PeerFlow

SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It —Adam Savage

Congress reconvenes in January and will take up the Internet censorship bills SOPA and PIPA again. The House only deferred SOPA because of widespread public outcry. Proponents of SOPA, funded by big corporate money, are probably just hoping opponents will be distracted by the holidays. Adam Savage reminds us why we need to be vigilant and keep flooding Congress with calls to vote down those bills or anything like them.

MythBuster Adam Savage wrote for Popular Mechanics 20 December 2011, SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It

Right now Congress is considering two bills—the Protect IP Act, and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—that would be laughable if they weren't in fact real. Honestly, if a friend wrote these into a piece of fiction about government oversight gone amok, I'd have to tell them that they were too one-dimensional, too obviously anticonstitutional.

Make no mistake: These bills aren't simply unconstitutional, they are anticonstitutional. They would allow for the wholesale elimination of entire websites, domain names, and chunks of the DNS (the underlying structure of the whole Internet), based on nothing more than the "good faith" assertion by a single party that the website is infringing on a copyright of the complainant. The accused doesn't even have to be aware that the complaint has been made.

I'm not kidding.

He goes on to correctly compare SOPA and PIPA unfavorably to the already bad Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. You remember, the DMCA that big copyright holders used to sue pre-teen video and audio "pirates" and to take down websites on suspicion. Savage cites a case where somebody with no copyright still got YouTube vidoes taken down under DMCA. Yes, SOPA and PIPA are even worse.

If you like YouTube, twitter, facebook, blogs, etc., it's time to speak up. Call your Senators and House members. Send them email. Write them paper letters. Petition them. Show up at their offices. Petition the White House to veto it if Congress passes it, and any other bills like it. Right now we still have the Internet to organize these things.

-jsq

Woz to FCC: Save the Internet

Wozniak to the FCC on net neutrality:

Imagine that when we started Apple we set things up so that we could charge purchasers of our computers by the number of bits they use. The personal computer revolution would have been delayed a decade or more. If I had to pay for each bit I used on my 6502 microprocessor, I would not have been able to build my own computers anyway.

He also details examples of how difficult it was to start a new service the way the telephone system used to be, how radio used to all be freely receivable, and how cable TV is mis-regulated. He summarizes his case:

I frequently speak to different types of audiences all over the country. When I'm asked my feeling on Net Neutrality I tell the open truth. When I was first asked to "sign on" with some good people interested in Net Neutrality my initial thought was that the economic system works better with tiered pricing for various customers. On the other hand, I'm a founder of the EFF and I care a lot about individuals and their own importance. Finally, the thought hit me that every time and in every way that the telecommunications careers have had power or control, we the people wind up getting screwed. Every audience that I speak this statement and phrase to bursts into applause.

Then he asks for all that not to happen to the Internet:

We have very few government agencies that the populace views as looking out for them, the people. The FCC is one of these agencies that is still wearing a white hat. Not only is current action on Net Neutrality one of the most important times ever for the FCC, it's probably the most momentous and watched action of any government agency in memorable times in terms of setting our perception of whether the government represents the wealthy powers or the average citizen, of whether the government is good or is bad. This decision is important far beyond the domain of the FCC itself.

Ain't that the truth.

-jsq

Keen on Coughlin on the Internet

I was going to say you have to admire Andrew Keen for finding a contrarian perspective and mining it for all it's worth. But this latest missive from him seems all too desperate.

Can Obama's plan for universal broadband turn the recession into a political nightmare resembling the 1930s? Yes, it can, writes the author of the controversial book, The Cult of the Amateur.

...

Imagine if today’s radically unregulated Internet, with its absence of fact checkers and editorial gatekeepers, had existed back then. Imagine that universal broadband had been available to enable the unemployed to read the latest conspiracy theories about the Great Crash on the blogosphere. Imagine the FDR-baiting, Hitler-loving Father Charles Coughlin, equipped with his “personalized” YouTube channel, able, at a click of a button, to distribute his racist message to the suffering masses. Or imagine a marketing genius like the Nazi chief propagandist Josef Goebbels managing a viral social network of anti-Semites which could coordinate local meet-ups to assault Jews and Communists.

