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The internet’s Supreme Court comes together

Good morning! This Thursday, Facebook appoints its overseers, inside the fight over the dot-org domain, and someone actually argues in favor of robocalls.
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What comes after smartphones to reinvent society all over again? A huge change in how we get around, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida believes:
You know that huge 5G network the FCC plans to let Ligado build in the U.S.? Dana Deasy, the DoD's CIO, isn't happy:
Andrew Cuomo tapped Eric Schmidt to help bring more technology to New York, and Schmidt says he already has big plans:
When Facebook announced its intention, way back in 2018, to create an independent oversight board that would deal with some of the platform's thorniest issues, I rolled my eyes. Too many projects like this end up like oil companies funding climate change research — sure, it's "independent," but everybody knows who's signing the checks.
To its credit, Facebook is trying to build something different. It announced the first 20 members of the board yesterday (there will eventually be 40), and it's a serious group of serious people with serious responsibility.
You can read Issie's full story about the project at protocol.com. One thing that stuck out to me was that Facebook's clearly trying to build a model for the rest of the internet:
Facebook told Issie the board is on track to start hearing cases by the end of the year. Things are off to an encouraging start, but don't forget: The scale of Facebook continues to vastly outpace any group's ability to police it. As author and professor Siva Vaidhyanathan put it, "The Problem with Facebook is not that some photo came down that one time. The Problem with Facebook is Facebook."
ICANN's decision last week to kill Ethos Capital's $1.1 billion acquisition of the .org domain registry from the Internet Society marks the end of a contentious six-month debate. One that the Internet Society wasn't looking for to begin with:
Why would private equity want in on the .org game, anyway? One obvious possibility: Not long before the sale was announced, ICANN removed a cap on how quickly the Public Interest Registry (PIR) could increase rates for registering .org domain names.
Uncertainty about Ethos Capital's motives did eventually resonate, with ICANN and others.
So what's next for the dot-orgs? Gagliano said Ethos could be thinking about challenging ICANN's decision. Or, now that the Internet Society made clear it doesn't want control of the PIR, ICANN could look for a more appropriate manager.
As for the Internet Society, Sullivan said he basically wants to pretend that this whole thing never happened. "What happens next is that we go back to the way things were," he told Sofie.
The Workforce of Tomorrow Requires Better Tools Today
The role for government centers on deriving better data sets, enabling better credential interoperability, and creating better reskilling incentives.
Smart-home startup Wink announced on its blog yesterday a new $5 monthly subscription for its service. I assume what came next wasn't intended to sound like a list of demands in a hostage situation, but, well:
Wink's blog post said that the company is now supporting 4 million connected devices, and that "long term costs and recent economic events have caused additional strain" on its business. Rather than sell user data, Wink wants to charge for a subscription.
The whole "that thing you bought won't work anymore" gambit doesn't tend to go well. Just ask Sonos. Reached for comment, Wink just directed me back to their blog post. But if I were a betting man, I'd say this plan will go away long before your Wink lights wink out.
Uber laid off 3,700 people, about 14% of its staff, mostly in recruiting and customer support. In a note to staff, Dara Khosrowshahi hinted there may be more to come. As for how bad things really are at Uber? We'll know more when the company reports earnings this afternoon.
Alison Kirkham is joining the Apple TV+ team to oversee unscripted content in Europe. She joins from the BBC, where she oversaw series like Planet Earth. The documentary scene is booming right now, and Apple clearly wants a piece.
H.R. McMaster is Zoom's newest board member. McMaster is a former army lieutenant general (a job for which he was named perfectly) and was President Trump's national security advisor a couple of years ago.
Zoom also hired Josh Kallmer, a longtime tech lobbyist, to run its policy and government relations team. Turns out Zoom is interested in improving its relationships in D.C.
Libra has a new boss: Stuart Levey, the former U.S. Treasury undersecretary and HSBC chief legal officer, will be the CEO of the Libra Association starting this summer. He told The Wall Street Journal that part of his job will be to help set standards and ground rules for the whole Libra community.
The latest case in the Supreme Court's set of virtual hearings (which is still going well, despite an unfortunate speakerphone toilet flush) was one you'd hardly think was controversial. Robocalling was on the docket! It's actually an interesting debate about what is and isn't free speech, but on the robocalls front I'll sum up my thinking using Justice Kavanaugh's thinking: "If you take a peek, just a peek, at the real world here, this is one of the most popular laws on the books. Because people don't like cell phone robocalls — that's just common sense. Are you against that common sense?"
The Workforce of Tomorrow Requires Better Tools Today
The role for government centers on deriving better data sets, enabling better credential interoperability, and creating better reskilling incentives.
Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to me, david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
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