These new books share a concern with how digital media are reshaping our political and social landscape, molding art and entertainment, even affecting the methodology of scholarship and research. They examine the consequences of the fragmentation of data that the Web produces, as news articles, novels and record albums are broken down into bits and bytes; the growing emphasis on immediacy and real-time responses; the rising tide of data and information that permeates our lives; and the emphasis that blogging and partisan political Web sites place on subjectivity.
At the same time it’s clear that technology and the mechanisms of the Web have been accelerating certain trends already percolating through our culture — including the blurring of news and entertainment, a growing polarization in national politics, a deconstructionist view of literature (which emphasizes a critic’s or reader’s interpretation of a text, rather than the text’s actual content), the prominence of postmodernism in the form of mash-ups and bricolage, and a growing cultural relativism that has been advanced on the left by multiculturalists and radical feminists, who argue that history is an adjunct of identity politics, and on the right by creationists and climate-change denialists, who suggest that science is an instrument of leftist ideologues.
It’s a great debate, but a very controversial one, of course. Anyway, go read her entire essay.
Beyond the fact that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to release the executive summary of its long awaited National Broadband Plan via a PDF of a scanned printed copy, there are other reasons to be concerned about the agency’s ability to centrally plan one of the most important, fast-moving sectors of our economy. In this video clip, I discussed some of my general reservations with the idea of a gargantuan government industrial policy for the broadband sector, and in this essay I noted how, from what we’ve see of the plan thus far [Executive Summary], the FCC appears to be engaged in some creative accounting techniques to fund the scheme.
Not everything in The Plan troubles me, however, and I hope to touch on some of the more sensible elements in a future post. But, as I was reading through it, I flagged 5 regulatory hot potatoes in the plan that threaten to derail the entire thing. In this regard, the parallels between the National Broadband Plan and the debate over health care “reform” are really quite striking. Indeed, it appears the Administration has once again settled upon a “go for broke” (potentially quite literally!) strategy. In both cases, they appear hell-bent and trying to do it all in the form of One Big Plan. Now, I won’t lie to you; such everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink public policy gambits make me nervous based simply on the sheer scale of the undertaking. When Washington tries to regulate massive chunks of the economy using bloated bills and bureaucracies inside the Beltway, it troubles me greatly. But even if the sound of Big Government on Steroids doesn’t raise your blood pressure, one would hope that the prospect of political gridlock and litigation hell would force advocates to scale back their ambitions a tad bit. After all, what good is a plan that can never pass or be implemented?
That’s why I was rather surprised to see these 5 regulatory initiatives teed up in the National Broadband Plan:
(1) Return of the Forced Access Regulatory Nightmare? The Plan says the FCC will, “Undertake a comprehensive review of wholesale competition rulesto help ensure competition in fixed and mobile broadband services.” As my friend Randy May of the Free State Foundation notes: Continue reading →
After working my way through the Executive Summary of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) National Broadband Plan, there are a number of things I find troubling that I will get to in a subsequent post. But here’s the thing about “The Plan” that I found most surprising — even audacious — in its arrogance: The FCC wants us to believe the whole scheme is costless. The agency bases this astonishing claim on the following assumptions:
Given the plan’s goal of freeing 500 megahertz of spectrum, future wireless auctions mean the overall plan will be revenue neutral, if not revenue positive. The vast majority of recommendations do not require new government funding; rather, they seek to drive improvements in the government efficiency, streamline processes and encourage private activity to promote consumer welfare and national priorities. The funding requests relate to public safety, deployment to unserved areas and adoption efforts. If the spectrum auction recommendations are implemented, the plan is likely to offset the potential costs.
Let me translate: “Pay no attention to all the bills we are racking up, because spectrum revenues shall set us free!”
Perhaps that logic works in the reality-free zone we call the Beltway, but back in the real world this simply doesn’t add up. Regardless of how well-intentioned any of these goals and proposals may be, it should be equally clear that there is no free lunch, even with spectrum auction proceeds fueling the high-tech gravy train. The proposals and programs the FCC sets forth will impose serious economic costs that shouldn’t be so casually dismissed, especially using the weak reasoning that “improvements in the government efficiency” will magically manifest themselves thanks to massive new government intervention in the field. (If you think you’ve heard this one before, you have. See: The current health care debate.)
Moreover, if everything really does hang on the promise of spectrum auction revenues covering the broadband spending binge, well, bad news: The agency is never going to bring in enough to cover what they’ve proposed here. The reason is simple: Most of the spectrum they want to grab is currently occupied by someone else! Continue reading →
Details are starting to trickle out about the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) National Broadband Plan, which is due out tomorrow. Someone just posted the Executive Summary here. I haven’t had a chance to go through it all yet, but I’m looking forward to learning more about what the agency’s plans are on this front.
On Friday (again, before seeing any details), I offered some fairly mushy comments about the idea of national “plan” to the gang over at the excellent new site, FiveQsOnTech.com. The site has a great format: Five questions on technology and policy asked and answered (usually on tape) by technology policy wonks. I’m honored to be among the first couple of experts featured on the site, along with Markham Erickson of the Open Internet Coalition and Rob Atkinson of ITIF.
In the first 3 minutes of this second of the two videos I appear in, I offered some thoughts about “The Plan”:
I published an opinion piece today for CNET arguing against recent calls to reclassify broadband Internet as a “telecommunications service” under Title II of the Communications Act.
