October 2008

Remember Newspapers?

by Adam Thierer on October 27, 2008 · 7 comments

In a City Journal article earlier this year, I wondered “how long some local papers have left when they are barred from restructuring their businesses or partnering with other local media operators to stem the bleeding and reinvent their business models.” I was responding to the Senate’s smack-down of a half-hearted reform effort that FCC chairman Kevin Martin pushed through in November 2007, which proposed relaxing the FCC’s newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule. That rule, unrevised since going into effect in 1975, prohibits a newspaper operator from also owning a radio or television station in the same media market. However, waivers were granted to grandfather in some combined newspaper and broadcast operations that had existed long before the ban took effect. Martin’s proposal was to simply tweak the rule to permit similar combinations in just the nation’s 20 largest media markets.

Martin’s limited liberalization proposal, however, led to howls of disapproval from FCC democrats like Michael Copps and many folks on both side of the aisle in Congress. Supposedly, this was nothing more than a “giveaway” to the newspaper industry, which critics said was doing just fine. It really makes you wonder if any of those critics even both reading the news about newspapers today.

As I have documented here on many occasions, as well as in my big Media Metrics report, the newspaper industry is in huge trouble with every financial variable of importance rapidly heading south. Alan Mutter does a good job here of summarizing “the secular forces dragging down newspapers: Declining readership, shrinking advertising, high fixed costs and growing online competition that makes it increasingly difficult to charge the premium ad rates that were possible prior to the Internet.” As a result of these forces, everyday brings another headline like this one today in the New York Times: “The Star-Ledger of Newark Plans 40% Cut,” or this one in the Wall Street Journal: “Some Newspapers Shed Unprofitable Readers.” The numbers are just miserable, and they just get worse and worse.

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Irony Alert: Supreme Court Refuses to Allow Public to Hear Free Speech Case Live

by Adam Thierer on October 27, 2008 · 12 comments

Like many others, I have long been troubled by the fact that the Supreme Court does not allow TV cameras or live audio coverage of the cases it hears. I know all the arguments against live video or audio coverage and I find them all quite unconvincing when weighed against the public’s right to hear the oral arguments and decisions that will have such a direct bearing on their lives and liberty. We should be allowed to see, or at least hear, these arguments and decisions as they happen.

Anyway, as I was reading through an article today in Broadcasting & Cable about how “C-SPAN Seeks Oral Argument Tapes in Fox Swearing Case,” I couldn’t help but think about how particularly ironic it was that our nation’s highest court would be considering one of the most important free speech cases in decades — FCC v. Fox — and it yet wouldn’t be allowing any of us to listen in live when it takes place on November 4th! If we are lucky, the Court might grant C-SPAN expedited access to the tapes of the arguments, but it may be that we have to wait many weeks to hear what was said.

Seems silly to me. Worse yet, it means I will have to camp out in front of the Supreme Court the night before and freeze my butt off in the hope of getting a seat in the courtroom to hear the live argument! Which brings up the final bit of irony I always like to point out about restricting cameras and microphones from courtrooms: Why are they letting anyone in the courtroom at all if they so fear instantaneous public access to the arguments?

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“Secure” Government Databases?

by Jim Harper on October 27, 2008 · 9 comments

From the Columbus Dispatch:

Information on [Joe “the Plumber”] Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.

The security of information about you in government databases is contingent on you keeping your head down.

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Twitter Terror

by Jim Harper on October 27, 2008 · 14 comments

I was amused to read that a draft Army intelligence report identified micro-blogging service Twitter as a potential tool for terrorists. On the other hand, it’s regrettable that this terrorism mania persists to foster this kind of report and media attention. There’s no distinct terror threat from Twitter. (Do check out the send-up of an Osama Bin Laden Twitter feed by clicking on the image.)

Sure, it’s possible that terrorists could use Twitter, just like it’s possible with any communications medium. Twitter is right up there with telephones, pen and paper, email, SMS, and smoke signals as a potential tool for terrorism. Each of these media have different properties which make them more or less susceptible to use for wrongdoing — and more or less protective of legitimate privacy for the law-abiding.

