June 2010

Why US Tech Policy Needs Silicon Valley's Input

[Commentary] The enormous economic impact of Silicon Valley's edge and cloud companies isn't adequately reflected in the policy debates taking place in Washington (DC). Given the extraordinary market power and plugged-in political clout of the few high-speed Internet access providers in this country, the Valley can no longer simply come up with tech solutions to get around what's going on in Washington. The Federal Communications Commission is about to begin a consideration of how to regulate broadband. Entrepreneurs need a level playing field that's predictable and allows them to launch without asking permission. The network access providers have clearly aimed all of their guns — monetary and otherwise — at the Commission in an attempt to avoid any hint of standardized regulation that would ensure competition or prevent them from monetizing Internet application. The tech community, by contrast, has been all but silent.

Verizon: Comcast P2P blocking was wrong, we won't do it

Verizon isn't a fan of the FCC's proposed "third way" approach to network neutrality rules, and the company's top policy people have suggested that the Internet needs an entirely new "policy framework." Such a framework will require massive wrangling in Congress, so in the short term, Verizon has partnered with Google and others to find a "consensus" framework for the short-term.

Is this a plan to avoid government rules on openness and turn the company into a maniacal bit-blocker? At a recent panel discussion, Verizon policy exec Link Hoewing said no—the company has no wish to go down Comcast's P2P blocking route, and he called out Comcast for its earlier approach. "We came up with a standard that says any of the players on the Internet should not do anything that harms users or competition," said Hoewing. "And I think that's a pretty important policy principle. Because what it says is that, take the Comcast case, in that case, they were using reset packets and it clearly did harm a lot of users. They were not able to use the Internet, some of them. So that principle basically says you can't do that kind of thing, even if it's network management to deal with congestion problems. That's not appropriate." Verizon is one of the sponsors of a new private-sector group that hopes to work out network management principles -- and Hoewing argues that such a group could have saved Comcast from itself.

New Illinois law relaxes phone regulations

Telephone companies operating in Illinois will face fewer regulations, and consumers could face higher prices under a measure Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL) signed into law June 15, a move supporters said will encourage investment in broadband and wireless technologies.

Under the new law, companies offering local phone service can change service packages and pricing plans without approval from the Illinois Commerce Commission. Supporters said the outdated regulations, last revamped in 2001, were not doing enough to create competition and profits that will entice companies to expand service and create new jobs.

Consumers can choose from three packages for land-line service: a basic plan that includes 30 local calls a month, one that allows for unlimited local calls or a more advanced plan that includes unlimited local calls and two extra features, such as voice mail and call waiting. Prices range from $3.05 a month for the most basic plan to $19.70 a month for the more advanced, though they are lowest in Chicago and highest in rural areas.

"There is always going to be a battle with telephone companies over pricing," said Jim Chilsen, a spokesman for the Citizens Utility Board. "But now we have protections in place for consumers who want plain old telephone service and want to keep their rates low." The changes go into effect immediately and will be in place for the next three years, when lawmakers would have to revisit the issue.

Officials hope map detailing high-speed Internet access will help bring service to rural Texas

The first map detailing high-speed Internet access around the state will highlight unserved rural areas in hopes of bringing service to those communities, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said Wednesday.

The interactive map unveiled during an online news conference allows computer users to pinpoint availability even down to a specific rural home. Staples says the tool could lead service providers to target future investment. Although the map shows 96 percent of Texas households have access to high-speed, or broadband, Internet service, Staples said that doesn't mean much to the roughly 250,000 homes without it. The map allows individuals and businesses to search specific areas to see whether broadband access exists and, if so, what services are available. The map features color-coded overlays representing varieties of wired and wireless access, plus areas without any of those services. It also brings up links to providers, which officials say will allow customers to compare prices. Connected Texas, the nonprofit that did the mapping for the Texas Department of Agriculture, will try to identify areas of strong demand that might persuade providers to move in, said Chief Executive Brian Mefford.

The $3 million mapping project was funded through federal stimulus money.

Internet File-Sharing Service Is Sued by Music Publishers

A coalition of eight music publishers sued the file-sharing service LimeWire on June 16, accusing it of copyright infringement, according to the National Music Publishers' Association, the industry group that organized the suit.

The lawsuit comes after a federal judge's ruling last month in a similar case brought by record companies that LimeWire and its creator, Mark Gorton, were liable for copyright infringement. David Israelite, chief executive of the publishers' association, said his organization had decided to bring the complaint because most publishers were not represented in the record company lawsuit and they were now confident that they had a winning case. The suit says that the "knowing and deliberate infringement is massive, as is the harm."