The push to do so comes as supporters of the FCC’s proposed Net Neutrality rules fear that the agency’s authority to adopt them under its so-called “ancillary jurisdiction” won’t fly in the courts. In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard arguments in Comcast’s appeal of sanctions levied against the cable company for violations of the neutrality principles (not yet adopted under a formal rulemaking). The three-judge panel expressed considerable doubt about the FCC’s jurisdiction in issuing the sanctions during oral arguments. Only the published opinion (forthcoming) will matter, of course, but anxiety is growing.
Solving the Net Neutrality jurisdiction problem with a return to Title II regulation is a staggeringly bad idea, and a counter-productive one at that. My article describes the parallel developments in “telecommunications services” and the largely unregulated “information services” (aka Title I) since the 1996 Communications Act, making the point that life for consumers has been far more exciting—and has generated far more wealth–under the latter than the former.
Under Title I, in short, we’ve had the Internet revolution. Under Title II, we’ve had the decline and fall of basic wireline phone service, boom and bust in the arbitraging competitive local exchange market, massive fraud in the bloated e-Rate program, and the continued corruption of local licensing authorities holding applications hostage for legal and illegal bribes.
A brief history and overview of policies involving “public interest” requirements for commercial media and telecommunications companies;
The state of local commercial broadcast TV and radio news and information; and
The impact of media convergence and the emergence of the Internet, mobile technologies, and digital media on FCC media policy.
In my remarks, I focused on “Why Expansion of the FCC’s Public Interest Regulatory Regime is Unwise, Unneeded, Unconstitutional, and Unenforceable.” Down below I have attached my written remarks. Continue reading →
Very cool little video here by Jess3 documenting Internet growth and activity. Ironically, Berin sent it to me as Adam Marcus and I were updating the lengthy list of Net & online media stats you’ll find down below. Many of the stats we were compiling are shown in the video. Enjoy!
1.73 billion Internet users worldwide as of Sept 2009; an 18% increase from the previous year.[1]
81.8 million .COM domain names at the end of 2009; 12.3 million .NET names & 7.8 million .ORG names.[2]
234 million websites as of Dec 2009; 47 million were added in 2009.[3] In 2006, Internet users in the United States viewed an average of 120.5 Web pages each day.[4]
There are roughly 26 million blogs on the Internet[5] and even back in 2007, there were over 1.5 million new blog posts every day (17 posts per second).[6]Continue reading →
White House cybersecurity chief Mike McConnell had a 1,400-word piece in the Washington Post on Sunday in which he stressed a public-private partnership as the key to a robust cyber-defense. One paragraph caught my attention, though:
We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options — and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to reengineer the Internet to make attribution, geolocation, intelligence analysis and impact assessment — who did it, from where, why and what was the result — more manageable. The technologies are already available from public and private sources and can be further developed if we have the will to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same.
I’m not sure what he’s talking about, and I’d love if a knowledgeable reader would chime in. I’m not sure how such a spoof-proof geolocation system would work without a complete overhaul of how the internet works.
Every Tuesday, Washington, DC’s local NPR station (88.5 WAMU) carries a “Tech Tuesdays” program as a regular part of The Kojo Nnamdi Show. This week’s show, which was guest hosted by Marc Fisher of the Washington Post, was on “Regulating the World Wide Web: A View from Abroad.” It was a wide-ranging and very interesting discussion about the future of Internet governance and regulation, featuring:
Evgeny Morozov: Yahoo! Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University; Fellow, Open Society Institute; and author “Net Effect” blog on ForeignPolicy.com
John Morris: General Counsel, Director of the Internet Standards, Technology and Policy Project, Center for Democracy and Technology
We learned from The Wall Street Journal yesterday that “Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski gets a little peeved when people suggests that he wants to regulate the Internet.” He told a group of Journal reporters and editors today that: “I don’t see any circumstances where we’d take steps to regulate the Internet itself,” and “I’ve been clear repeatedly that we’re not going to regulate the Internet.”
We’re thankful to hear Chairman Julius Genachowski to make that promise. We’ll certainly hold him to it. But you will pardon us if we remain skeptical (and, in advance, if you hear a constant stream of “I told you so” from us in the months and years to come). If the Chairman is “peeved” at the suggestion that the FCC might be angling to extend its reach to include the Internet and new media platforms and content, perhaps he should start taking a closer look at what his own agency is doing—and think about the precedents he’s setting for future Chairmen who might not share his professed commitment not to regulate the ‘net. Allow us to cite just a few examples:
Net Neutrality Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
We’re certainly aware of the argument that the FCC’s proposed net neutrality regime is not tantamount to Internet regulation—but we just don’t buy it. Not for one minute.
First, Chairman Genachowski seems to believe that “the Internet” is entirely distinct from the physical infrastructure that brings “cyberspace” to our homes, offices and mobile devices. The WSJ notes, “when pressed, [Genachowski] admitted he was referring to regulating Internet content rather than regulating Internet lines.” OK, so let’s just make sure we have this straight: The FCC is going to enshrine in law the principle that “gatekeepers” that control the “bottleneck” of broadband service can only be checked by having the government enforce “neutrality” principles in the same basic model of “common carrier” regulation that once applied to canals, railroads, the telegraph and telephone. But when it comes to accusations of “gatekeeper” power at the content/services/applications “layers” of the Internet, the FCC is just going to step back and let markets sort things out? Sorry, we’re just not buying it. Continue reading →
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
