Icons for a data portability policy – a few thoughts

I sat down with the DataPortability Project's Elias Bizannes a few months ago to organize the elements of a model portability policy. Your site's portability policy will be part of your Terms of Service or End User License Agreement. Your portability policy should help your sites and services communicate the data portability parts of your relationship with the people who use them and your business partners.

I'm heading down to an all day privacy forum co-hosted by Lauren Gelman and Mozilla this morning to discuss what browsers might do with a "privacy" icon.

The Clusters

We clustered portability policy questions into five stacks: Start, Sync, Access, Share, and End. I sketched five icons:

I cleaned them up a bit, but they are still rough:

Between the five, you'll see questions about the lifecycle of your relationship with a site, from its start to its finish. You'll also see questions about the power to manage your portability through interoperability.

The questions

We mapped these questions for your portability policy to the icons.

The questions can be answered by choosing Yes/No or from a short multiple choice list. Policy explanations, links, and actionable information are optional.

These questions are the work of the DataPortability Projects ToS/EULA Working Group over 2008 and 2009.

Start.

How well do you welcome me, my history, my friends? 

Are your import and export APIs and formats documented?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes,where are they documented?

Do people need to create a new identity for this site, or can they use an existing one?

• New Identity - The person is expected to create a fresh identity that is used on this site. This site does not trust a third party to authenticate identity.
• Existing Identity - The person can register an account that is accessed using an identity authenticated by some third party. This product assumes that, by selecting a third party to authenticate their identity, the person accepts that third party as trustworthy.
• Suggested: If Existing Identity, what identity services will you support?

Sync.

How do you keep my data fresh?

Must people import things into this product, or can the product refer to things stored someplace else? Can this product work with objects and information whose "authoritative home" is another product, or can this product only work with things that it hosts directly?

• Must Host - In order for this product to work with a thing, it must be hosted directly.
• Can Refer - This product has the ability to access and work with things that are hosted by third parties, assuming that the third party allows this.
• Suggested: If Can Refer, what items can be stored elsewhere and under what conditions?

Can this site accept updates that users make on other sites? In cases where the product tracks or manages things that the person has stored on some third party product, can this product watch the third party for updates?

• One Time Import - This product only sees the remote thing at import time, and does not watch for changes.
• Watch For Updates - This product watches the third party for changes, and updates its own view of the remote thing to match.
• Suggested: If Yes, what types of items and under what conditions?

Access.

How well do you help me use and manage my information?

Can the person allow other sites to use the things they've created or updated here? Does this product provide a way for third parties to authenticate a person and read or write?

• No Access - The person must use this product to read or access whatever it manages.
• Third Parties Can Read - The person can provide the third party with authentication credentials, and can read data managed by this product.
• Third Parties Can Write - The person can provide the third party with authentication credentials, and can write data managed by this product.
• Suggested: If Yes, what technical protocols are supported and how can users manage the authority they give other sites?

Can the person download or remotely access a copy of everything they've provided to this service? As part of their standard use of most products, people import or create things. Does this product provide an open, DRM-free way for people to retrieve or access via third party all of the things they've created or provided?

• No Access - This product does not offer the person the ability to download the things they've provided.
• Remote Access - The product provides an open, DRM-free way for people to download all of the things they've provided to the product, or remotely access it using a third party product.
• Suggested: If Yes, how and in what forms?

Do you disclose where my data is being kept in the real world?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, where can I learn where my data is kept?

Can I control where my data is kept in the real world?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, how can I exercise those controls?

Share.

How well do you help me share well with others?

If person updates something here, is that change stored only by this product or can the person ask this product to store it elsewhere? Can this product accept some other site as being the authoritative home of a thing it knows about?

• Must Be Authoritative - This product assumes that it is the authoritative home of all things it manages, and does not update third parties.
• Can Update Remote - This product can work with a third party that is assumed to be authoritative. All updates made by the person using this product are also forwarded to the third party.
• Suggested: If Yes, how does it work in practice?

Can the person download or remotely access information that others have provided to the product? In cases where the product allows download or remote access, can the person export or access all of the data to which they have access, or only data which they have directly created?

• Provider Only - This person may only export or access data which they have directly provided.
• Full Access - The person may export or download any data to which they have access on this product, subject to reasonable usage and abuse rules.
• Suggested: If Yes, how and in what forms and with what other services or protocols?

End.

How well do you support a graceful exit from our relationship?

Will this site delete an account and all associated data upon a user's request? If the user creates a password or account for use with this product, does the product provide a way to cancel the account and erase all data associated with it?

• Immortal Accounts - Accounts or passwords, once created, are assumed to live for as long as the product is available. Desktop applications and other stand-alone products that do not have host services may have no way to remotely revoke accounts or passwords.
• Data Expires - If this product acts as a hub, the data it copies from other sites will expire in a set amount of time. This product must be linked to a place where it can refresh or synchronize data in order to stay current.
• Accounts Deleted Upon Request - This product has the ability to remove a person's account and all relevant data, and will do so when requested by the person or third party with appropriate legal standing.
• Suggested: If Yes, where can I find the procedure to request deletion.

