“The fraternity of the nation’s television critics at daily newspapers was once a thriving milieu, dominated by a great diversity of committed voices. The critics’ opinions were sought, revered — in many cases, even feared — and blurbed in network on-air promos. That reality has changed drastically of late as the ranks of critics have grown noticeably leaner. Caught in the financial turmoil roiling the newspaper industry, they have become a beleaguered lot, a growing part of the collateral damage of the digital revolution. In the past two years, more than one-dozen longtime critics at major-market dailies — including the Dallas Morning News, Seattle-Post Intelligencer, New York Newsday, New York Daily News and Houston Chronicle — have been either let go, shunted to different beats or been forced to take the ubiquitous buyout…”
This is not altogether surprising. I think there are three main culprits:
(1) Growing outlet competition and audience fragmentation: There’s just a lot more to read, watch and listen to now, so something’s got to give.
(2) Continued decline of newspaper business in general: For reason #1, newspapers are hurting and losing revenue. [see James Gattuso’s recent post on this]. That has meant ongoing staff cuts, and critics (TV, music, art, or otherwise) are likely to be the first with their heads on the chopping blocks.
(3) Explosion of independent voice & critics via blogosphere: Finally, anyone can be a critic these days. That does not mean anyone can be a good critic–there are plenty of blithering idiots out there in the blogosphere when it comes to armchair media criticism–but there are many “amatuers” who do a fine job critiquing mass media programming (especially television).
So, while I am sad to seem some mainstream critics struggling, I just don’t see this newspaper beat surviving much longer.
Here’s a great article on the recent history of the civil liberties debate, beginning with the CALEA battles of the 1990s. It gives some interesting details on the formation of CDT.
The big question the article asks is why it’s so much harder today to get the various factions in the FISA debate together in a room and work out a compromise, the way the parties did in 1994. It seems to me that the fundamental difference is that the previous administration accepted the fundamental premise that the government had an obligation to obey the law. So while the Clinton-era FBI pushed aggressively for statutory changes that dramatically expanded eavesdropping powers, and then litigated aggressively for interpretations of the law that expanded them further, it generally accepted that if Congress and the courts ruled against them, they had an obligation to defer to their judgments.
In contrast, the current administration believes, fundamentally, that the need to defend people from terrorism trumps old-fashioned concepts like the separation of powers and the rule of law. So while they’d certainly like Congress to rubber-stamp what they’re pleased to call the “War on Terror”, they’re prepared to ignore the law and peoples’ civil liberties regardless of what the other branches say.
Under those circumstances, negotiation is a waste of time because there’s no particular reason to think the administration will respect the outcome of the legislative process. Worse than that, pretending that the administration takes the law seriously, when it has made it crystal clear that it does not, serves the political ends of the White House by making it clear that contempt for the law has no consequences. When one side in the negotiations has made it clear they’ll do what they like regardless of what the law said, the only reasonable response is the one the House has taken: pass legislation that makes clear that the administration’s actions were and are illegal, and that increased scrutiny is needed. Not until we have a new president who re-affirms his (or her) commitment to the rule of law will it make sense to enter into serious negotiations with the White House.
…or in this case, you can’t stop the terrorists without occasionally letting a baby die while customs officials inspect his paperwork. I hope the people responsible for this spend some time in prison.
In 1993 Congress substituted auctions for the deplorable practice of giving away valuable spectrum to well-connected commercial entities.
Lawmakers who think spectrum is a valuable public resource for which the taxpayers should be compensated need to wake up for a minute. FCC rulemaking could render the remaining assets worthless, distort wireless competition and contribute to the unfortunate perception of the FCC as a candy store.
Google has made it clear that it plans to weigh in at the FCC as it determines how to re-auction the D-block from the recent 700 MHz auction, and that it wants to open the white spaces between channels 2 and 51 on the TV dial for unlicensed broadband services.
Anna-Maria Kovacs, a regulatory analyst, reported that in the recent 700 MHz auction AT&T Mobility paid an average price of $3.15 per POP in the B-block while Verizon Wireless paid 77 cents per POP in the C-block which was subject to special rules advocated by Google.
