the governance of the Internet.  While this will stay on the forefront of my mind and our computer screens during this conference, I know that we will all continue to voice our shared ideas to support an open and free Internet.

With WCIT-12 in full swing, I have been thinking about the United Nations quite a bit.  From my research, I know that the International Telecommunications Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations.  After spending this week weighing my thoughts about the ITU and about the United Nations in general, I found many of my thoughts to be overly negative.  These negative thoughts were exacerbated from reading other's posts, many with the same convictions.  When I get an overwhelmingly negative feeling about something, I usually try to find some positives to help me balance my thoughts.  I try to look at other events, even if in the past, to help me take a step back and reflect a bit deeper. 

So I thought back to this date, December 11, 1946.  That was when the United Nations General Assembly created the United Nations Children's Fund or UNICEF.  UNICEF was created to provide emergency food and healthcare to children in countries that had been devastated by World War II.  Now I was not alive for the establishment of UNICEF, but I am fortunate today to work with a division of this group, and it is amazing to me that a small business in Virginia has the ability to help such a global group with certain aspects of their hosted web technologies.

I also think back to just yesterday, December 10, where many of us, along with our friends at the Internet Society supported the United Nations Human Rights Day with focus on inclusion and participation; A tribute to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on that same day in 1948. 

As I think about UNICEF as they gear up for their holiday gift giving season (which I know will be successful) and I reflect on the tremendous support from the online community on Human Rights Day, I try to have faith that certain potentially negative ideas that are being discussed at WCIT-12 will be replaced with positive ideas that will continue to support our shared beliefs in an open and free Internet.   We have said it before and know it to be true.  The Internet has brought nations and people closer together.  Maybe all of us, the Hedgehog Hosting's of the world and the many other infrastructure companies that the I2Coalition represents will be able to convince these decision makers to let us continue to do just that!

A simple man's view of the UN's International Telecommunications Union meeting in Dubai

I have been reading article after article and blog post after blog post trying to decipher any concrete information about the current meeting of the ITU that is being held by the UN in Dubai these next two weeks, and while I will continue to educate myself on this topic, I know I am not and will not be an expert in International Telecommunications Treaties when all is said and done.  In truth. I do not want to be!  I really just want to understand the "why" of these meetings and I think, when I add up much of the data that I am processing, I am getting a clearer picture.

Now, the ITU says one of the main reasons that they are convening is to ensure the provisioning of Internet access to all people all over the world.  Dr Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union said, "The brutal truth is that the internet remains largely [the] rich world's privilege...ITU wants to change that."  While this may be true and may be a noble cause, I often look at these opportunities with the same cynicism I have when most governing bodies come out with grand new ideas for how to make the world a better place.  What I always come back to is money!  Who is it that can regulate, make decisions about and mostly who can TAX  for these goods or services and who will benefit most from those decisions?

Since Hedgehog was started, and moreover, since the owners of Hedgehog started in the Internet industry back in the mid 90's, we have held the belief that the Internet will be the vessel for change in everything we do as individuals and as businesses. My good friend and Chairman of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, Christian Dawson put is so eloquently when he said, " Our companies are the ones who help new businesses get off the ground. Our businesses directly impact and empower both world and local economies.  Our companies are the ones who aid individuals in getting their information out and their voices heard.  I am confident that if developing nations better understood that businesses like ours were the foundations of the open Internet they would better understand how maintaining liberalized markets is the best way to continue the Internet’s growth and outreach.  It is a little known fact, but the Internet is mostly small and local.  Our companies are proof of that."

 As a member of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, Hedgehog strongly believes in this.  We believe strongly enough in this vision that I have taken an active role with the I2C and will continue to seek to influence decision makers to weigh decisions on whether they are good or bad for the Internet economy and its foundational industries. In short, we seek to foster growth within the Internet infrastructure industry by driving others to harness the Internet's full potential.

So that is the background information.  Now to the reason I am writing this post.  I do not feel that this meeting of the ITU is being held with these same beliefs in mind.  I do not believe that the decisions being made are being made with the same mindset as I mentioned earlier.  I believe these meetings are a bit of knee-jerk reaction to a growing industry that is not fully understood by our law-makers and governing bodies.

I will use Uber (www.uber.com) as an example.  This new company provides licensed, professional drivers the ability to receive and fulfill on-demand car service reservations as your private driver.  TechCrunch said, "This service eliminates everything bad about a taxi experience." It is a competitor to the common taxi cab.  Well... This service was not well received here in Washington DC. There have been months of debate over whether the Internet-based service should be regulated by the D.C. Taxicab Commission. Uber feels that they have a right to operate without falling within the myriad of taxicab regulations, particularly those that involve the regulating of fees.  The owner of Uber says, "That's the free marketplace in operation... Uber is not something you have to do.  You can take a taxi if you'd like to do that, but there are also times you want to take Uber, and if you are willing to pay a higher amount during peak hours, you should be allowed to do that." For all you Virginia residents, doesn't this sound a lot like the "Hot Lanes" that just opened up?  But I digress...

So now, there has been a victory for Uber.  The District of Columbia has ruled to define a new class of for-hire vehicles that use digital dispatch and charge by time and distance. This is neither a taxi or a traditional sedan.  But larger than that, this is a victory for small business and entrepreneurship.  Rather than lump this new vision of travel into an age old system that has been around since 1640.  That is a bit of an exaggeration for effect as the real industry was probably established closer to the 1940's, but still it is rather neat that for-hire transportation has been around that long.  But back to my point.  The people we entrust to make decisions came to realize that this new service may not fit into any existing mold that we have and it may be time for a new mold.  Moreover, they are working with the developer of this new technology to strike just the right definition of what this new category of service is.

Now, if only others will follow suit.  In the end, the ITU wants to take the Internet, a fairly new and rapidly growing technology and they want to lump it in the with an age-old treaty last updated in 1988 that governs telecommunications.  They must be made to understand why this is bad.  Just yesterday, The US and some other nations put forward a proposal to the ITU that would limit the International Telecommunication Union's rules to only telecom operators and not Internet-based companies such as Google Inc and Facebook Inc.  This was a great first step but was met with opposition and ultimately failed to win support.  While no one is arguing that a treaty last updated in 1988 needs no revisions, (That is not entirely true.  There are a number of people on the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." bandwagon, but that is another post.)  we really need to keep trying and keep working to make the right kind of change - one that doesn't pack new innovation into old frameworks that would kill them.  The ITU needs to come to a realization that it needs to be hands-off if it wants to let what's working continue to work, the way DC ultimately did with Uber.

There is an old Italian proverb that says, "After the game, the King and pawn go into the same box."  If we are truly trying to make good decisions, maybe the king and the pawn need to be on the same table to make this happen.  I applaud Uber for working with local and state governments just as much as I applaud the DC government for the solutions that they are working towards.  Maybe there is a blueprint here that can be taken to other governing bodies.