— The Internet Is Bad For You, by Andrew Keen, 19 Dec 2008

Like we don't already have xenophobic propaganda on talk radio, Fox News, Lou Dobbs on CNN, etc. Rush Limbaugh already has his personalized TV show channel, as does Bill O'Reilly. If that's what gatekeepers bring us, bring on the Internet.

With net neutrality, please. As in what Larry Lessig says Obama plans to require:

the terms offered one website or company are no better or worse than those offered anyone else.

That way we can keep free speech on the Internet, even if it doesn't exist on TV or radio. What Keen hates most about the Internet is exactly what is its greatest strength: it is not a broadcast medium. It is a participatory medium, in which everyone can publish and everyone can select what to read or view. For example, I realize that I'm giving Keen's doleful visage a tiny amount of publicity by posting this, but hey, it's better to have weirdly wrongheaded stuff like this out there where everybody can see it and rebut it than having it festering in the darkness.

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

—Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820

On this I'll go with Jefferson rather than Keen.

-jsq

George Carlin's final list

of seven things you can't say on TV.

-jsq

Sitcoms as Gin, or, Looking for the Mouse

Clay Shirky explains why sitcoms serve the same function as gin did in industrial revolution Britain:

Transcript.

This is why traditional media fear the Internet. They have been supplying the gin to keep us all intoxicated instead of doing anything participatory or useful with our leisure time. The Internet (and gaming, and computers in general) provides ways of interacting and participating at every scale from local to global that have never existed before. And people are starting to use them.

Think about that the next time somebody equates "screen time" for television and the Internet.

-jsq

Abyss: What You Won't Hear Without the Internet

Tim Robbins, famous actor, writer, director, and producer, was invited by the National Association of Broadcasters to give a talk. Then they turned off all the cameras. But they forgot to tell the audience to turn off their voice recorders:

Now some of you are concerned with that unrelenting pesky competition. You know, the new technologies; the Internets and satellite radio and television. The problem is there are too many people in this country that take the notion of creativity and invention too damn seriously. Just when one technology is centralized, conglomerated, monopolized, along come new technologies and delivery systems to threaten the good work born of deregulation. Just when we were getting close to a national playlist for our music, satellite technology is threatening to provide music that people actually want to hear. Just when we were close to a national news media, providing a general consensus on what the truth is, along comes the Internets that allow its users a choice on the kinds of news it watches. And the You Tube. My God we’ve got to stop them. Recently when we were about to enjoy our great national pastime of ‘tearing apart a presidential candidate with relentless repetition of ugly things his friend said’, You Tube provided the candidates reasoned response and millions watched and responded positively.

Well you here at NAB have the power to stop this dangerous technology. The question is, how? I respectfully suggest that you do what others have done when facing the competition of new technologies. Get compromising information on your enemy and expose them in a sex scandal. Or call them a racist, or better yet a traitor. That not only undermines your competitor, but provides the public with fantastic entertainment.

— The Power and Responsibility of our Nation’s Broadcasters, By Tim Robbins, The following is my opening keynote speech for the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas, which I delivered Monday night. 14 April 2008

He had a fine time lampooning that the news media do all the time. And then he got serious:

Censored News 2007

As usual, net neutrality was the top censored news story of 2007:

Throughout 2005 and 2006, a large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to as “network neutrality,” the issue has become a tug of war with cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet service providers on the other. Yet despite important legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions throughout 2005, the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines until 2006.1 And, except for occasional coverage on CNBC’s Kudlow & Kramer, mainstream television remains hands-off to this day (June 2006).2

Most coverage of the issue framed it as an argument over regulation—but the term “regulation” in this case is somewhat misleading. Groups advocating for “net neutrality” are not promoting regulation of internet content. What they want is a legal mandate forcing cable companies to allow internet service providers (ISPs) free access to their cable lines (called a “common carriage” agreement). This was the model used for dial-up internet, and it is the way content providers want to keep it. They also want to make sure that cable companies cannot screen or interrupt internet content without a court order.