Like most common digital communications, Twitter is a pretty weak medium for planning bad things. Copies of every post are distributed far and wide — and all “Tweets” are housed pretty much permanently by a single organization.

If you want to get caught doing something wrong, use Twitter to plan it.

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Google Policy Fellow Program

by Berin Szoka on October 25, 2008 · 12 comments

Google has just announced that it is now accepting applications from undergraduate, graduate and professional students for its summer 2009 Google Policy Fellowship. Three think tanks employing TLFers are among the host organizations participating in the program: The Progress & Freedom Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Applications are due by December 12, 2008. The program will run for ten weeks during the summer of 2009 (June-August). Apply today!

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After the Crash

by Bret Swanson on October 24, 2008 · 9 comments

Forbes has produced a scintillating special report on the market crash and what comes next. Steve Forbes tells “How Capitalism Will Save Us.” In “Curbing Washington’s Growing Power” economist David Malpass explains the policy mistakes that led here and describes the key threats that could make it worse. Rich Karlgaard compares today’s market to the malaise of the 1970s, but offers hints of optimism bubbling up. And George Gilder, summoning Peter Drucker’s mantra — “Don’t solve problems; pursue opportunities” — previews the technologies that portend a “Coming Creativity Boom” and offers, characteristically, the deepest insights on the nature of capitalism:

Knowledge is about the past; entrepreneurship is about the future. In a crisis the world of expertise pulls the global economy ever deeper into the past, where accountant-economists ruminate on the labyrinthine statistics of leviathan trade gaps, tides of debt and deficits, political bailouts and rebates, regulatory clamps and controls, all propping up the past in the name of progress.

The crucial conflict in every economy, however, goes on. It is not between rich and poor, Main Street and Wall Street, or even government and the private sector. It is between the established system and the new forms of wealth rising up to displace it–all the entrenched knowledge of the past and the insurrections of futuristic enterprise and invention.

The real source of all growth is human creativity and entrepreneurship, which always comes as a surprise to us, especially in the worst of times, as Rich Karlgaard notes. No amount of knowledge about the present can predict the specific profile and provenance of innovation. From the pits of the crash of 2000, when the Internet and the dot.com siege were famously dismissed as a barren “bubble,” came Google (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ) and MySpace to rise up and take all the chips and establish a new Internet economy. If creativity was not unexpected, governments could plan it and socialism would work. But creativity is intrinsically surprising and the source of all real profit and growth.

You’ll find lots more economic and investing advice, including a report on “What Ben Graham would do.”

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PFF Launches Center for Internet Freedom

by Berin Szoka on October 24, 2008 · 12 comments

The Progress & Freedom Foundation has just launched the new Center for Internet Freedom. CIF offers an alternative to the proliferation of advocacy groups calling for government intervention online by offering timely analyses and critiques of proposals that diminish the vital role of free markets, free speech and property rights. We aim to drive the Internet policy debate in new directions by emphasizing a layered approach of technological innovation, user education, user self-help, industry self-regulation, and the enforcement of existing laws consistent with the First Amendment. Such an approach is a less restrictive—and generally more effective—alternative to increased regulation.

Here are some of the issues I’ll be working on as CIF’s Director in conjunction with my esteemed colleagues Adam Thierer, Adam Marcus, and adjunct fellows:

Defending online advertising as the lifeblood of online content & services, especially in the “Long Tail”;
Emphasizing market solutions to problems of privacy protection, especially regarding the use of cookies and packet inspection data;
Protecting online speech and expression both in the U.S. and abroad;
Defending Section 230 immunity for Internet intermediaries;
Opposing online taxation and legal barriers to e-commerce and digital payments, especially at the state and local levels; and
Ensuring that Internet governance remains transparent and accountable without hampering the evolution of the Internet.

