September 2009

A radical plan to save old media

[Commentary] Since the dawn of the Internet, news organizations have accepted the notion that the only way to survive the onslaught of the Web is to publish everything online, at no cost to readers, and let anyone in the world synopsize it, refer to it, and copy and link to it. You can't charge for your work—that's rule No. 1 on the Internet. And you can't block others from copying or linking to it—that's rule No. 2. But those rules are starting to look stupid. All the media companies that follow them are going broke, so now they're casting about for a new business model. Some are talking about making readers pay subscription fees. But the most radical idea, and the one I find most intriguing, is being advanced by Mark Cuban, a billionaire Internet entrepreneur. Cuban's advice: declare war on the "aggregator" Web sites that get a free ride on content. These aggregators—sites like Drudge Report, Newser, and countless others—don't create much original material. They mostly just synopsize stuff from mainstream newspapers and magazines, and provide a link to the original.

FCC Issues Reminders to TV Stations, Cable Operators

The Federal Communications Commission issued two public reminders Thursday to TV stations and cable operators, one of an upcoming deadline and the other of an ongoing obligation. The FCC reminded them in one public notice that all nonexempt Spanish-language video has to be closed captioned as of Jan. 1, 2010. In another, it cited the Southern California fires and the current hurricane season as reason to remind program distributors, again including cable and broadcast, of their obligation to make emergency information accessible to the vision- and hearing-impaired.

Concern grows over emphasis on technology to push transparency

Some members of the open government community are dissatisfied with what they believe to be the White House's overemphasis on technology to carry out its transparency initiative. President Obama took office pledging in a Jan. 21 memo to release a directive ordering agencies to use technology to create a more transparent government. Parts of the whistleblower community and OpenTheGovernment.org steering committee want officials to address policies that would make information disclosure a central part of doing business in government. Such policies, which include e-rulemaking, classification and archiving regulations, would use technology as a means to an end, not the end, they say. Open government advocates outside the technology community stress that new applications such as wikis, which are Web pages that any user can edit, are one tool for creating transparency in government, but "wiki government" is not the solution, they argue.

Court Rejects Challenge To Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge by the Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association, which had argued that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is unconstitutionally vague and infringes on people's right to privacy. The 2006 law prohibits banks and credit card companies from processing payments used for unlawful online gambling. The gaming group argued that the law is too vague because there's no generally accepted definition of unlawful Internet gambling. Instead, the statute leaves it to state and federal governments to define illegal Web gambling. But the court rejected that argument. "The fact that gambling may be prohibited in some states but permitted in others does not render the act unconstitutionally vague," the court wrote.

Federal Government Needs Massive Hiring Binge (updated)

The federal government needs to hire more than 270,000 workers for "mission-critical" jobs over the next three years, a surge prompted in part by the large number of baby-boomer federal workers reaching retirement age. The numbers also reflect the Obama administration's intent to take on several enormous challenges, including the repair of the financial sector, fighting two wars, and addressing climate change. "It has to win the war for talent in order to win the multiple wars it's fighting for the American people," said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, the think tank that conducted the survey of 35 federal agencies, representing nearly 99 percent of the federal workforce. Despite its comprehensive scope, the survey is necessarily imprecise about certain questions in looking so far into the future. The number of hires would be affected, for example, by federal workers deciding to delay their retirement, the government continuing to rely on private contractors to handle some of these jobs, and Congress balking at the price tag of adding new workers to the federal payroll. Nevertheless, the survey makes clear that the majority of new hires will be needed in five broad fields -- medical, security, law enforcement, legal and administrative.

The reports says the federal government will need to hire more than 11,500 workers during the next three years to fill various roles in information technology. The lion's share of IT positions will be in defense and related segments. The report predicts both the Army and Navy will need more than 1,800 new hires, the Defense Department will need 1,400 and the Department of Homeland Security will need to hire 1,000 new IT professionals.

