July 2014

[Commentary] The world was introduced to Kickstarter when our Web site went live in 2009. One thing we didn’t have to worry about: access to the Internet. We didn’t have to negotiate a deal with a cable company or other Internet service provider (ISP). Such roadblocks would have created enormous logistical and financial hurdles -- ones so big they might have shut us down before we got started.

But that’s the world that start-ups will be born into if the Federal Communications Commission moves forward with its proposed rules allowing paid prioritization -- a system where Internet carriers can charge for access to a “fast lane.” Once a fast lane exists, it will become the de facto standard on the Web. Sites unwilling or unable to pay up will be buffered to death: unloadable, unwatchable and left out in the cold.

It won’t be enough anymore to have a great idea and to execute it well. New entrepreneurs will have to pay their ISP tax, too. This proposed system would incentivize entrepreneurs to divert resources from their customers and staff and into paid deals with ISPs. Trading healthy competition for deep pockets is a terrible way to create an innovative, competitive economy.

It’s also a terrible way to promote a vibrant culture and informed citizenry. Allowing paid priority access and content discrimination would threaten the free exchange of ideas that takes place online, between people from all around the world, every second of every day. That free exchange is key to what makes the Internet such a powerful force.

[Strickler is chief executive and co-founder of Kickstarter]

The clash between Amazon.com and publishing giant Hachette has taken a new turn, as hundreds of authors asked readers to write e-mails to Amazon's chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos to protest the web retailer's tough tactics.

One letter, spearheaded by author Douglas Preston and signed by nearly 400 authors -- including Stephen King, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert A. Caro and novelist ames Patterson -- takes Amazon to task specifically for not accepting pre-orders on Hachette authors' books, not discounting the prices of many Hachette books and slowing the delivery of many Hachette titles to consumers' doorsteps.

"We have made Amazon many millions of dollars and over the years have contributed so much, free of charge, to the company by way of cooperation, joint promotions, reviews and blogs. This is no way to treat a business partner. Nor is it the right way to treat your friends," the authors wrote.

As far too many of us have learned as a result of the recession, the public library is often the only place where out-of-work Americans can go to apply for jobs and unemployment benefits online. In many cases, the only way libraries can afford to offer those services is with help from the federal government. Through a public program known as E-Rate, Washington gives institutions a bit of money each year to defray the costs of buying Internet service and equipment.

That initiative got a big boost recently, with the Federal Communications Commission announcing plans to spend $1 billion a year for the next two years on better Wi-Fi, amid a broader push to modernize the E-Rate program. Now the FCC has to decide how to divide up that $2 billion -- and libraries are smack in the center of a brewing fight about it. Library directors from five cities, including Seattle, Memphis and Hartford (CT), have sent letters to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler saying that they stand to be shortchanged if the commission moves forward with a plan to tie the money to the square footage of their facilities.

Under the proposal, the FCC would give libraries a budget for WiFi funding at a rate of $1 per square foot -- which some say isn't nearly enough. "Wi-Fi costs are not merely a function of the square footage of a room with wireless connectivity," wrote Matthew Poland, chief executive of the public library system in Hartford (CT). "Wi-Fi performance is a function of users."

Poland argued that other libraries -- such as those serving wealthy suburbanites -- tend to be bigger. Not only would the proposed formula give more funding to suburban facilities, but those libraries would be taking in money that might be put to better use elsewhere. Inner-city libraries, Poland wrote, serve more users in a tighter space; their patrons tend to be less wealthy and disproportionately unemployed or under-employed. The upshot: It isn't fair for large, rich libraries to get even more money when small, needy libraries might get less.