After Delay, AT&T Deal Nears Approval

After a prolonged review, AT&T is close to securing regulatory approval for its $2.35 billion purchase of rural U.S. wireless licenses from rival Verizon Wireless.

Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski last week circulated an order asking the other four members of the commission to approve the deal. The vote could happen in coming weeks. Regulators mandated the sale in 2008 as a condition for approving $28.1 billion purchase of Alltel by Verizon, a unit of Verizon Communications Inc. AT&T, which stands to add a swath of network coverage in 18 states, mainly in the middle of the country, announced the deal with Verizon in May 2009 and had said it expected to close the sale in the first quarter. But with a new commission taking over last year and a flood of other issues at the top of the FCC's list, the Alltel deal took a back seat.

The Disclose Act is a matter of campaign honesty

[Commentary] On Jan. 21, 2010, the Supreme Court threw out 100 years of established law and legal precedent that protected the integrity of our political process against direct campaign expenditures by big-money special interests. With Americans already struggling to have their voices heard in Washington, the ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission dramatically expanded the ability of special interests to influence the political process.

The most important things Congress can do in response to this ruling are to increase transparency and shine a light on the special interests trying to influence elections. That is why we have introduced the bipartisan Disclose (Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Elections) Act. The bill requires the disclosure of political spending by special interests, keeps foreign-controlled companies from affecting America's elections, and ensures that entities that receive large amounts of taxpayer money can't turn around and spend that money in campaigns. By bringing campaign spending into the light, we empower voters to make more informed decisions.

NRA exemption shows campaign disclosure bill's cynical, fatal flaws

[Commentary] The cynical decision this week by House Democrats to exempt the National Rifle Association from the latest campaign finance regulatory scheme is itself a public disclosure. It reveals the true purpose of the perversely named Disclose Act (H.R. 5175): namely, to silence congressional critics in the 2010 elections.

The NRA "carve-out" reaffirms the wisdom of the First Amendment's precise language: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech." The Disclose Act isn't really intended to elicit information not currently required by law. The act serves notice on certain speakers that their involvement in the political process will exact a high price of regulation, penalty and notoriety, using disclosure and reporting as a subterfuge to chill their political speech and association. It is only disclosure, say the authors. And box-cutters are only handy household tools . . . until they are used by terrorists to crash airplanes. This is not just "disclosure." It is a scheme hatched by political insiders to eradicate disfavored speech. There is no room under the First Amendment for Congress to make deals on political speech, whether with the NRA or anyone else.

[Mitchell is a member of the NRA's board of directors.]

Google shadow over new media groups

Google is developing technology that could position it to compete with a new breed of digital media companies that are generating story ideas for the Internet by mining online search data for under-covered topics.

These new digital companies hope to produce content more cheaply than traditional media operations by using statistical analysis to identify topics of interest to consumers and then hiring freelancers to produce relevant stories or videos. However, Google obtained a patent this year for a system that would help it identify "inadequate content" on the Internet, based on comparisons of what people search for and what they find. The filing said data from the Google system could be sold to online publishers or given away for free, which could complicate the plans of companies such as Demand Media, Associated Content and AOL that are developing systems to generate ideas for Internet content using software algorithms.

A good example of Obama's warning about the media focusing on 'sexier' stories

[Commentary] President Barack Obama has had a few choice words for reporters recently. He warned graduates at the University of Michigan of the damage the media do by playing up "every hint of conflict" to produce "sexier" stories. Vilification on both sides, President Obama said, "prevents learning - since after all, why should we listen to a 'fascist' or a 'socialist' or a 'right-wing nut' or a 'left-wing nut'?"

It's a lesson that the slew of reporters who have recently cited the spring 2010 report of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), "Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism," should have taken to heart. The SPLC, known for monitoring hate groups, warned of a resurgent tide of a right-wing movement that in the 1990s "produced an enormous amount of violence." "Patriot groups - militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose 'one-world government' on liberty-loving Americans," they reported, "came roaring back after years out of the limelight." SLPC spokesman Mark Potok was even more explicit in an interview. He told one reporter that today's America "feels a lot like the run-up to Oklahoma City," and penned an opinion article to that effect on the 15th anniversary of the bombing. Meanwhile, Obama has a point about reporters. No matter how difficult times are for them, journalists must remember to always think critically: An easy story, or a high traffic story, is not necessarily a true story, regardless of whether there are "data" to push it.

[Holmes is a research associate at New America Foundation.]

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