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[Commentary] Just when you thought you had enough to worry about (fiscal cliff, global warming, Syria), along comes WCIT, pronounced "wicket."
What WCIT stands for is the World Conference on International Telecommunications. What it is, is a chance for various international cabals to kill the open and free Internet. Look, I thought it was crazy, too, when I first heard about the idea of handing over regulation of the Internet to an obscure U.N. agency. I mean, come on. Are black helicopters going to be buzzing our backyards to see what we're liking on Facebook? Do we need to line our bedroom windows with tinfoil to keep our bank accounts from being drained? Is some nasty regime going to shut down the Internet, as if we're living in some postapocalyptic PG-13 movie? Well, maybe. Today we carry the Internet around with us (Thank you iPhone). We can use it to buy the latest Mumford & Sons single, or see and talk to far-flung loved ones, or help topple evil regimes. The speed with which the Web has become interwoven into our lives and the lives of billions of people around the world is staggering. It's an incredibly powerful force, and those fighting for the Internet hope the people of the world will use it -- and whatever else they can -- to let politicians and the WCIT delegates know that they don't want their Internet messed with. Otherwise, we might one day look back to December in Dubai as we wonder where our Internet went.
Dubai Internet conference threatens our wide Web world
[Commentary] Regulation of the Internet is on the agenda. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is convening a conference from December 3-14 to revise a decades-old treaty, in which only governments have a vote. Some proposals could allow governments to justify the censorship of legitimate speech, or even cut off Internet access in their countries. You can read more about my concerns on CNN.com, but I am not alone. So far, more than 1,000 organizations from more than 160 countries have spoken up too, and they’re joined by hundreds of thousands of Internet users who are standing up for a free and open Internet. On an interactive map at freeandopenweb.com, you can see that people from all corners of the world have signed our petition, used the #freeandopen hashtag on social media, or created and uploaded videos to say how important these issues are.
Keep the Internet free and open
[Commentary] Cyber Monday wasn't just a big day for online customers this year, it was also a big day for federal authorities. In an effort to fight the sale of counterfeit goods, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seized 132 domain names and arrested one man who is suspected of selling fake Microsoft software on Craigslist. This is the third Cyber Monday in a row on which officials have specifically targeted websites in what they describe as a battle to defend intellectual property rights. But while it's hard to feel much sympathy for counterfeiters, the U.S. government is going to have to find a smarter and more precise way of targeting them besides domain name seizures.
Web domain seizures warrant due process
Google, Facebook and even Yahoo have been hailed as visionary companies that aren’t just disrupting old media, they’re replacing it. That conjecture hasn’t applied as readily to Apple, which after all deals in high-end hardware, not eyeballs or advertising. A closer look, however, reveals that Apple not only has a significant media business, it’s bigger than most major media companies — and possibly at their expense.
By itself, Apple’s iTunes (which was just updated) and App stores, which hawk everything from movies and music to books and newspaper subscriptions, make more money than The New York Times; Simon & Schuster, which publishes the best-selling “Steve Jobs” biography; Warner Bros. film studios, which owns the popular Batman film franchise; and Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the US. Combined. Apple’s media storefronts took in more than $8.5 billion for the fiscal year ending in September. Put together, the revenue of the above-mentioned media companies only adds up to $8.2 billion for the same period, about $300 million less than Apple.
Apple’s ITunes Would Be One of World’s Biggest Media Companies
[Commentary] Several months ago, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals created shockwaves throughout the noncommercial broadcasting community by holding that the Communications Act's prohibitions against the sale of advertising time by noncommercial stations was unconstitutional when applied to political advertising. That decision may be short-lived, as the full Court of Appeals, in reviewing the decision of the initial three judge panel, has indicated that the case should not be relied on as precedent in any other court decision until the full Court can complete its review. While one must be careful in pre-judging any court decision, especially when all we have to divine the intent of the Court is a two sentence order, this at least hints that the full Court may have misgivings about the initial decision in this case.
Will the 9th Circuit Overrule Holding That Noncommercial Broadcasters Can Run Political Ads?
