Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Last night, I appeared on a short segment on the PBS News Hour discussing, “What’s the future of privacy in a big data world?” I was also joined by Jules Polonetsky, executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum. If you’re interested, here’s the video. Transcript is here. Finally, down below the fold, I’ve listed a few law review articles and other essays of mine on this same subject.
I’m not one of those libertarians who incessantly rants about the supposed evils of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcast Service (PBS). In fact, I find quite a bit to like in the programming I consume on both services, NPR in particular. A few years back I realized that I was listening to about 45 minutes to an hour of programming on my local NPR affiliate (WAMU) each morning and afternoon, and so I decided to donate $10 per month. Doesn’t sound like much, but at $120 bucks per year, that’s more than I spend on any other single news media product with the exception of The Wall Street Journal. So, when there’s value in a media product, I’ll pay for it, and I find great value in NPR’s “long-form” broadcast journalism, despite its occasional political slant on some issues.
In many ways, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR and PBS, has the perfect business model for the age of information abundance. Philanthropic models — which rely on support for foundational benefactors, corporate underwriters, individual donors, and even government subsidy — can help diversify the funding base at a time when traditional media business models — advertising support, subscriptions, and direct sales — are being strained. This is why many private media operations are struggling today; they’re experiencing the ravages of gut-wrenching marketplace / technological changes and searching for new business models to sustain their operations. By contrast, CPB, NPR, and PBS are better positioned to weather this storm since they do not rely on those same commercial models.
Nonetheless, NPR and PBS and the supporters of increased “pubic media” continue to claim that they are in peril and that increased support — especially public subsidy — is essential to their survival. For example, consider an editorial in today’s Washington Post making “The Argument for Funding Public Media,” which was penned by Laura R. Walker, the president and chief executive of New York Public Radio, and Jaclyn Sallee, the president and chief executive of Officer Kohanic Broadcast Corp. in Anchorage. They argue: Continue reading →
By Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka
As we mentioned yesterday, in a new series of essays, we will be examining proposals being put forward today that would have the government play a greater role in sustaining struggling media enterprises, “saving journalism,” or promoting more “public interest” content. With many traditional media operators struggling, and questions being raised about how journalism in particular will be supported in the future, Washington policymakers are currently considering what role government can and should play in helping media providers reinvent themselves in the face of tumultuous technological change wrought by the Digital Revolution. We will be releasing 6 or 7 essays on this topic leading up to our big filing in the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding (deadline is May 7th).
In the first installment of our series, we will critique an old idea that’s suddenly gained new currency: taxing media devices or distribution systems to fund media content. We argue that such media income redistribution is fundamentally inconsistent with American press traditions, highly problematic under the First Amendment, difficult to implement in a world of media abundance and platform convergence, and likely to cause serious negative side effects. Bottom line: Don’t tax our iPhones or broadband to subsidize media!
We’ve attached the entire text of the piece below. (Installment #2, on broadcast spectrum taxes to subsidize public media, will be released next week.)
By Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka
In a series of upcoming essays, we will be examining proposals being put forward today that would have the government play a greater role in sustaining struggling media enterprises, “saving journalism,” or promoting more “public interest” content. The reason we’re working up this multi-part series is because, with many traditional media operators struggling, and questions being raised about how journalism in particular will be supported in the future, Washington policymakers are currently considering what role government can and should play in helping media providers reinvent themselves in the face of tumultuous technological change wrought by the Digital Revolution.
For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently kicked off a new “Future of Media” effort with a workshop on “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era.” (The filing deadline for the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding is May 7th). Likewise, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has hosted two workshops asking “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” Meanwhile, the Senate has already held hearings about “the future of journalism,” and Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) recently introduced the “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” which would allow newspapers to become tax-exempt non-profits in an effort to help them stay afloat.
Thus, in light of Washington’s sudden interest in the future of media and journalism, we will be taking a hard look at several issues and proposals that are being floated today, including:
You won’t be surprised to hear that we are generally quite skeptical of most of these ideas, but we promise to give each one serious consideration. We’ll kick things off tomorrow with our essay on why taxing media devices or distribution systems to fund media content is not a particularly good idea.
My central lament in everything I have said so far about the Federal Communications Commission’s ambitious new National Broadband Plan is that, well, it’s just too ambitious! The agency has taken an everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink approach to the issue and the sheer scope of their imperial ambitions is breathtaking. I’ve likened it to an industrial policy for the Internet because the agency is essentially trying to centrally plan and engineer from above virtually every aspect of America’s broadband future despite its proclamation that, “Technologies, costs and consumer preferences are changing too quickly in this dynamic part of the economy to make accurate predictions.” But very little humility seems to be on display throughout the 376-page blueprint, which includes dissertations on everything from privacy to child safety issues to set-top box regulation.
And then there’s Chapter 15 on “civic engagement,” which calls for a wide variety of things to “strengthen the citizenry and its government,” and to “build a robust digital media ecosystem.” Although some of the ideas floated in the chapter are harmless enough–and some, like the call for more open and transparent government, would actually be beneficial–for the life of me I don’t understand why any of this needs to be in a plan about broadband deployment and diffusion. Particularly bizarre is the call here for Congress to create “a trust fund for digital public media,” which would fund the “production, distribution, and archiving of digital public media.” It would apparently be funded by “the revenues from a voluntary auction of spectrum licensed to public television.” (see pgs. 303-4)
Look, if the FCC wants Congress to create the equivalent of the PBS on Steroids, fine. Let’s have that debate. (In fact, I thought it was a debate that the FCC was already considering as part of its “Future of Media” effort). But why, again, is this in broadband plan? It’s a serious stretch to claim that this is somehow crucial to the task of getting more broadband out to the masses. Moreover, should our government really be in charge of “building a robust digital media ecosystem”? Here are a few reasons we might want to avoid having the government in the driver’s seat when it comes to charting the future course of America’s media sector.
Free Press, the radical pro-regulatory media activist group, recently filed comments with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the agency’s upcoming workshop on “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” The Free Press comments provide an enlightening glimpse into the mind of how many on the Left now think about media policy in America. Their approach can be summarized as follows:
To elaborate on the last point, here’s how Free Press summarizes what they are looking for:
For U.S. public media to become a truly world-class system will require a substantial increase in funding. This could be accomplished by an increase in direct congressional appropriations to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. With increased funding — to as little as $5 per person, increasing annual appropriations to some $1.5 billion — the American public media system could dramatically increase its capacity, reach, diversity and relevance.
But they stress that a simple expansion of the PBS/NPR/CPB non-commercial model will not be enough since that system is “vulnerable to repeated threats of funding cuts” and too “reliant on corporate backing, via the underwriting process.” They want to go well beyond non-commercial media, therefore, and have the state start building a massive public media infrastructure. Here’s where their pitch for a public option for the press comes in: Continue reading →
I’ve written much about the potential “chilling effect” associated with over-zealous FCC regulation of speech. Some people doubt that the FCC’s regulatory wrath is really so severe that media operators will censor important programs for fear of being fined afterward. But we know that that is exactly what happened with a 9/11 documentary last year when CBS decided to censor the remarks of firefighters under duress. Imagine that, firefighters were swearing as the disaster unfolded! But apparently we need to have history whitewashed for our benefit. Absurd.
And now it’s happening again.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
