Miscellaneous

My Swan Song Moment: I Will Take Elmo Hostage in the Name of First Amendment Freedoms!

by on March 4, 2010 · 2 comments

But I Don't Love You, Elmo

I have decided what my swan song moment in the field of public policy will be. For some time now I’ve been considering retiring from the public policy world since I am really quite sick of political BS in Washington, but I’ve always wanted to go out in style. So, here’s what I plan to do to end my career next week. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has just announced that he will be delivering a major policy speech outlining how the agency’s new National Broadband Plan will benefit children and families next Friday at 10:30.  According to the press release, the Chairman will be joined by Sesame Street’s Elmo when making the announcement.

So, here’s my plan… I will go to the event , rush the stage as Genachowski goes up with Elmo, grab Elmo, pull out a fake gun, put it to Elmo’s head, and then shout: “Stop regulating the Net and free speech rights now or the Muppet gets it!”

An ugly scene will no doubt follow in which several of my old friends at Common Sense Media, who are co-hosting the event, will try to talk me down from the cliff by asking me hand over the gun and to “think of the children.” But I’ll rush out the back door of the auditorium with Elmo in tow and escape in my getaway car. (I plan to live in mountains in rural Idaho and skim money off of the FCC universal service fund & the E-Rate program since I know how to rig the system from reading years of GAO reports on fraud and abuse of both!)

OK, so you get that this is all sarcasm, right? I don’t want to Secret Service showing up at my door on the grounds that I am threatening a Muppet.  And I certainly don’t want to live in Idaho. But, seriously, what is the deal with politicians appearing with puppets? That’s always freaked me out a bit. I will never forget attending a congressional hearing about children’s television issues back in 1993 and watching a surreal exchange between Rep. Ed Markey and Lamb Chop, the sock puppet.  Really, a woman with a sock on her hand (Shari Lewis) delivered testimony to Congress. No, seriously, it really happened. Check it out: Continue reading →

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Broadband Availability: The Dog that Didn't Bark

by on March 3, 2010 · 0 comments

I was slow to adopt broadband. So maybe it’s also appropriate that I was slow to read John Horrigan’s highly informative survey on broadband adoption released by the Federal Communications Commission on February 23. Or maybe it’s fortuitous, because the delay let me take a look to see what messages the news media took away from this survey.

Two clear messages appear in the news coverage.  The first is a variant of the screaming headline the FCC put on its own press release: “93 Million Americans Disconnected from Broadband Opportunities.” You’ll find this as the headline or lead paragraph in coverage by the New York Times and AFP.

The second type of message highlights the main reasons one-third of the population does not subscribe to broadband. “FCC Survey Shows Need to Teach Broadband Basics,” notes the headline on an Associated Press story. According to the survey, the three main obstacles to broadband adoption are cost, lack of digital literacy, and non-adopters’ perception that broadband is not sufficiently relevant to their lives.  (I got a chuckle when I saw that non-adopters said they would be willing to pay $25, on average, for broadband; that’s the magic price that finally induced me to give in and sign up!)

But whoa, what’s missing here?  Our old friend Availability. Broadband was supposed to be some kind of noveau public works project that would take hundreds of billions of dollars to bring to fruition, because many Americans lack access to broadband. “Build it and they will come!” “Pour that concrete information superhighway!” “Stimulate the economy!”

The FCC survey tells an interesting story about availability:

Of the … non-adopters, 12 percent say they cannot get broadband where they live. This translates into a 4 percent share of Americans—on the basis of their reports on infrastructure availability in their neighborhood—who say they are unable to obtain broadband because it is not available. This means that 31 percent of all Americans can get service but do not. (p. 5)

The survey also notes that 10 percent of rural respondents say broadband is not available where they live.  I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but that’s all?  Heck, I’d have guessed a higher percentage than that.   

To put the numbers in perspective: 4 percent of Americans say they don’t have broadband because it isn’t available, while almost three times as many — 10 percent — lack broadband because they think the Internet is irrelevant to their lives.

Is availability a problem in some places?  Sure. But the FCC survey shows it isn’t nearly the size of problem we’d been led to believe. So let’s hope the National Broadband Plan’s discussion of availability is similary circumscribed and appropriately targeted.

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Stats, Stats, & More Stats (@ the Net & Online Media)

by on March 2, 2010 · 0 comments

Very cool little video here by Jess3 documenting Internet growth and activity. Ironically, Berin sent it to me as Adam Marcus and I were updating the lengthy list of Net & online media stats you’ll find down below. Many of the stats we were compiling are shown in the video. Enjoy!