Can the nascent entrepreneurial ideas bouncing around Silicon Valley help reinvent public media? Matter Ventures, a start-up accelerator that will provide four months of financial and logistical support for budding media entrepreneurs, will be unveiled Dec 3 by its partners: KQED, a public television and radio station operator; the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and the Public Radio Exchange, known as PRX.
KQED, based in San Francisco, and the Knight Foundation are each investing $1.25 million in the initial $2.5 million fund and will have an equity stake in any projects that become viable businesses. PRX, based in Cambridge, Mass., is contributing strategic and management support. The project was announced a year ago as a PRX endeavor to be financed by Knight, before KQED became an investor. While the partners would love to find the next Google, KQED, which just had two years of record-setting revenue, does not expect to get rich from the venture, John Boland, KQED’s president, said.
Partnership Offers Support for Media Entrepreneurs Matter Ventures (Matter Ventures)
The new owners of the Dodgers are expected to get $6-billion-plus for the TV rights to their team's games. That may be a big win for the home team, but consumers won't be doing high-fives once they see their pay-TV bills.
The average household already spends about $90 a month for cable or satellite TV, and nearly half of that amount pays for the sports channels packaged into most services. Massive deals for marquee sports franchises are driving those costs even higher. Over the next three years, monthly cable and satellite bills are expected to rise an average of nearly 40%, to $125, according to the market research company NPD Group. So far, people seem willing to pay. But the escalating costs are triggering worries that, at some point, consumers will begin ditching their cable and satellite subscriptions.
Rising sports programming costs could have consumers crying foul
If you ask several of the top programmers in network television what is going wrong with their ratings this season, they offer a litany of answers: jarring schedule disruptions from debates, election night and Hurricane Sandy, for instance, as well as the ever-increasing defections toward delayed viewing and away from the nightly schedules that have defined network prime time since the days of radio. The numbers tell the tale. With seven days of delayed viewing factored in, ABC is down 7 percent in the audience preferred by most advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49; CBS is down 18 percent; and Fox Broadcasting is down an eye-popping 26 percent. NBC is the only network bucking the trend, with its audience up 23 percent in that category.
“We are definitely in a transition period,” said Paul Lee, president of ABC’s entertainment group, citing the heavy shift toward reliance on DVRs and video on demand to create personalized viewing schedules. Another factor also seems to have been at work this fall: disappointing new shows.
“The point the networks make is that the DVR is revolutionizing viewing,” said Brad Adgate, director of research for Horizon Media, a media buying company. “But that is masking the fact that the new shows they put on this fall just aren’t that good. There are better shows on cable.”
DVR Use One Factor in Networks’ Low Ratings Networks Should Give The Blame-DVR Stuff A Break (MediaPost)
Joshua Wright, the Obama administration’s nominee to fill a Republican spot on the Federal Trade Commission, has informed congressional aides he will recuse himself from cases involving Google for two years to avoid any perceived conflict of interest.
Wright is expected to make that vow publicly during his Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing Dec 4, sources said. Wright, a professor at George Mason University, has never been paid directly by Google. But he has faced scrutiny because some of his academic research has been funded indirectly by the search company, and the nominee previously has defended the company against the FTC’s ongoing antitrust probe. To allay those concerns, Wright told the Senate Commerce Committee staff that he’s not going to take part in agency enforcement decisions — antitrust or otherwise — regarding Google for two years.
FTC nominee Joshua Wright to skip Google cases
Europe's biggest economies are teaming up to try to wring more taxes out of the world's biggest Internet companies. Ministers from the U.K., Germany and France have begun meeting in recent weeks to discuss how to stop big multinational companies from using legal loopholes to shift European profits to low-tax countries, government officials say.
The talks are taking place as Europe tries to plug budget deficits amid a spreading recession. Caught in the crosshairs: firms like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook. The companies rack up tens of billions of euros in yearly sales in Europe but pay comparatively little tax in many countries because of arrangements that they and many tax experts say are legal. The tax talks are likely to stoke debate over the role of national borders in an increasingly virtual world. They could also challenge some of the underpinnings of the current European tax system as it is used by businesses.
EU Nations Aim to Boost Web Firms' Tax Payouts