— #1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media, Top 25 Censored news stories of 2007 Project Censored, The News That Didn't Make The News Sonoma State University, 2007

This is the first I've heard that "Internet service providers" other than cable companies are on the side of consumers. Doubtless AT&T will be gratified to hear that version. Oh, wait: later the same writeup refers to "cable supporters like the AT&T-sponsored Hands Off the Internet website." Also, what's this about free access?

AT&T, Texas Football, and Legislators

AT&T tried to impress Texas legislators by streaming the football game in high definition:

"I'd never seen a football game on a big screen like that. It didn't look very good."

—Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, quoted in UNDER THE DOME Most Austin reps skipped football game - and lobby party, W. Gardner Selby, Austin American-Statesman, Saturday, December 01, 2007

I'm not sure AT&T wanted that kind of reaction to watching a Texas football team in Austin, the capital of the second most populous state. The local cableco in Austin, Time Warner, didn't have the game (Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers), which was on the NFL Network, which has a deal with AT&T. Most legislators didn't even show up to watch. Interesting, considering that legislators and regulators are the real audience of the duopoly.

-jsq

FT on FCC: SOP

From London, it appears the emperor's apparatchik has no clothes:

The commission, under Mr Martin, has turned US media policy into mere political theatre, while technology marches on apace, revolutionising media markets without any serious input from the regulators in the public debate about the implications.

Big Media control of the airwaves is simply not the threat to democracy and choice that it once was (in the days before cable or, for that matter, bloggers and MySpace). This is yesterday’s battle. It is time to move on to the tougher challenge: how to ensure that quality news survives the YouTube era.

— New rules for yesterday’s problem, Editorial, Financial Times, Published: November 14 2007 19:15 | Last updated: November 14 2007 19:15

Well, the first step would be to ensure that people get to look at it, for example that they are able to view the Financial Times. Economic models would be good, too. Some traditional news media seem to be developing those.

But it is not clear how one troubled industry (newspapers) can be helped by grafting it on to another one (the broadcast media), when both have essentially the same problem: the internet is stealing their advertising revenues.

Well, the New York Times has discovered can make more money by advertising if they don't charge for articles. And that didn't involve merging with a TV station. With real ISP competition, somebody would also develop a real first-mile ISP business plan.

-jsq

Pirates of the Duopoly: AT&T Plans Anti-Piracy Content-Recognition

Yo ho:

Remember YouTube's content filtering system? AT&T is mulling setting one up across its whole network. BusinessWeek's reporting AT&T's in talks with NBC Universal and Disney to possibly use content-recognition tech developed by Vobile—a company they've all invested in—to block pirated material from being sent to and fro along its network.

— [email protected] Net Neuterality: AT&T Considering Scary, Content-Recognizing Anti-Piracy Filter for Entire Network, Gizmodo, by Matt Buchanan, 8 Nov 2007

Perhaps Disney, NBC, and AT&T have forgotten that Disney has made pirates very popular.

Meanwhile, it's one thing for YouTube to do content filtering. It's quite another for AT&T, as one of the duopoly of Internet access in most of the U.S., to do the same. You know, the same AT&T that censored Pearl Jam and other bands for expressing political views.

I wonder how big a backlash there will be when AT&T's customers discover more false positives than fingerprints?

-jsq

FCC: Trick or Treat! Media Consolidation

Today is November First, which is the deadline for comments on the FCC's media consolidation move. There's still no notice on the FCC web pages of a hearing on November 2.

Oh, wait! Kevin Martin held a hearing two days earlier, on Halloween instead! Without ever announcing it on the FCC web pages.

Dissident commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein appeared at a rally outside the FCC's office in Washington to object to Martin's chicanery. "Neither we nor the public received any confirmation that the hearing would occur until ... just 5 business days before the event," the commissioners said before entering the building for the hearing. "This is unacceptable and unfair to the public."

Joining Copps and Adelstein were political, labor and community leaders who condemned Martin's assault not merely on media diversity but on the basic standards for making regulatory shifts.

— No Treats for FCC Chair and Media Monopolists, John Nichols, The Nation, Wed Oct 31, 6:03 PM ET

Jesse Jackson, National Organization of Women, United Church of Christ, Future of the Media Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives; they all protested.

