The New York Times has come up with a nifty online feature — a presidential debate analyser that allows you to see word-by-word what the candidates at this week’s GOP presidential debate said about what, and how many times.
It’s worth a look. Those looking for statements by the contenders on Internet or telecommunications policy, however, are likely to be disappointed. A few quick searches reveal that — although this was bill as an economic policy debate — anything having to do with digital world seems absent. “Telecommunications”? 0 mentions. “Net neutrality”? Not there. Television? Surprisingly absent. FCC? Mentioned only once, by the moderator, Chris Matthews.
The word “Internet” was mentioned six times, after Matthews asked Rudy Giuliani how he would police the Internet culturally. He stated firmly that he wouldn’t tax the Internet (reassuring, but not really responsive), and indicated broadly that existing laws should be sufficient to police child predators and the like. Matthews persisted, asking directly whether we need a new, FCC-style agency for the Internet. Oddly, Giulianai hedged a bit on that, hinting that maybe he would if things got “worse.” Kudos to John McCain, who seemed to practically chew through his microphone at that point to say his answer was “absolutely not.”
There’s also an analyser for the September 26 Democratic debate. Internet mentions there? Zero.
The Times analyzer is a fascinating gizmo, even if the content isn’t encouraging.
In an interesting post today, Glenn Fleishman explores what AT&T’s purchase of 700 MHz spectrum from Aloha Partners today means for Verizon. While my conspiracy theory radar tingles a bit, I had this same thought earlier today. No point in paraphrasing; enter the blockquote.
AT&T spends $2.5b for 12 MHz across 200m people in the 700 MHz band: Let’s talk two-steps-ahead. In the terms for the C Block licenses that Google wanted very open and Verizon and AT&T wanted to have cell-spectrum-like restrictions, AT&T did a volte-face and said it would agree to most of the openness that Google wanted. Huh, I said, I wonder what made them do that? Well, it’s gamesmanship. AT&T was obviously already in a position to acquire Aloha Partners’s licenses.
This means that AT&T is reverse-encumbering the other band. While the C Block involves more bandwidth and greater coverage, Verizon is now in a worse position because of the lack of device and application lock-in if they choose to bid in 700 MHz as AT&T will already have holdings. AT&T can have the flexibility to deploy different services in the different 700 MHz blocks. I think.
AT&T can now focus on bidding on the A and B blocks, which can compliment their Aloha acquisition and which don’t come with open-access restrictions. So did AT&T pull off a Machiavellian ploy to saddle Verizon with an open access mandate?
In my comments to the FCC in the 700 MHz proceeding, I addressed the Commission’s insistence that the licensee of a national public safety spectrum license be a non-profit entity. At the time I said,
This is odd since there are several commercial communications companies with the comparative advantage and expertise in designing, building-out, and maintaining wireless broadband networks. A for-profit mission and quality service to first responders should not be considered mutually exclusive ideals.
The Commission’s 312-page final order cited my comment, but sadly as an example of the sort of proposal they weren’t going to adopt. Instead, they decided that they would create a license for 10 MHz of public safety spectrum (worth billions) and give it to a Public Safety Broadband Licensee. And who is the Public Safety Broadband Licensee? They have no idea, but in the Order they lay out the requirements for any entity who wishes to apply to be the Public Safety Broadband Licensee. These include,
- No commercial interest may be held in the licensee, nor may any commercial interest participate in the management of the licensee
- The entity must be non-profit
- The entity must be “broadly representative of the public safety radio user community”
Well, applications to be the Public Safety Broadband Licensee are due this Wednesday, and so far there’s only one applicant, an organization called the Public Safety Spectrum Trust Corporation (sorry, no website). If they are chosen as the Licensee, the PSST will help set the public safety requirements any bidder will have to satisfy in order to purchase the commercial-public safety shared D Block that will be auctioned in January. (Frontline has committed to bid, while Verizon has also shown an interest.) So who makes up the PSST? According to their recent press release,
The PSST Board of Directors is comprised of representatives of the following organizations: the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO); the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International (APCO); the Forestry Conservation Communications Association (FCCA); the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP); the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC); the International Municipal Signal Association (IMSA); the National Association of State Emergency Medical Services Officials (NASEMSO); the National Emergency Number Association (NENA); and the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA).
That is, the lobbying groups for public safety. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of the lobbyists themselves potentially getting a license. Also, these groups supported the Cyren Call plan last year to reallocate spectrum from commercial to public safety use. Guess who they chose last week to be their “Public Safety Advisor“?
I’ve not seen much mention of the fact that libertarian journalist extraordinaire Declan McCullough has joined the blogosphere. His most interesting post to date was this one, in which he revealed that the White House has been using its robots.txt file to prevent search engines from indexing or archiving potentially embarrassing information:
Whitehouse.gov was programmed to block search engines from indexing a photo gallery of President Bush in a flight suit standing in front of that famous Iraq “Mission Accomplished” banner in May 2003.
What’s odd is that the gallery, which has since been moved, was the only one on the entire Whitehouse.gov site listed as off-limits. To be fair, though, the current location is not off-limits.
