Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Dan Rather has just announced that he will retire from his CBS anchor position in March of next year. At least that’s what’s being reported. However, I hear the resignation letter was typed in courier font, and is still being examined by specialists.
No word on what either of the remaining CBS News viewers will do now.
There’s so many new blogs out there, and TLF’s market share is so low as it is, that I’m always hesitant to plug new blogs here. Yet I’ll make an exception for one just started by my colleague here at The Heritage Foundation, Mark Tapscott, who directs Heritage’s Center for Media and Public Policy. His just-launched blog is called “Tapscott’s Copy Desk” and is worth a look. Among recent entries, a discussion of whether bloggers are the dominant media today
and a (perhaps too hopeful) post asking if bloggers can do for (to?) the government what they’ve done for the mainstream media.
Should Michael Powell be the next NFL commissioner? It might make sense, given the amount of time the FCC has spent looking at football broadcasts lately. Only weeks after the commission fined CBS over showing a bit too much of Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl, ABC is now under the microscope for a somewhat tawdry segment aired at the beginning of Monday Night Football this week.
The video–which more people probably saw on cable news than on the actual show–featured a woman from the hit show “Desperate Housewives” dressed in only a towel in the locker room before the game, propositioning a Philadelphia Eagle. The towel drops at the end of the segment, definitely indicating some hanky-panky, although there’s no nudity.
The segment provoked outrage among many–including many conservatives, who found it out of bounds for prime time. Michael Powell dutifully tsked-tsked the segment, saying he found the segment “very disappointing,” adding “I wonder whether Walt Disney would be proud.” A better question might be whether Thomas Jefferson would be proud that federal bureaucrats increasingly decide what Americans get to see and hear.
Like some regulatory Freddy Krueger, it looks like the FCC’s UNE rules just can’t be killed off. Earlier this year, it looked like the rules were doomed when the D.C. Court of Appeals struck down the regs–which require telephone companies to lease network elements to competitors. And only last month, the Supreme Court turned down requests to review the decision. It was widely assumed then that the rules, if not eliminated entirely, would be reduced to a minimal level. Recent news reports, however, now indicate that the Commission may in a few days adopt new rules that retain forced access requirements in certain circumstances, if there is not sufficient competition among telephone companies in a given area. That sounds reasonable, except that “competition” may be defined in an extremely narrow way–perhaps on a block by block basis. Thus, for instance, if there are a slew of competitors offering service on K Street, but none on L Street, the rules would be retained for L Street (even if competitors could easily expand into neigboring areas). Surprisingly, the new rules are being pushed by Chairman Michael Powell, usually seen as key defender of deregulation. We’re still awaiting details on what exactly the new rules will provide, but right now it looks like the UNE horror story will continue for some time to come.
Short piece by Norbert Michel and myself on the MPAA lawsuits, released yesterday by Heritage…
Hollywood, Values and P2P Lawsuits
If exit polls can be believed, issues of moral values were among the most important factors in last week’s presidential elections. Pundits are still weighing the meaning of that vote and what it means for public policy. Yet buried beneath the election news, the values issue was also raised last week in a much different context, the fight against the theft of intellectual property on the Internet. Ironically, the motion picture industry–rarely seen as a hotbed of traditional morality–is leading this fight. It announced that it will file lawsuits against individuals found illegally trading copyrighted movies over the Internet.
Just got word that a new website, “Fairnessdoctrine.com” has been launched in support of a bill by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. The site is co-sponsored by Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Democracy Access Project, David Brock of Media Matters, and Tom Athens of Democracy Radio.
I’ll refrain from rehashing the debate over the Fairness Doctrine, which managed to suppress political debate on the airwaves for decades, and met a well-deserved death in 1987. I do, however, urge everyone to promptly contact fairnessdoctrine.com to claim equal time on their page for your opposing views. I think I’ll ask for a link to techliberation.org. It is, after all, only a matter of fairness.
The Chicago-based Heartland Institute today released a new study on local government ownership of broadband networks, by Joseph Bast, the president of the Institute. Entitled “Municipally Owned Broadband Networks: A Critical Evaluation,” the paper focuses on the situation in three Chicago area suburbs, but is chock-full facts, figures, and logic that can apply to any city. Definitely a must-read if your friendly local city council members are considering a broadband scheme.
The fights over media this year just get more and more bizarre. I got an e-mail the other day from The Nation magazine that began:
“Among media watchdog groups, it’s an article of faith that concentration of power in the hands of massive media conglomerates is dangerous for the public interest. The fear is that these corporate giants could use that power to manipulate the nation’s political process. Sinclair Broadcasting Group is proving these fears well-founded.”
Huh? I repeat: huh? Only hours later, Sinclair bowed to public pressure and cancelled its plans to air an anti-Kerry documentary on its stations. But never mind that. Even if Sinclair had not reversed course, does anyone really that Sinclair or anyone else has undue power over what Americans hear and think? For gosh sakes, most people didn’t even know Sinclair had a news division until a few weeks ago.
Andrew Grossman, Heritage’s senior web editor, sent over the following on the just-released Google Desktop, and the looming battle between Google and MS. (To see more from Grossman, check out the Heritage policy weblog):
“Last week, Google, a company renowned for its search service, released the Google Desktop, a piece of software that lets users search through the materials stored on their own computers, from e-mail to Word files to Web pages that they have recently browsed. The Desktop is Google’s first major foray onto the desktop, and its release may mark the beginning of the end of Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop software market. Someone should tell the trustbusters in Washington and Brussels that their services are no longer needed, if they ever were.”
The New Millennium Research Council is hosting an event next Wedneday (Oct 27) in Washington on “The End of Regulation? Reforming Telecom Policy and REgulator’s Roles to Meet New Market Realities.” Speakers at the half-day conference–including TLFer’s Braden Cox and Adam Thierer–will discuss the future of regulation and of regulators in the coming IP world. I will be moderating the shebang, but it promises to be an interesting day anyway. If you’re in the Washington area, it’s worth dropping by to see.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