Martin even has the Parents Television Council against him.

Notice of a meeting only five days before to the other commissioners, and apparently none to the public? You'd think Martin didn't know how to talk to the press. Yet just a few days ago he was chatting with the New York Times about ending cable monopolies to apartments.

I wonder if he told the telcos about that Halloween meeting more than five days before? Nah, that would be corruption.

-jsq

FCC: Media Consolidation in November

Last year the FCC rushed through approval of the AT&T-Bellsouth merger at the last minute in December before the new Congress was convened in January. This year the rush is on reducing ownership of the majority of media in the U.S. from 50 owners to 5 in the past two decades wasn't enough already.

The Federal Communications Commission is responding to critics’ complaints that the agency isn’t giving them enough time to examine the scientific studies prepared for the agency’s media ownership review.

The FCC’s Media Bureau today extended the deadline for comment by three weeks, citing the request of Free Press, Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America.

Nearing the end of its examination of media ownership rules, the FCC on July 31 released 10 studies of various issues of media consolidation and indicated they could help form the basis of any rule changes. The studies included examinations of the impact of consolidation on news content, opinion, advertising and programming and also looked at minority ownership trends.

FCC Extends Deadline for Comments on Media Ownership Studies, By Ira Teinowitz, TV Week, September 28, 2007

Various groups complained, so the FCC made an extension:

The FCC said comments that were to have been filed by Oct. 1 now may be filed through Oct. 22, with responses now due by Nov. 1.

That's right: three more weeks to study an issue that will affect news, politics, government, and, well, basically everything for the indefinite future. Or, to be more specific, to study studies picked by the FCC.

Some observers are relatively confident of concessions, apparently not taking into account that some previous concessions have already fallen by the wayside:

Dispersed Media Ownership

Here's a point that somebody needed to spell out:

The Federal Communications Commission is considering whether to reduce restrictions on broadcast-station ownership, an action that would permit greater media and press concentration.

This is a bad idea. Bad for audiences, for citizens, and for democracy. Dispersed media ownership, ideally local ownership, serves democratic values, while conglomerate ownership and media mergers, which would be the result of reduced ownership restrictions, do the opposite.

Equality — one person one vote — provides the proper standard for the distribution of power and voice in a democracy. Maximum dispersal of media ownership can enable more people to identify a media entity as in some sense speaking for and to them.

Dispersed ownership also reduces the danger of inordinate, potentially demagogic power in the public sphere. As the FCC once recognized, many owners creates more independent decision makers who can devote journalistic resources to investigative reports. Finally, dispersal reduces — without eliminating — potential conflicts of interests between journalism and an owner's economic interests.

In contrast, media mergers put papers and broadcasters into the hands of executives whose career advancement depends on maximizing profits. Mergers require owners to squeeze out more profits to pay off debt created by the high bid made to secure the purchase. As too many recent examples show, the most consistent method to reduce expenses is to fire journalists.

— Dispersed media ownership serves democratic values By C. Edwin Baker, Los Angeles Times, 10 September 2007

There's more. It's all good. And it's by a law professor who has written a book on the subject, so he appears to have researched it.

Back to the ITU Future

I should have expected the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to be involved in this:

Another document came out last week that ties this all together. It's from the ITU, and it's called "Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2007: The Road to Next-Generation Networks (NGN)."

The ITU defines "NGN" as a network that provides quality-of-service-enabled transport technologies. The idea is that packet transport will be "enriched with Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) to ensure Quality of Service (QoS)."

Translation, as far as I can tell: packet transport becomes the same as circuit-switched transport. Prioritization is controlled; it's a network optimized on billing.

— Tying things together, by Susan Crawford, Susan Crawford blog, Mon 10 Sep 2007 08:05 PM ED

This takes us back to the bad old days when national telephone companies sold you data service by the byte, through their preferred protocol, X.25. The advantage of circuit switching was supposed to be fully provisioned copper wires or other resources all the way through between two parties. The disadvantages were that you sometimes couldn't get a connection and the high price, which got even higher between countries. It seems the telcos have settled on MPLS as their modern equivalent of X.25.

