August 2009

The Antitrust Anachronism

[Commentary] The Sherman Act and later antitrust laws were supposed to protect consumer interests. That's not so easy when regulators have to deal with industries as different as oil, with its cartels and long product cycles, and technology, where fast change is a constant necessity for survival. The result: It could be months before the government approves or vetoes last week's deal between Yahoo and Microsoft to team up on search, undertaken as an effort to create a real alternative to the dominant Google. The bottom line is that by the time regulators can assess a technology market, the market has often moved on. The antitrust laws are anachronisms when applied to industries of constant innovation. Even theories about the role of antitrust were designed for the industrial era. Instead of more aggressive enforcement of a legal relic, the real question is when will technology's ever faster cycles of creative destruction spell the end of antitrust law? Consumers benefit from competition, innovation and new technology, which regulation cannot provide but can suppress. Instead of using 19th-century tools for this century's challenges, President Obama should tell his regulators to study the humility of technologists who understand that today's leader can be tomorrow's laggard.

FTC May Ease Anti-Trust Laws to Save News

The federal government is preparing an inquiry into the endangered field of news and reporting -- and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz is dropping some broad hints about what will be in it. He expressed some sympathy to easing antitrust enforcement of media consolidations to prevent more newspapers from folding or further declines in TV news staffs. He also said the FTC intends not just throw out a lifeline. He wants to ensure that media companies are doing a good enough job finding alternative revenues. Some media critics contend that at least part of the current woes affecting journalism reflect heavy-handed cutbacks and management failures to pitch new readers or charge for websites.

Broadcast Station Owner: Ownership Deregulation Is Key To Local TV's Survival

A Q&A with Gene Loving of Max Media LLC, a company that buys immature and troubled television and radio stations and, in theory, sells them off for a profit. But in the current economy, turning stations around and selling them ain't too easy. Loving says the Federal Communications Commission "has to recognize that the rules they put in place a long time ago are really irrelevant today. They ought to eliminate all the ownership restrictions." Yes, all. "If anything, the need to get rid of burdensome and restrictive rules has increased over the past six years as the financial support has gotten much, much worse. Chairman [Julius] Genachowski, with the support of the majority of the commission, could order the staff to stop enforcing a list of rules and ownership restrictions now. At the same time, he could announce that in better times the FCC will consider what new rules it may want to enact, having had the benefit of the real world experience, instead of supposition."

Microsoft deal will pay Yahoo more after 5 years

Yahoo will get slightly more revenue from Microsoft during the second half of the companies' recently announced 10-year Internet search partnership. The share of revenue that Microsoft pays to run search ads on Yahoo's network of sites will increase from 88 percent to 90 percent in the second five years of the partnership, according to regulatory filings by Yahoo on Tuesday. At least 400 Yahoo employees will join Microsoft as part of the Internet search partnership, and the two companies will select an additional 150 Yahoo employees to help with the transition of powering Yahoo's search and ad search with Microsoft technology.

White House still seeking cybersecurity czar

President Barack Obama is still searching for the right person to lead the fight against an epidemic of cybercrime, the White House said on Tuesday as it came under fire following the resignation of top cybersecurity adviser Melissa Hathaway. "The loss of her expertise on this issue is unfortunate," said Sen Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking Republican on the Senate homeland security committee. She said the White House should not appoint a cybersecurity czar but should work with Congress to appoint a "cyber leader" at the Department of Homeland Security. House Cybersecurity Caucus co-chairs Jim Langevin (D-RI) and Michael McCaul (R-TX) pressed the Obama administration on Tuesday to move quickly in appointing a high-level White House official to coordinate agencies' efforts to identify and guard against attacks on public and private sector information technology networks. Separately on Tuesday, Obama's homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, said she was working to recruit industry experts on cybersecurity.

The Newspaper-Web War

The newspaper industry and its allies have many grievances against the Web. They say the Web is parasitic, that it copies newspaper content and steals its advertising. They claim that Web creators will never provide the deep reporting that democracy needs and that newspapers provided before the Web arrived and ruined the media neighborhood. They want to tame the Web by rejigging copyright law. And they protest that the Web has undermined quality journalism by teaching readers to expect news for free. Whatever the merits of these complaints, it's not the first time established media have accused new media of bringing on Armageddon. Although not completely analogous to today's tussle between the newspapers and the Web, the media battle in the 1920s and 1930s echoes its points of contention. Back then, anti-radio newspapers (newspapers that didn't own radio stations) were furious over the unauthorized use of newspaper and wire service copy, just as today's Associated Press and newspaper publishers are raging over what they regard as the theft of their copy and headlines by Web sites and search engines like Google.

Olbermann's Non-Denial and His Good Move

[Commentary] On his show last night, Keith Olbermann essentially issued a non-denial denial about the GE-MSNBC-Fox story, saying that he himself was "party to no deal" - exactly what he said in the original New York Times article. There's no reason to doubt Olbermann - however, as journalism prof Dan Kennedy suggests, Olbermann's own personal lack of involvement in a "deal" is far less important than the simple fact that GE started trying to give blatant news-content orders to MSNBC's newsroom - orders that may have been followed in places well beyond Olbermann's control. Certainly, the fact that Olbermann resisted those orders is good news, but this story wasn't an indictment of Olbermann - it was an indictment of the entire corporate-news structure of the networks in question.

Prof Tests AP 'Copyfraud'

The Associated Press has made no secret of its stance that bloggers who excerpt passages from stories should pay licensing fees. But the wire service might want to take a closer look at how its licensing policy is being implemented. On Monday, New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann reported on his blog that he paid the AP $12 to license a 26-word quote from Thomas Jefferson. The quote, which takes aim at the concept of intellectual property, has long been in the public domain. The AP says the rights were sold through iCopyright, which the news service tapped to sell licenses online in April of 2008. "It is an automated form, thus explaining how one blogger got it to charge him for the words of a former president," the AP said. iCopyright CEO Mike O'Donnell says the company operates on the "honor system" and relies on "reasonable checks and balances to verify that people or companies getting licenses through the system are being honest." The platform asks users to cut and paste the text they wish to excerpt into a box, and then charges based on words used. O'Donnell says the company issues more than 25,000 licenses each day. By Monday afternoon, iCopyright had revoked the license it had granted Grimmelmann and refunded his $12.

Equal Billing: TV/Internet Use High For Old/Young Demos

Good news for CBS comes from new Internet research and their older-skewing traditional TV demographic. Younger TV households may be another story. Simultaneous use of TV and the Internet is just as high with young viewers as with the older crowd, according to David Poltrack, chief research officer of CBS Corp. and president of CBS Vision, during a press briefing at the Television Critics Association meeting here. An average of 30.8% of adults 35-54 adults and 33.8% of adults 55-64 multitask Internet and TV usage, according to CBS research. Older adults watching prime time are just as likely to be online as the younger adults, he says.

NIST Seeks Nominations for Federal Advisory Committees

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) invites and requests nomination of individuals for appointment to its eight existing Federal Advisory Committees: Technology Innovation Program Advisory Board, Board of Overseers of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Judges Panel of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, Manufacturing Extension Partnership Advisory Board, National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee, Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazards Reduction, and Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology. Nominations for all committees will be accepted on an ongoing basis and will be considered as and when vacancies arise.

Benton

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