By way of background, there was a flap in late 2003 about the White House using robots.txt to tell search engine bots to stay away from “/iraq” pages because the same file was posted in the main section and duplicated in the “/iraq” section. It’s the same logic as blocking text-only pages; here’s an example of the same text appearing in three different templates: normal, text-only, and printer-friendly. The White House seems to have subsequently discontinued the Iraq template.
That explains the “/nsc/iraq” directory being marked as off-limits to search engines. But out of 767 mentions of “/iraq” in the robots.txt file from 2003, the sole Iraq press release or gallery listed as blocked this week (a) represents a uniquely embarrassing moment for the Bush administration and (b) has been the subject of revisionism.
Don’t believe me? Bush’s carrier speech originally was titled, according to the Internet Archive, “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended” and featured photographs of smiling Iraqi children. At some point the children vanished and the speech was quietly renamed: “President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.” Another USS Abraham Lincoln-related switch: before and after.
It looks like it’ll be a great blog!
The FCC’s 700 MHz plan adopted yesterday embraces, for the most part, Frontline Wireless’s plan for a national public safety network. It’s really an amazing thing considering that nine months ago Frontline Wireless didn’t exist (at least not in public), while Cyren Call had been making noise for months. As I’ve said before, I’m not crazy about Frontline’s plan, but I like it better than Cyren Call’s ill-fated proposal. That said, here are the pros and cons of the new rules ad I see them (and without the benefit of the actual rules in front of me because the FCC apparently hasn’t heard of this publishing technology called the World Wide Web).
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Today, the Well Connected Project of the Center for Public Integrity is excited to launch an issue portal jointly with Congresspedia. This issue portal is a wiki, like Wikipedia, creating a collection of articles on telecom, media and technology policy, in a single location. Anyone can read, write and edit these articles.
This issue portal builds on the great telecom and technology reporting done by the members of the Well Connected Project staff. This venture into collaborative journalism is a first for our project. It adds a new element to our investigative journalism endeavor. First of all, we have the Media Tracker, a free database of more than five million records that tells you who owns the media where you live by typing in you ZIP code. If we win our lawsuit against the FCC, we’ll also include company-specific broadband information in the Media Tracker.
Second, our blog features dozens of quick-turnaround stories on the hottest topics in telecom and media policy. Recent stories have broken news on the battle over 700 Megahertz, on the lobbying over the proposed XM-Sirius satellite radio merger, and also over copyright controls on electronic devices. We also do investigative reports – like this one about Sam Zell, the new owner of Tribune Co. – that build on the data that is freely available in Media Tracker.
Now, with the addition of this Congresspedia wiki, our project aims to incorporate citizen-journalism on key public policy issues near and dear to the blogosphere. These are issues like Broadband availability, Digital copyright, Digital television, Regulating media content, and Spectrum are at the core of what techies care about in Washington. We hope you will add others articles, too. In fact, I’ve already started my own wish list: articles about Patent overhaul legislation, Media ownership, the Universal Service Fund, and Video franchising. Our reporters can summarize these issues and debates, but so can you.
Take a crack at them!
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The podcast of my keynote speech at EDUCAUSE, “Mapping the Fault Lines in Telecom, Media and Tech Lobbying,” is now available an online podcast.
Here’s the blurb from the event:
The digital convergence of telecommunications, media, and technology is changing the landscape for policy makers and the industries that lobby them, as well as the users of computers, telephones, entertainment and knowledge. The Center for Public Integrity’s Well Connected project tracks each of the major telecom, broadcast, cable, news, entertainment, wireless, and computer companies. Americans can access this free database to see who owns the media and communications networks in their city by typing in their ZIP code. The project is also responsible for a freedom of information lawsuit to obtain data about local broadband deployment from the FCC. This session will address the need for the educational users of computing and communication to be attuned to the lobbying fault lines that affect all of these sectors, with a particular focus on recent developments in telecommunications and intellectual property.
TLFers may be interested to note that Jim Harper’s keynote podcast is also available.
Google’s public policy shop today officially joined the blogosphere, joining Cisco (February 4, 2005), Global Crossing (November 7, 2005), and Verizon Communications (October 2, 2006), each of which already have corporate policy blogs. The maiden post, by Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s director of public policy and government affairs, promises “public policy advocacy in a Googley way.” It’s one in which users will “be part of the effort” to help “refine and improve” the company’s policy positions. The blog already has 12 posts, done during the company’s internal test. The most recent – which I suspect provided the occasion to officially launch the blog – is a short summary of the official Google position on network neutrality.
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Tech Policy Weekly from the Technology Liberation Front is a weekly podcast about technology policy from TLF’s learned band of contributors. The shows’s panelists this week are Jerry Brito, James Gattuso, Tim Lee, Adam Thierer, and Ryan Paul of Ars Technica. Topics include,
- More states governments defy congress and reject REAL ID
- Won’t someone please think of the children?!
- the FTC’s new report on marketing violence to children
- the Child Online Protection Act
- and the .xxx domain is rejected
- How the net neutrality debate is bleeding into spectrum auctions and other quick bits
There are several ways to listen to the TLF Podcast. You can press play on the player below to listen right now, or download the MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the podcast by clicking on the button for your preferred service. And do us a favor, Digg this podcast!
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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.