-jsq

Merger Mania

Interesting post here on Scott Cleland's Percursor Blog:

A major reason why the stakes are so high in the FTC's review of the Google-DoubleClick merger is how remarkably fast online advertising is overtaking other advertising industry segments that have been around for decades.

— Online ad trends show the huge stakes in the Google-Doubleclick merger, by Scott Cleland, Precursor Blog, Wed, 2007-09-05 17:38.

Interesting especially in that I don't recall him having any similar trepidations about the AT&T-Bellsouth merger.

He quotes eMarketer as saying that:

a recent report from equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson predicts that the Internet will displace television as the No. 1 ad medium by 2011." [bold added]

Cleland did not provide a link to eMarketer or to VSS.

A little googling finds the VSS press release about its report, which actually says:

Internet advertising is expected to become the largest ad segment in 2011, surpassing newspapers.

— New Veronis Suhler Stevenson Forecast: Shift to Alternative Media Strategies Will Drive U.S. Communications Spending Growth in 2007-2011 Period; Consumer Media Usage Expected to Level Off Going Forward, Press Release, Veronis Suhler Stevenson, 7 Aug 2007

VSS says newspapers: not television. Looks like somebody had television on the brain.

if we just had phones and Internet service

If you're stuck in a desert in the summer in a dead-end war, what do you want? Water, women, wine? Food and a ticket out? For some, the first thing they want is:

"There are two different wars," said Staff Sgt. Donald Richard Harris, comparing his soldiers' views with those of commanders in distant bases. "It's a dead-end process, it seems like."

Asked to rank morale in his unit, Harris gave it a 4 on a 10-point scale. "Look at these guys. This is their downtime," he said, as young soldiers around him silently cleaned dust from their rifles at a battle position south of the capital. A fiery wind blasted through the small base, an abandoned home surrounded by sandbags and razor wire.

"It sounds selfish, but if we just had phones and Internet service," said Staff Sgt. Clark Merlin, his voice trailing off.

— GIs' morale dips as Iraq war drags on, By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, August 25, 2007

This is perhaps an indication of how important Internet service is these days. With it, these troops can communicate with their peers, family, and others, not to mention get news on whatever they want. Without it, they're isolated in a howling desert.

Back home, without the Internet, we're isolated in the wastelands of TV.

-jsq

Heck of a Job, Stickler

Richard Sticker ((ABC 4 News))

What practical difference does it make when a president appoints political commissars as heads of departments and agencies, enforcing ideologicallines instead of doing their job?

Also coming to light, is the fact that Stickler's nomination to head the mine administration was twice rejected by congress and rejected when republicans were still in charge. Rejected reportedly by senators who were concerned about Stickler's safety record when he operated mines. After his nomination was twice rejected by the Senate, President Bush gave Richard Stickler the mine safety job with a recess appointment. That's a presidential appointment made when congress is not in session.

Finally, congressional investigations and hearings are now expected to look at a key provision of federal mining law, one which requires the U.S. Government to be the main communicator when an accident occurs. ABC News now notes it took the mine safety administration two days to take public control of the Crandall Canyon Mine. ABC also adds, "Others were irate that [mine owner Bob] Murray was allowed to publicly predict success and contradict MSHA itself while agency officials quietly looked on."

— Federal mine safety official's credentials questioned, Chris Vanocur, ABC 4 News, Last Update: 8/20 2007 8:00 pm

Dead people in mines. Dead people in Hurricane Katrina. Postal rate hikes for small publications. Wireless spectrum handed over to a few big companies. And of course massive consolidation of first mile Internet ISPs in the hands of companies that aren't delivering on their promises and that indulge in repeated political censorship while cooperating with the government in wiretapping.

The stakes going forward are even higher, including economic competitiveness, control of information, and political discourse and with it the survival of a political system.

At least the traditional media finally noticed the problem with the appointment of the Mine and Health Safety Administrator. Imagine if we had more proactive investigative media that might have actually noticed his appointment when it happened. And imagine if we had none, which is a very real possibility with continuing media consolidation and increasing control over the Internet by a very small number of companies.