Do you give notice before terminating the account?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, how much notice do you give and in what forms?

Can you recover a terminated account?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, how thoroughly, under what conditions, how quickly, and how is recovery triggered? 

Do you have a posted appeals process or dispute resolution procedure?

• Yes
• No
• Suggested: If Yes, where are the procedures posted?

Going Forward.

The questions and the clusters are works in progress. We're open to better questions, clusters, and definitely better labels and designs. These are just placeholders for better, official art.

I hope they serve a few common goals.

1. Make it easier to learn and understand the overall scope of a portability policy.
2. Make it easier to find the parts of a policy you care about.
3. Provide the visual part of semantic encoding that browsers and search engines can use to discover and understand where and what a site's policies are stored.

Things to do with the icons:

• Confirm the policy asks the right questions
• Prioritize and boil down for the Goldilocks Test: Not too much, not too little, just right
• Design an icon for the whole portability policy
• Design UI/UX behavior for what happens when you click on the portability policy icon
• Make the icons work better everywhere (cultures, visual impairments, sizes) and vet for semiotic conflict and mark infringement
• Semantic encoding (microformats, anyone?) that works across access methods
• Write the legal layer, creating plain language boilerplate that works for the business, for their lawyers, for site partners, and for users. Vary for world legal systems. Translate.

Join DataPortability.org's general mailing list to help or the low-volume announcements only mailing list for updates.

tags: dataportability, dataportabilityproject, dpp, icons, icon, portability, policy, portabilitypolicy

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype Journal FAQ: Do I pay roaming when my son Skype's me from Argentina?

Q. My son Skyped my mobile phone from Argentina. Will I see expensive international rates or roaming fees on my next bill? – Dad in USA.

A. No. That was a local call as far as your phone company is concerned. Your son only paid "SkypeOut" rates, about $1.20 per hour. Aren't you glad your boy learned to use the Internet?

tags: skype, pricing, skypeout

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Vivu plugs multiparty video into Skype for Windows

$10 a month gets you multiparty video conferencing, screen/application sharing, browser and phone access for your guests, and video broadcasting. Vivu's VuRoom for Skype plugs-in to your Windows and Mac Skype clients. VuRoom launches your session using the Skype client. Vivu notifies your invitees to your call through a Skype chat. They can launch into the room through their own copy of VuRoom or click on a link to the browser version. Your meeting uses Skype's encrypted, high quality audio channel.  Here's a flash demo, an offer for a 15 day trial account, and details on subscribing to VuRoom.

Vivu isn't the first company to offer multiparty video for Skype, but their timing is excellent. Hundreds of millions of Skype users now appreciate video calling, paving the way in customer appreciation and behavior. This plug-in helps Vivu extend its market reach to Skype's large user base and builds on the love and trust people have for the Skype brand.

Vivu's core business is hosting webcasts, some with ten thousand attendees, and virtual meeting rooms. It's a highly competitive space: Apple iChat, iVisit, MeBeam, Paltalk, PeerMe, SightSpeed, ooVoo, ekko, TokBox, Dimdim, and WebEx are prominent in supporting multiple parties in video chat as part of the meetings.

Skype could easily target this market segment as it turns to business markets. Will Skype compete with partners like Vivu for customer attention, as they have with one-to-one video calling software partners and with desktop sharing software partners?

tags: skype, vivu, vuroom, video, videochat, videoconference, videoconferencing, software, plug-in, iChat, iVisit, MeBeam, Paltalk, PeerMe, SightSpeed, ooVoo, ekko, TokBox, Dimdim, WebEx

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype gave away $12.9 billion in free international calls in 2009

One in nine cross-border minutes was a free Skype-to-Skype call last year. That's $12.9 billion in international calls Skype gave its users for free assuming Skype's customers would pay a world average market price of roughly $0.24 per minute.

Did Skype take those billions from telephone companies?

Just a little.

Telephone companies don't offer much in the way of differential pricing, charging more to people who'd pay more and less to people who'd pay less. So they leave a large underserved market.

Skype is happy to serve them.

Skype is also making the market bigger. When you make Skype-to-Skype calls, you don't worry about the cost of the call; just your time and your Internet connection. Skype voice calls can run for hours without anyone feeling anxious about using up minutes or the phone bill. So not only is Skype bringing underserved callers into the international calling market, Skype is encouraging them to speak longer and call more often.

Looking at the chart, people have been substituting Skype's free/cheap, simply priced, IM-style calling for expensive, unpredictable, and hard-to-dial PSTN calls. This bids down the market price of all calls. That's been going on for years; the average price is one fifth of what it was fifteen years' ago. It also slows the growth of PSTN calling as people switch to Skype.

The trend line shows Skype serving 75 billion minutes this year and 100 billion in 2011. That assumes Skype doesn't do anything new, like improving virality, usability, availability, presence, accessibility. You know: things that bring more people in and get them to call more people, more often, for more minutes.

tags: skype, competition, international, longdistance, pricing, chart, stats, statistics, trends

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype weighs in on Clinton's response to China Internet freedom

Skype wasn't a target of the recent attack on Google and thirty other companies. Google is considering leaving China, where they believe the attacks originated. The United States government has not adopted a position until today's speech by Hilary Clinton on Internet Freedom. Here is Skype's official response to the Secretary's speech. I'll comment below.

