Tucked inside the $82 billion emergency military appropriations bill that passed unanimously in the Senate yesterday (because what senator would vote against “supporting our troops”?) was the REAL ID Act, courtesy of Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.). That act effectively creates a national ID card by standardizing state drivers licenses and databases. Worst of all, the Act requires that all licenses include a “common machine-readable technology.” RFID is a top candidate to fill that bill, as I lament here. What’s amazing to me is how little debate there was on this particular bill, even though decades of disagreement on national IDs had managed to stave them off. Check out this column by Bruce Schneier to learn why the new IDs are bad news for privacy, for security, and for the states.
This week I released a short new PFF report on the S. 946, the “Kid-Friendly TV Programming Act of 2005.” It would force all cable and satellite operators to offer a “child-friendly” tier of at least 15
channels of video programming. It’s another misguided and unconstitutional attempt by Congress to regulate content on cable and satellite television. This new report can be found here and my earlier report on cable and satellite censorship can be found here.
I wanted to draw everyone’s attention to an important new blog put together by media guru Ben Compaine. His site”Who Owns the Media?” attempts to lay out the truth about the current state of diversity in competition in the media marketplace today.
I’ve written about Ben’s fine work many times before on this and other sites, but for those of you who do know of him or his work, Ben Compaine has long been the voice of reason in the field of media finance and economics. His classic study of the media market, “Who Owns the Media?” is a comprehensive refutation of the myths about media ownership and consolidation.
Through the New Millennium Research Council, Ben has also recently released a wonderful new report entitled The Media Monopoly Myth: How New Competition is Expanding Our Sources of Information and Entertainment. Ben conclusively shows, both in his old book and his new NMRC study, that the media marketplace has never been more dynamic, diverse and competitive.
Anyway, check out Ben’s blog for more details on all his important work in this area. His work has long been a real inspiration to me.
Well, as I was reading the back pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning I came across and article about Emmis Communications Corp.’s announcement that it plans to sell some or all of its 16 television stations to concentrate on its radio business. So, I started penning another installment of my “Media Deconsolidation” series only to then stumble upon a separate story about Disney’s potential move to sell off its ABC Radio assets.
These moves by Emmis and Disney aren’t really all that surprising. As I’ve noted in previous posts, media deconsolidation is all the rage these days. The list of high-profile media divestitures and divorces continues to grow: Clear Channel, AOL-Time Warner, Disney-Miramax, Cablevision, Viacom, Liberty Media, Sony, and on and on. They all have been pondering or carrying out major spin-offs or restructuring plans in recent months.
This is all part of the ongoing “mass media meltdown” that continues to ravage many media operators. While alliances and acquisitions were in vogue in the late 90s, it’s all about shedding assets and getting back to basics these days. This is particularly important today as older media operators face serious threats from new media technologies and outlets. They cannot allow the decline in certain business units be a drag on their overall business or else they will die a slow but certain death. (Check out this amazing post on Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” blog for all the ugly details.)
What this confirms is that the media sector is far more dynamic and competitive than most media critics care to admit. Giants come and go but, in the end, consumers are given more choices and better service with each passing year. In my forthcoming book, Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate over Media Ownership, I discuss all this in much greater detail and try to set the record straight in this regard since many media critics continue to make outrageous claims about the state of media diversity and competition. I also encourage everyone to read Ben Compaine’s latest study on the true state of the media marketplace. It’s another masterpiece by Ben. (Also, please check out Ben’s new blog here for more details on this study and all his fine work.)
Imagine you built a platform in your backyard for the purpose of informing or entertaining your friends of neighbors. Now further imagine that you are actually fairly good at what you do and manage to attract and retain a large audience. Then one day, a few hecklers come to hear you speak on your platform. They shout about how it’s unfair that you have attracted so many people to hear you speak on your soapbox and they demand access to your platform for a certain amount of time each day. They rationalize this by arguing that it is THEIR rights as listeners that are really important, not YOUR rights as a speaker or the owner of the soapbox.
That sort of scenario could never happen in America, right? Sadly, it’s been the way media law has operated for several decades in this country. This twisted “media access” philosophy has been employed by federal lawmakers and numerous special interest groups to justify extensive and massively unjust regime of media regulation and speech redistributionism. And it’s still at work today.
Take, for example, the announcement made yesterday by a coalition of interests billing themselves as the “Media & Democracy Coalition” who released a “Media Bill of Rights.” Hey, who could be against media and democracy? And who could be against a media “Bill of Rights”? Well, let’s take a closer look at what they’re after before we let them get away with equating their efforts to Mom, baseball and apple pie.
Continue reading →
I highly recommend a new book called More Than Human by Ramez Naam. He makes the case that the desire and implementation of biological enhancement is entirely human. Here’s a column I wrote weaving some of his ideas in with the controversy over “designer babies” in the UK.
Crossposted from www.soniaarrison.com
Now, it’s also a tower for WiMax. Speakeasy is a cool company, and this should be one more piece of evidence to regulators around the country that there is *not* a monopoly in the broadband space. Don’t think anyone’s arguing that? Just take a look at this article about California.
Crossposted from my personal blog at www.soniaarrison.com.
The New Millennium Research Council has just released a wonderful new report by Prof. Benjamin Compaine entitled The Media Monopoly Myth: How New Competition is Expanding Our Sources of Information and Entertainment.
Ben Compaine has long been the voice of reason in the field of media finance and economics. His classic study of the media market, “Who Owns the Media?” is the classic refutation of the myths about media ownership and consolidation. Ben conclusively shows, both in his old book and his new NMRC study, that the media marketplace has never been more dynamic, diverse and competitive.
Attached below is a summary of what you will find in the report that I pulled from the NMRC’s press release about the report. But I encourage you to download and read the entire study for the facts about the current state of competition in our modern media marketplace.
Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.