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Leading U.K. Telecom Official to Deliver Major Lecture at George Mason University

by Drew Clark on October 23, 2008 · 5 comments

William Webb, Head of Research and Development at OFCOM, to speak about ‘The Theory, Practice, Politics and Problems of Spectrum Reform’ on November 12

ARLINGTON, VA., October 23 – With the transition to digital television in the United States less than four months away, disputes about the airwaves used by broadcasters are raging here and around the globe. A world-class expert will soon weigh in on how one country, the United Kingdom, views the challenges of bringing radio spectrum allocation into the 21st Century.

On Wednesday, November 12, 2008, the Information Economy Project at the George Mason University School of Law will host its next Big Ideas About Information Lecture, featuring an address by Dr. William Webb, a top policy maker at OFCOM, the U.K. telecommunications regulator.

OFCOM’s ambitious liberalization strategy, announced in 2004, permits the large majority of valuable frequencies to be used freely by competitive licensees, offering an exciting and informative experiment in public policy. Dr. Webb’s lecture, “The Theory, Practice, Politics and Problems of Spectrum Reform,” will offer a timely progress report for the American audience.

Webb’s lecture will be the sixth in a prestigious series that has included Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith and noted economist David Porter on how FCC license auctions have worked; Martin Cooper, the “father of the cellphone,” on spectrum allocation; Brian Lamb, founder and CEO of C-SPAN, on the policies that enabled the cable network to launch; former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Dennis Patrick, on the decision to abolish the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987; and University of Minnesota Professor Andrew Odlyzko, on financial bubbles in high-technology industries.

Dr. Webb’s Lecture will review the century-long history of radio spectrum regulation. For almost all of that century, the policy-maker has micro-managed spectrum use, defining services, technologies and business models deployed by wireless operators. The inefficiencies embedded in this approach have triggered calls for liberalization since the pioneering work of economist Ronald Coase in the 1950s.

While efforts to relax administrative control have generally met great political resistance, some substantial progress has been made with the emergence of mobile telephone networks over the past two decades. Policy makers in some nations are now seeking to achieve bolder changes. The regulator in the United Kingdom, OFCOM, has emerged as a leader in this campaign.

After the Labour Government commissioned a landmark 2002 study authored by economist Martin Cave, OFCOM moved aggressively to assist the emergence of property rights in frequencies, the institutional switch enabling market allocation of radio spectrum.

This lecture, delivered by a key OFCOM policy official and a noted spectrum technology expert in his own right, dissects the liberalization process in Great Britain and offers lessons learned. This experience promises great insight for the U.S. and other countries struggling to enact pro-consumer policy reforms.

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White Spaces Battle Heats Up as Broadcast Networks Seek ‘Time Out’

by Drew Clark on October 23, 2008 · 13 comments

Over at DrewClark.com, earlier today I reported today that television networks – which in recent years have had a strained relationship with local broadcasters on a variety of fronts – joined with the National Association of Broadcasters in calling for a time out on the politically simmering issue of “white spaces.” Here’s the start of the story, and you can read the full post at DrewClark.com

WASHINGTON, October 23 – The top executives of the four major broadcast networks on Thursday urged the head of the Federal Communications Commission to delay a vote on a politically simmering issue that pits broadcasters against Google and high-tech executives.

In the letter, the CEOs of CBS Corp., NBC Universal and Walt Disney, and the chief operating officer of News Corp., urge that the FCC exercise caution before taking irreparable action with regard to the vacant television channels known as “white spaces.”

Google and the other technology executives, including Microsoft, Motorola, Philips and others, want the FCC to authorize electronic devices that capable of transmitting internet signals over vacant television bands.

The network executives – CBS’s Leslie Moonves, Disney’s Robert Iger, NBC’s Jeffrey Zucker and Peter Chernin of News Corp. – want a time out.

They join their local broadcasting colleagues, as well as manufacturers and users of wireless microphones, like the National Football League and Boadway theater owners, who have been actively lobbying the issue.

[…]

Read the rest of the story at my blog, DrewClark.com – The Politics of Telecom, Media and Technology

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