SKYPE LAUDS U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT FOR PROTECTING INTERNET’S FREEDOM TO CONNECT PEOPLE ACROSS BORDERS

WASHINGTON, January 21, 2010 – Skype, the global internet communications company whose mission is to enable the world’s conversations, applauds Secretary Clinton, her senior adviser for innovation, Alec Ross, the State Department and the U.S. government for embracing and defending the principles of freedom of expression, privacy, and the freedom to connect to the Internet, as well as for their use of Web 2.0 tools for 21st century statesmanship.

“Conducting international relations by encouraging online interaction is an example of the Internet’s power to change the way governments and people around the world engage as part of one global community,” said Staci Pies, Skype’s Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs. “Secretary Clinton’s concerted effort to transform the State Department’s role from traditional ‘government-to-government diplomacy’ to ‘people-to-people diplomacy’ is a clear recognition that more and more people around the globe are turning to technologies like Skype to freely connect with one another across borders and to increasingly facilitate diplomacy, interaction and understanding.”

It seems State heard Rebecca MacKinnon's guidance on how not to save the Internet by focusing on human rights to connect. How will these high minded aspirations become policy? Can we expect tariffs on goods from censoring countries? "This product made by people with a censored Internet" product labels?

tags: skype, clinton, china, freedomtoconnect, freedom, freespeech, us, usa

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype for Kindle? No way, says Amazon.

Wouldn't it be cool to have book readers that could IM and offer presence? Maybe take or make phone calls? Now that Amazon announced it will open its Kindle book readers to third party developers, Skype could build an app for this new platform.

No it can't. Amazon warns "Voice over IP functionality, advertising, offensive materials, collection of customer information without express customer knowledge and consent, or usage of the Amazon or Kindle brand in any way are not allowed."

I can think of three reasons for this ban:

1. Amazon is worried about using up a year's worth of data plan with one long phone call.
2. Amazon contracted to ban VoIP at the request of its mobile carriers.
3. Amazon wants to reserve VoIP for a future Kindle product. The Amazon phone?

Kindles have a mobile phone built in and a lifetime data plan, apparently a dream VoIP device (although better speakers, a microphone, and a webcam would be nice). Amazon will require apps to pay for data transfers at $0.15 per megabyte. So I'm betting Amazon is most concerned with keeping the costs of their mobile plan affordable for users.

tags: skype, amazon, netneutrality, voip, blocking

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Christopher Dean speaking at ITExpo Thursday

The VoIP industry conference in Miami, Florida, hasn't published the title of Skype's chief strategy officer's Thursday morning keynote. If you're attending, drop a line to tips@skypejournal.com or @skypejournal. Here's hoping Dean will speak to Skype's VoIP channel strategy, Skype's role in wideband audio VoIP, and Skype's struggle for access to mobile broadband.

Skype trunking lets your phone system dial out through the Skype network at SkypeOut rates. Now that Skype trunking products are shipping for legacy PBXs (see VoSKY's SMB gateways), Asterisk-based switches, and some Cisco, ShoreTel, and SIPfoundry PBXs, what will Skype do for the VoIP hardware and service distribution channels? When will Avaya, Nortel, Mitel, NEC and others offer Skype trunking? What does the channel need from Skype? Can Skype offer the channel meaningful commissions?

Have the hundreds of millions of Skype customers changed consumer expectations for all audio quality? Is Skype driving demand for HD telephony? What barriers remain to upgrading the mobile and enterprise networks to HD audio?

On the regulatory front, is Skype's appeal for net neutrality, for an open Internet, for equal access getting any support with the VoIP industry? The VoIP industry serves incumbent telcos and opposes their political agenda at great risk. Can Skype frame its issues to earn mindshare at ITExpo East?

tags: skype, voip, itexpo, vosky, asterisk, shoretel, sipfoundry, avaya, nortel, mitel, nec, trunking, skypeforsip

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype Dialtone: 22 million online.

22,268,233 Skype clients logged in at the same time, up from the 21.5 million record last Monday.

Here's the updated trendline going back from the beginning.

While a straight line explains 97% of the data, a polynomial regression fit gets us to 99%. The curve guesses 26 million people online at the same time by year's end. This on a base of more than 520 million user accounts.

My crude estimate puts active Skype users, people who log in over a two week period, about 132 million. This allows for different time zones and for people who use Skype for very short sessions during a month.

tags: skype, stats, statistics, trends, online, trend, charts, graphics, performance, dialtone, dialtone density, chart, simultaneous, concurrent

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Tip: Include Skype Calls in Your Ustream Broadcast (Mac)

This instructional video is courtesy of lockergnome. Ustream.tv lets you broadcast a live video over the web. Here's how to add Skype calls to your show with a Mac and Audio Hijack Pro.

tags: skype, ustream, ustream.tv, broadcasting, streaming, video, tip, tips, tricks, howto, production

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.