Now comes an admission that Google’s main goal was not to win C-block licenses in the auction but to jack up the price just enough so the reserve could be met, according to the New York Times.
“Our primary goal was to trigger the openness conditions,” said Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington telecommunications and media counsel.
This certainly isn’t consistent with the way Google presented the open access proposal to the Federal Communications Commission last summer.
I have a new blog post on Cato@Liberty about a recent sit-down that DHS Secretary Chertoff had with a select group of bloggers. Below the video, a further item:
TLF-exclusive update!: I just noticed that Secretary Chertoff describes the machine-readable zone in REAL ID as if it is literally the sequence of letters and numbers in the MRZ of the passport. In fact, the REAL ID regulation calls for the use of a 2D barcode standard. A 2D barcode can hold quite a bit more information per unit of surface area and, of course, it can’t be interpreted by the eye as the MRZ on a passport can.
My last post on the ISO standards body vote in favor of OOXML sparked a few comments, so here goes another. While the headlines of Groklaw generally tell only one side of the story, here’s an interesting blog post from Jan van den Beld, the former Secretary General of Ecma International, the standards body that first approved OOXML as a standard.
If you’re like me and think that standards bodies will play an increasingly important role in the future, you want to see a process with integrity, accountability and transparency.
In his post, Jan van den Beld says that groups opposed to ratification are now trying to blame the messenger (standards bodies), in addition to the message (the standard):
They have resorted to making accusations of impropriety on the part of national standards bodies where they were unhappy that their negative views on this issue didn’t carry the day – notably on blogs such as noooxml.org and Groklaw. They would have you believe that no one could possibly favor ratification without being bribed or manipulated. Indeed, it appears that they find it impossible to believe that anyone could possibly disagree with their views, despite the overwhelming number who do in fact disagree with this position. These direct attacks on the integrity or national standards bodies are without merit.
The always entertaining Scott Cleland has calculated Google’s take from the 700Mhz auction at $7 billion. It seems he’s used a fair method for calculating the value lost to taxpayers due to Google’s preferred “open access” condition. (Cleland’s conclusions beyond that are, again, good entertainment.)
Keep in mind that Google’s “take” is money taken from taxpayers, not yet money collected by Google. But it could easily get to be that much if its “Android” mobile operating system and many of the communications and transactions on it accrue to Google’s benefit.
I like the idea of an open wireless network and would like to see it happen. I just don’t think that any company should enjoy windfall profits from such a network coming into being. Google could have created an open network by paying full price for the spectrum in an open auction rather than by gaming the regulatory system.
The Orange County Register has an editorial on the REAL ID Act this morning that captures the issues magnificently. Among other gems:
The big trouble is that there’s no evidence that this Draconian act, even if fully implemented, would be more than a minor inconvenience for a determined terrorist. But having all that information – including copies of birth certificates and Social Security cards – available in one database would make an irresistible target for identity thieves. And it would be a major inconvenience for millions of innocent Americans and a major expense for state governments – meaning taxpayers.
The Register‘s conclusion? Congress should “bite the bullet and repeal this useless, intrusive, money-wasting law.”
Today and tomorrow I am attending a terrific conference at Penn State University called, “Playing to Win: The Business and Social Frontiers of Videogames.” It features panel discussions about various legal and business issues facing the video game industry, as well as discussions about how video games are used to aid teaching and learning. There are also panels on multiplayer online worlds and virtual reality environments and the issues surrounding both. [They will apparently be posting videos from the conference on their site shortly.]
The folks at PSU were kind enough to invite me to deliver the luncheon keynote on Day 1 and I decided to provide a broad overview of the policy issues facing video games that I have covered in some of mypast work. My presentation was entitled, “Video Games, Ratings, Parental Controls, & Public Policy: Where Do We Stand?” and the entire 36-slide presentation is now available online here. Down below, I thought I would just outline a couple of the key themes I touched upon in my presentation.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.