Monthly Archives: September 2007

FCC Investigating Wiretapping?

ejm_crop.jpg Now this would be a good thing if it happened:
House telecom subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) repeated his call for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate widespread allegations of telecom privacy law violations by intelligence agencies that received cooperation from telecom carriers in anti-terrorist surveillance efforts.

— Markey renews calls for FCC investigation into wiretapping, By Jeffrey Silva, RCCWireless News, September 12, 2007 – 2:13 pm EDT

That would be about as likely as Gonzales starting such an investigation.

Oh, wait:

After Markey wrote Martin in March to ask him to launch an investigation into whether telecom privacy laws have been broken, the FCC chairman wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to verify that the agency could not conduct such a probe because it would violate federal laws governing disclosure of state secrets. Gonzales, who recently announced his resignation, has yet to respond to Martin.
Markey points at a number of events since his first request, such as that it’s not a secret anymore that the government has been using telcos to wiretap.

It would be good if the FCC were to represent the public interest, rather than just the telco and cableco and the administration’s interest.

-jsq

PS: Seen on Fergie’s tech blog.

Dispersed Media Ownership

edwin_baker.jpg 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. Continue reading →

Twaddle v. a Wonder of the World

goldengate.jpg It’s good to see a newspaper not mince words:
A free-for-all web (after normal monthly broadband charges have been paid) is one of the wonders of the world and a binding force for all communities.

…

The Federal Communications Commission has just been advised by the US department of justice, under heavy lobbying from the operators who stand to gain from higher data charges, that a neutral net might “prevent, rather than promote” investment and innovation. This is twaddle. An open-access net has produced one of the greatest surges of innovation ever recorded and has given an opportunity for people all over the world to communicate with each other and share knowledge on equal terms. Long may it continue to be so.

— In praise of… a freely available internet, Leader, The Guardian, Tuesday September 11, 2007

The Guardian brings up a related point:

It has only become an issue because the US Congress is scrutinising the question of “net neutrality”, though why the US authorities – rather than an international body – should deem themselves to have jurisdiction over the internet is not clear.
The usual answer to that is that a properly constituted international body would do even worse. Although nowadays, it seems the otherwise unlateralist U.S. government is toeing the (pseudo-)capitalist international party line.

-jsq

Back to the ITU Future

itu.jpg 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

Whatevermerit

qualls1.jpg
Photograph by
Martynka Wawrzyniak
Ashley Qualls, aged 17, builds a myspace site, Whateverlife, earns $70,000/month, quits school, buys house, refuses $1.5 million buy out.
Her MySpace page layouts are available for the bargain price of…nothing. They’re free for the taking. Her only significant source of revenue so far is advertising.

— Girl Power, by Chuck Salter, Fast Company, Issue 118, September 2007, Page 104

Ads by ValueClick Media, not DoubleClick.

Now imagine her doing this on a properly commoditized and monetized broadcast content duopoly-controled Internet. She wouldn’t be able to get approval, and if she did, she wouldn’t be able to afford the broadcast fees.

Internet freedom? Whatever!

-jsq

PS: Seen on SocialDailyNews.com.

Copper-Based Competitors

highlander.jpg The chutzpah:
Ed Shakin, a lawyer for Verizon, said network-sharing requirements are no longer needed in certain cities now that cable companies and other competitors have rolled out Internet and phone service. “What competitors want are artificially low prices,” he said. “It comes down to a fight about price, not availability.”

— Telecom Changes Put Competition on the Line, By Kim Hart, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, September 6, 2007; Page D01

So Verizon is reducing the number of competitors, but as long as there is at least one, that’s enough, they say. Apparently Verizon thinks its competition is the Highlander: There Can Be Only One.

-jsq

Merger Mania

cleland.jpg 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. Continue reading →

Intended vs. Legal

richard-m-nixon-sized.jpg Shortly after a high level U.S. official acknowledged that telephone companies have helped the government in illegal spying, this comes out:
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.

The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the program.

The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or “any other form of assistance” to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.

— Bush Seeks Legal Immunity for Telecoms, By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer, August 31, 2007 – 5:02 p.m. EDT

Let’s let President Nixon sum it up:

Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

— Richard M. Nixon interviewed by David Frost, 19 May 1977.

Yet the same administration can’t be proactive about effective regulation of first-mile Internet access for effective competition.

-jsq

The Amazon Channel

packages.gif It’s all very well to talk about net neutrality or Internet freedom and how it affects 700Mhz spectrum sales or freedom of the press. But what does all this have to do with the average Internet user?

Suppose the telcos and cablecos get everything they want.

To buy a BBQ grill on eBay, you’ll have to pay for the eBay channel. This is above whatever you pay the seller for the grill or eBay for your membership. You’ll have to pay your local Internet access company just to let you get to eBay to participate in the auction. Oh, maybe you’ll be able to get there anyway, but your access may be so slow that you’ll pay for the eBay channel out of frustration.

If you want to buy a book from Amazon, you’ll have to pay for the Amazon channel. For search you’ll need the Yahoo channel or the ask.com channel or the google channel. Assuming your favorite search engine is even offered as a channel. Many smaller services probably won’t be.

Maybe it won’t be quite this bad. Continue reading →