A Framework for Universal Broadband

Broadband provides lots of benefits to the economy and society, and the more widely available broadband is, the greater the benefits. But there are costs to universal deployment that may not be immediately recouped, such as the expense of laying fiber in rural areas, acquiring rights-of-way, or clearing spectrum for wireless broadband. And once a network is in place, low rates of adoption could delay enjoyment of the economic and societal gains. As government policies inherently affect both the revenues and the costs of broadband, part of the Federal Communications Commission's job, in thinking about a national broadband plan, is to explore whether those policies should be adjusted to increase the revenues and decrease the costs of inputs associated with broadband. Simple, right? Levin has worries, oh, he has worries every day. What if low adoption doesn't provide sufficient incentives to build out and upgrade wireline, cable and wireless networks? With the Universal Service Fund already strained, how do we fund deployment?

A National Broadband Plan: The Social Entrepreneurship Model

[Commentary] Using broadband infrastructure to promote jobs creation, workforce development and entrepreneurship education through the building of social entrepreneurship and asset-based community development modalities. By definition, Asset-Based Community Development (A-BCD) is a methodology that seeks to uncover and highlight the strengths within communities as a means for sustainable development. The basic tenet is that a capacities-focused approach is more likely to empower the community and therefore mobilize citizens to create positive and meaningful change from within. Instead of focusing on a community's needs, deficiencies and problems, the A-BCD approach helps them become stronger and more self-reliant by discovering, mapping and mobilizing this model using all their local assets. Few people realize how many assets any community has. Using this definition as the premise and incorporating into this model, the empowerment that our communities unknowingly maintain to create positive and meaningful change from within lies with technology. The layperson or average citizen does not realize that the assets needed to generate revenue that stays within their communities, and would support self-sustainability of these communities where we work and live, are literally right there under our noses.

FCC should look to thousands of stimulus applications to define broadband

[Commentary] Out of the 2,200 applications asking for nearly $28 billion in broadband stimulus funds from the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) and Rural Utilities Service (RUS), how many do you expect will propose to offer 768 kbps downstream and 200 kbps upstream broadband? The Federal Communications Commission should root through the thousands of applications to find out exactly what applicants are proposing. They could get a good picture of what speeds are economically viable in some of the most hard-to-reach areas.

FCC Focuses On Big-Picture Ideas At Broadband Workshop

The Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Workshop on "Big Ideas" looked at how outside-the-box developments that could shape the future of broadband. They included the bifurcation of the Internet into a number of virtual private networks and the need for more research and development.

David Clark, professor and senior research scientist at MIT's computer lab dominated much of the conversation in the first half of the workshop, which focused on those big ideas. He was even asked to sit in on the following panel -- on Internet TV -- by impressed FCC staffers. In fact, all of the first panels' participants got high marks from staffers. Daniel Weitzner, from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, suggested bolting the panelists to the floor and make them write the broadband plan. Clark argued that wireless would not become a substitute for wired broadband, saying it would wind up being some combination of both. Fluidity was the concept he drove home, about both the state of broadband and how the national plan should be structured. He said the goal was not a one-time objective but a continuing process, which meant sustainability, a concept cable operators have long said was key to any government proposals.

The Broadband Apps and Devices Workshop

On August 27th the FCC helped moderate two workshops on technology, applications and devices, which provoked some fascinating discussions around the current and future state of broadband in America.

The first workshop focused on the current state of the network, applications, and devices. The panelists represented a cross-section of network, applications, and devices backgrounds and covered a number of critical points. The first point from the panel was that defining broadband in a way that is sustainable and measurable is a non-trivial task. The second point the panel discussed was that the US is lagging far behind best-in-class countries (South Korea was mentioned most frequently) in terms of performance of and access to the Internet. Finally, the panel also discussed the impact of US policy on innovation. The panelists agreed that policy (ranging from spectrum policy to telco consolidation) has had and will continue to have a significant impact on innovation, both in the telecom and network spaces.

The day's second workshop included a group more heavily representing equipment and network providers. The group focused on several topics, including the debate of "What is broadband 'success' for the US?" An interesting segment of this debate centered on the question of what was more important to our 'success' - is it more important to increase adoption among those who are served but don't buy broadband, or is it more important to increase the quality of current users' experience. The panel also discussed the importance of basic broadband as a gateway to better broadband for the user - the premise is that once a user experiences even a modest broadband connection (and one that doesn't incur per-use charges or tie up the phone line) they will trade up to a higher speed. A final discussion for the second panel was around the short-term and long-term path of innovation and utilization, and implicitly around the "social value" of certain activities.

Benton

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