AT&T is cutting another 7,000 jobs this quarter. Combined with earlier cuts, this means the once-proud king of communications will have cut 20% of its workforce this year. They have also bailed out of the residential phone market entirely.
In a piece earlier this year, I discuss how and why the end is coming for the company. I try to make it clear that, despite claims by AT&T that the regulators did them in, the company made a series of strategic business blunders over the past few years that sealed its fate. I received some very interesting responses to this piece, including a number of letters from AT&T employees largely agreeing with me that management had driven the company into the ground. Others bitterly disagreed with my analysis and held onto the view that public policy screwed them over. Anyway, read my piece and tell me what you think.
For those of you who have followed the ongoing saga of Internet taxation, you’re familiar with a hideous little creation known as the Streamlined Sales Tax Project or “SSTP.” As I detailed in this briefing paper last year, the SSTP is basically a giant sales tax cartel scheme. In the name of “tax fairness” and a supposed “level playing field,” some state and local officials would allow the extraterritorial taxation of interstate commerce via this Frankenstein monster of a tax collection scheme. Tax competition among the states would suffer as a result and consumers would be burdened with billions in new tax obligations. All this to get at the tiny amount of e-commerce out there, which still isn’t more than 2 percent of all retail sales in America!
The folks over at Progress & Freedom Foundation have just released a new report documenting just how costly this SSTP scheme would be. Take a look at their findings here.
Let’s hope Congress doesn’t give in to state and local pressures to erase the protections our Constitution provides for interstate commerce and vendors.
The Progressive Policy Institute is very active on technology issues, providing a thoughtful point of view from what I guess would be ‘center-left.’ They take a bit of a “get over it” point of view on privacy, which is worrisome at times, but entirely welcome in the RFID debate. Here is PPI’s new piece on RFID, aiming to calm the hypesteria about RFID and privacy.
It’s SO odd when ‘consumer groups’ rail against technologies that will lower prices and improve the quality of goods for consumers. Thank you PPI for tamping down on that nonsense.
Just in case you missed it, here’s my piece on the social influences that will steer RFID to the benefit of consumers and a long, deeply engaging letter to the editor I sent to Information Week.
Well, it was bound to happen. Howard Stern announced today that he signed a five-year deal with Sirius Satellite Radio, jumping ship from Infinity Broadcasting. The move frees Stern from from the radio nannies at the FCC, who have long hounded the shockjock for on-air indecency.
Personally, the change won’t change my listening habits. I’ve always found Stern more boring than shocking, at least since I left junior high school. But the move is significant–rather than stamp out indecency, the FCC has merely pushed it to new media the FCC doesn’t control (thanks to that pesky 1st amendment). Along with Rathergate, just more evidence that the media world has changed, and that broadcasters (and the FCC) no longer enjoy a bottleneck on what Americans see and hear.
To no one’s real surprise, the House approved the Bono spyware bill (H.R. 2929) yesterday, by a 399-1 vote. The less-comprehensive Goodlatte bill (H.R. 4661) is also expected to pass today. TLF regulars know the problems with these bills. Here’s a piece released from Heritage last week. For more vitriol, see Jim’s Harper’s vent here. I also just posted this resource page on the topic, with more links than you can shake a curser at, earlier this week.
No one, of course, really expects legislation to solve the spyware problem–the bad guys will probably escape its reach, those that can’t fall under one or another current law. And the private-sector is coming up with solutions at warp-speed. So why is Congress rushing in? The basic political problem is the “don’t stand there, do something” syndrome. It’s hard to get elected by letting markets work–its always better to have voted for a law, any law. Even if, no, especially if the problem is being solved anyway.
In any case, the whole spyware controversy may only be an opening act for a much bigger Internet privacy battle. Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology is quoted in today’s Internet Daily saying that the spyware bills is only “one of the first privacy bills we’ve had [pass] the House”, and calling for more comprehensive privacy legislation to follow. Stay tuned. The show is just beginning.
The Federal Communications Commission has a pretty cool system for electronic filing of documents: comments in proceedings, disclosures, and such. It’s called the Electronic Comment Filing System.
The Washington Post is reporting that someone uploaded a lobbying strategy document through ECFS, rendering it quite widely available.
What’s most interesting is the ritualistic resignation of the guy who wrote the document and the collective twittering among the lobbyists. Johnny showed his underwear! Hee hee!
Lesson 1: Electronic communications are dangerous and powerful. Watch your step.
Lesson 2: The lather about the existence of lobbying, even among lobbyists themselves, shows the wide gap between public expectations that ours is a thoughtful, deliberative government and the reality that it’s pretty much a slot machine.
Here is my latest addition to the corpus of commentary on spyware. This week, your U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to consider legislation to ban it. The legislation is junk.
Why? Well, for one thing: it wouldn’t actually stop actual spyware. Considering how Congress did with suppressing spam through the CAN-SPAM Act, you kind of wonder how many times Congress is willing to lie to the American people. (Don’t start counting because, if you do, a few weeks from now you’ll still be counting and you’ll get an aneurysm and you’ll have to stop.)
Mine follows on fellow TLFer James Gattuso’s very good spyware piece and it marginally improves on a quick and dirty spyware rant I laid on y’all earlier. James and I agree: Carefully applying existing law to the online world is going to be superior to fresh statutes passed in haste each time a new Internet pathology emerges.
This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would let the FTC’s “do not call” registry stand. It had been challenged on first amendment grounds–the basic problem being that it gave special exemptions to political candidates and charitable groups–even though their calls can be just as annoying at dinnertime than those from businesses. It was an uphill battle legally, and the Supreme Court didn’t agree with the argument. As the election approaches, then, batten down your phones for a flood of unsolicited calls from you friendly local candidates.
Broadcasting and Cable magazine is reporting that broadcasters are officially on notice to begin delaying live programs long enough to edit out any possibly “indecent” material. The magazine notes that the recent $550,000 record fine levied against CBS / Viacom for the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident included a not-so-subtle suggestion that broadcasters start using delay techniques and technologies. Here’s the relevant language from the ruling:
“We urge each licensee to take reasonable precautions in the future, such as employing such delay technology to independently prescreen the network feed to prevent the broadcast of indecent programming over its licensed station.”
One wonders how live news shows will respond. I guess a five second delay isn’t a huge deal–and I know that many broadcasters already use such techniques–but I still find it troubling that this could mean the death of truly live TV and radio.
Amit Yoran is gone. And he might as well be saying how can a cybersecurity czar help online security when the Administration sends out signals of “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time?”
The news reports say Yoran’s departure was a result of his wanting more authority to address cybersecurity issues. As the director of the National Cyber Security Division, he was charged with implementing President Bush’s “National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace.” Will there now be a call for more government involvement in cybersecurity? Does cybersecurity warrant Assistant Secretary status within DHS, a position that has direct access to Secretary Tom Ridge?
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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.