-jsq

700Mhz: Duopoly As Usual

Susan Crawford reads the 700Mhz auction rules and confirms the worst:

1. Those Carterfone protections don't mean too much. The no-locking, no-blocking requirements are hedged in by substantial limitations: the winning licensee will be able to lock and block devices and applications as long as they can show that their actions are related to "reasonable network management and protection," or "compliance with applicable regulatory requirements." In other words, as long as the discrimination can be shown to be connected (however indirectly) to some vision of "network management," it will be permitted. (Discrimination "solely" for discrimination's sake is prohibited, but that's not too difficult to avoid.)

— Many, many devils in the details: 700 MHz rules, by Susan, from Susan Crawford blog, 13 Aug 2007

So it's ILECs vs. CLECs, round two. Guess who'll win?

And even supposedly Cmr. Copps "grudgingly accepted" these rules. Seems to me we need a whole new FCC, so we can get some real rules of the road.

And what we really need is some real competition.

-jsq

Russian Roulette

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps has a way with words. Last year he said we should be talking about Internet freedom rather than net neutrality. And now he says we're

playing Russian roulette with broadband and Internet and more traditional media

— FCC Commissioner: US playing "Russian roulette with broadband and Internet" By Nate Anderson, ars technica, August 03, 2007 - 09:20AM CT

And the Russians are winning.

Common Sense Conversation

In case it wasn't clear why the Internet is different from traditional broadcast news media:

...news is no longer a one-way process. It is now much more of a conversation between journalist and reader. Reporters at major news organizations no longer have the omnipotent authority they once had. The news process, in a word, has been democratized. Readers feel entitled to get just the information they want, in the form they want it. They feel entitled to talk back. Slowly but surely, we reporters are beginning to accept that readers do actually have this right, and that the feedback can make us better, not worse. As the old New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling once put it, "I think democracy a most precious thing, not because any democratic state is perfect, but because it is perfectible."

— The MSM vs. the blogosphere, by Michael Scherer, War Room, Salon, 3 August 2007

A conversation? Not controled by the few big media companies that control most other media? Now that sounds dangerous doesn't it? Dangerous like Common Sense.

-jsq

AT&T U-Verse Considered as Cable TV

In case it wasn't obvious why the telcos want local TV franchise laws repealed:

A federal judge has thrown up a roadblock in front of AT&T as it attempts to roll out its new U-Verse IPTV service in the state of Connecticut. In an opinion issued yesterday, Judge Janet Bond Arterton ruled that AT&T's U-Verse IPTV service is a cable television service like any other and is therefore subject to local franchising agreements.

— Federal judge: AT&T U-Verse == cable TV, By Eric Bangeman, ars technica, Published: July 27, 2007 - 10:44AM CT

But isn't it different from cable if it's carried over IP?

Crack Google?

Cringely gets anxious over Google's floor bid for 700Mhz. After pointing out that Verizon and AT&T coming around to Kevin Martin's leaked counterproposal of watered down "open access" rules, he says:

Look who Google is up against -- all the largest Internet service providers in the U.S. Google will not win this even if they win the auction, because the telcos and cable companies are far more skilled and cunning when it comes to lobbying and controlling politicians than Google can ever hope to be. The telcos have spent more than a century at this game and Google hasn't even been in it for a decade. And Google's pockets are no deeper than those of the other potential bidders.

— Is Google on Crack?: Eric Schmidt bets the ranch on wireless spectrum, Robert X. Cringely, Pulpit, 27 July 2007

Cringely is missing the point about who Google is up against. These outfits have not been the largest ISPs for more than a century. They've been telephone companies for more than a century. And being around for a long time isn't necessarily a sure win. Look at the Vatican; it's been around for two thousand years, and it's managed to lose most of its traditional heartland of Europe. Sure, Google is fragile, in some senses even more fragile than Microsoft, as Cringely points out. But even Microsoft is losing market share from IE to an open source browser, Firefox. Google, as a proponent of open source that actually understands it, has a fair chance here. The incumbent duopoly telcos aren't really in the Internet business; Google is.

Maybe Cringely's right that Google alone couldn't win the auction. But Google and Sprint possibly could. Sure, Sprint is a phone company, too. But that doesn't mean it's going to side with the rest if it scents profit. Maybe with a little help from Apple.

Let's hope that's what Google is really up to, rather than expecting to get Martin to change the rules and then wait for AT&T to deliver another striped bass.

I also don't think Cringely is taking into account the stakes here.

The Internet As a Market: Al Gore and Reasoned Discourse

So I've been wondering what to say about Al Gore's book, The Assault on Reason. A story in The Economist helped me out. After lauding Gore for calling Mr. Bush's risky schemes well before most people, for denouncing the invasion of Iraq back in 2002, for his Oscar, and for being "the man who changed the climate of opinion climate change", it then ridicules the book's core thesis:

But he does not stop there. He worries about America's money-saturated politics. He lambasts television for infantilising the electorate.

...

He sometimes comes across as eccentric—as when he lambasts television for killing public discourse, then celebrates the internet as its potential saviour. A few minutes online, reading the zealots on either the right or the left, should have been enough to explode that illusion.

— Gore in the balance, From The Economist print edition, May 31st 2007

That last would appear to be the sort of trivialized, perhaps even infantilized, reaction Gore is lamenting. The big advantage of the Internet is you get not just a few zealots at extreme ends of an arbitrary spectrum: you get all the shadings and colors and depth you can absorb. And you can weave your own strands in this home-made tapestry.

TV4U? Not Me!

Franchise reform, if you don't have enough supporters, apparently you can just write their names in anyway:

At a Capitol press conference, several others leading the fight against the bill -- including former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin and communications professor Cynthia Laitman -- said their names also falsely showed up as supporters of the deregulation bill on petitions given lawmakers by TV4Us, the private group leading the ad and public relations push for the bill.

"I don't know how it happened," said Soglin, who said he has pushed for tight municipal controls and consumer protections over the cable TV industry since 1971. "AT&T gets very confused."

— Legislators seek probe of misuse of names, By Steven Walters, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WEDNESDAY, July 11, 2007, 11:15 a.m.

How confused?

Franchise Reform?

In the previous post, I quoted a paper as saying competition would promote lower prices. Here's what the authors recommend to produce that competition:

Federal reform and additional state-specific reforms have focused on reforming "video franchising" laws to reduce barriers to entry and investment by new service providers. We commend such policies as likely to contribute to investment and competition in broadband services.

— The Effects of Broadband Deployment on Output and Employment: A Cross-sectional Analysis of U.S. Data, By Robert Crandall, William Lehr and Robert Litan, Brookings Institution, 2007

Here's what some affected parties think about that:

Two years ago we profiled the rural Massachusetts towns of Shutesbury and Leverett, who have long been trying to get broadband from anyone -- but aren't deemed profitable to serve by Comcast or Verizon. While towns as close as 300 feet get service, these two towns are still waiting, though some have concocted home brew solutions. Locals tell us they were insulted when approached by Verizon to support "franchise reform," which all but seals their fate by eliminating build out requirements.

—Broadband Black Holes: FiOS? We've never been able to get DSL, by Karl, BroadbandReports.com, 10:42AM Thursday Jul 05 2007

It seems "franchise reform" may be one of those newspeak phrases like "tax relief" which is used to persuade those who will suffer to support something that will benefit those who propose it.

It's enough to make you nostalgic for FDR and the REA.

-jsq

Broadband Produces Employment

Many have assumed that broadband is good for the economy; now here's a study with rivets:

More specifically, for every one percentage point increase in broadband penetration in a state, employment is projected to increase by 0.2 to 0.3 percent per year.

— The Effects of Broadband Deployment on Output and Employment: A Cross-sectional Analysis of U.S. Data, By Robert Crandall, William Lehr and Robert Litan, Brookings Institution, 2007

Of course, this is like saying every state in medieval Germany that had a printing press produced employment in the printing industry. There are economic and social effects far beyond mere employment. What should be done?

The paper has a few recommendations:

The surest route to lower prices is provided by increasing competition in the delivery of broadband services.

FCC's Record Screams

The Wall Street Journal doesn't trust the FCC to clean up TV:

Haven't we seen this TV sitcom before? It's the one in which politicians try to clean up the airwaves in the name of protecting children.

—FCC TV, Wall Street Journal, May 2007

Even though parents are concerned about violence on TV, the WSJ notes that there isn't exactly a groundswell of demand for political interference:

"The report cites studies showing that parents in the U.S. are deeply concerned about violence on TV. That may be true, but it's difficult to square with another of the report's findings, which is that nearly 70% of children have a TV in their bedroom. Either mom and dad aren't as concerned about the issue as policy makers and special-interest groups would like, or they have things in better perspective."

— FCC TV, Center for Creative Voices in Media Blog, 23 May 2007

Is this the only conservative voice against FCC censorship of whatever it chooses to call violence?

Media Ownership

While we're on the general subject of postal and Internet rates and a free press,, let's look at who owns the U.S. media:

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. ... When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation.

In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.

— Number of corporations that control a majority of U.S. media, Media Reform Information Center, accessed 21 June 2007

This might be worth remembering the next time you hear that the market will sort out any problems and there's no need for regulation. Would that there were a market so that that could be true.

-jsq

TV, Literacy, and the Internet

Whether Ray Bradbury is right about the cause being TV or not, it appears that U.S. adults don't read very well:

In the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) assessment, 1994-98:

• The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with primary or no education, ranked 14th out of 18 high-income countries;
• The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with some high school, but no diploma or GED, ranked 19th out of 19 high-income countries;
• The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with a high school diploma or GED (but no college), ranked 18th (tie) out of 19 countries;
• The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with 1-3 years of college, ranked 15th out of 19 countries; and
• The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with a bachelor's degree or higher, ranked 5th.

— The Twin Challenges of Mediocrity and Inequality: Literacy in the U.S. from an International Perspective, Sum, Andrew, Irwin Kirsch, and Robert Taggart, Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, February 2002. Quoted in Fact Sheet Overview, National Institute for Literacy, accessed 7 June 2007.

Apparently U.S. adults only really learn to read in college, and not all that well even then. And if they can't read very well, it's a safe bet that they don't read very much.

TV451

Ray Bradbury didn't go collect his Pulitzer special citation because winners aren't permitted to say anything, so he created a press event instead:

He says the culprit in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.

— Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted, L.A.’s august Pulitzer honoree says it was never about censorship, By Amy E. Boyle Johnston, Wednesday, May 30, 2007 - 7:00 pm

Yet the state, or politicians, can leverage that opiate for their ends just as well, perhaps even better, than if the government sold the drug directly.

Presidential Spectrum

A presidential candidate sends a letter to the FCC about reallocating 700Mhz spectrum currently used by analog TV:

In recent years, the Internet has grown to touch everything and transform much of what it touches. It's not the answer to everything, but it can powerfully accelerate the best of America. It improves our democracy by making quiet voices loud, improves our economy by making small markets big, and improves opportunity by making unlikely dreams possible.

— Edwards Calls On FCC To Make Internet More Available And Affordable, John Edwards '08, 30 May 2007

The letter goes on to propose sensible concrete actions. So not only is this letter remarkable in that a presidential candidate sent it, but also that what he writes makes sense.

-jsq

PS: Seen on Art Brodsky.

Rocketboom Explains Net Neutrality

RocketBoom on net neutrality:

Net neutrality is not a luxury: it's life, or death.

Found on Rock the Net.

-jsq

Google + Cable TV

Imminent death of the Internet predicted:

Cable operators are set to return to capital investments of a modest 10 to 12 percent of revenues, but they can be forced to spend much more due to outside pressures from increased Internet consumption and from rival telecoms operators that upgrade their broadband Internet packages to fiber optic super speeds.

"Then, the world becomes cloudy," Manby said.

Google and cable firms warn of risks from Web TV, By Lucas van Grinsven, European Telecoms Correspondent, Reuters, Wed Feb 7, 2007 6:56PM EST

Manby is "Charles Manby, Goldman Sachs' global co-head for the telecoms, media and technology industries." The article remarks that Google thinks the Internet at large doesn't scale for putting mainstream TV on it, and google offers to provide search capabilities for cable TV instead.