  • 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide as of Sept 2009; an 18% increase from the previous year.[1]
  • 81.8 million .COM domain names at the end of 2009; 12.3 million .NET names & 7.8 million .ORG names.[2]
  • 234 million websites as of Dec 2009; 47 million were added in 2009.[3] In 2006, Internet users in the United States viewed an average of 120.5 Web pages each day.[4]
  • There are roughly 26 million blogs on the Internet[5] and even back in 2007, there were over 1.5 million new blog posts every day (17 posts per second).[6] Continue reading →

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Shop Blue Jeans Cable

by on March 1, 2010 · 11 comments

I wasn’t going to pay $35 piece for a couple of 3-foot HDMI cables—the shortest Radio Shack carries—when all I needed were 1-foot cables.

So on Adam’s recommendation I went to Blue Jeans cable, where 1-foot cables are $8.75.

Ordered on Friday night. Shipped Saturday. Arrived Monday.

What more do you need to know? I’ve got a set-up with noooo cable clutter.

Blue Jeans cable is a good outfit, sez this happy customer.

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Planet Moron on the FCC’s National Broadband Plan

by on February 27, 2010 · 2 comments

Planet Moron.com has taken a humorous look at the FCC’s pending National Broadband Plan (“We’re Digitally Distressed At How Much This Is Going To Cost Us.”) It’s quite entertaining.  They note:

If you are like most Americans, three questions probably pop into your mind:

1) Am I paying for this?
2) Seriously, am I paying for this?
3) Because if I’m paying for this, I’m going to be really ticked off.

Indeed, it’s probably going to cost us a lot more than we can possible imagine, especially with all the lawyering and lobbying that will accompany it.  Oh well, that’s Washington for you–we pay $2 bucks to get $1 worth of benefits. I’m voting for the National Elevator Plan instead.

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Radio discussion: “Regulating the World Wide Web: A View from Abroad”

by on February 23, 2010 · 0 comments

Every Tuesday, Washington, DC’s local NPR station (88.5 WAMU) carries a “Tech Tuesdays” program as a regular part of The Kojo Nnamdi Show.  This week’s show, which was guest hosted by Marc Fisher of the Washington Post, was on “Regulating the World Wide Web: A View from Abroad.” It was a wide-ranging and very interesting discussion about the future of Internet governance and regulation, featuring:

  • Evgeny Morozov: Yahoo! Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University; Fellow, Open Society Institute; and author “Net Effect” blog on ForeignPolicy.com
  • John Morris: General Counsel, Director of the Internet Standards, Technology and Policy Project, Center for Democracy and Technology
  • Olivier Tesquet: Reporter, Slate.fr (France)

Listen here. It’s worth your time.

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Broadband as a Public Utility

by on February 23, 2010 · 2 comments

Debate over the regulatory status of broadband heated up this week as trade associations and major broadband companies sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission arguing strenuously against reclassification of broadband as “telecommunications service” subject to regulation under Title II of the Communications Act. One implication of Title II regulation is that broadband could be regulated like a public utility. Comparisons of broadband to services like electricity or railroads, which I discussed last week, also raise the prospect of public utility regulation. 

Classic public utility regulation restricts entry and regulates prices to prevent firms from charging excessive prices.  It’s typically used in situations where competition is believed to be impossible (or, where pre-existing policy decisions have created monopolies that aren’t going to go away very soon).

Broadband is not a monopoly; it is an oligopoly. Contrary to popular perception, that is not synonymous with “evil.” Although both monopoly and oligopoly end in “-opoly,” that doesn’t mean broadband competitors will charge monopoly prices, or even somewhat excessive prices.  The only firm conclusion that emerges from economic literature on oligopoly is, “anything’s possible, depending on the specific facts and circumstances.”

But there are also firm conclusions that emerge from economic literature on public utility regulation.  Just about every time the federal government has tried to impose public utility regulation on an oligopoly, it has ended up enforcing a cartel.  This is what happened in the past with railroads, trucking, airlines, and brokerage firms. There are a few times federal price regulation did not enforce cartels in oligopolistic or competitive industries. In those cases, it usually created shortages  — most notably gasoline and natural gas in the 1970s.

Title II regulation is not necessarily synonymous with public utility regulation. Title II could be used to impose some “nondiscrimination” requirements, without necessarily directly regulating broadband providers’ prices or profits.

But anyone who actually wants the FCC to regulate broadband providers’ prices and profits needs to read the peer-reviewed economics literature on the actual effects of public utility regulation in practice on the federal level. (More literature is cited here.) Then they need to explain why the results in broadband would be different.  And the explanation needs to be better than “We know better now, we’re smart, and we promise.”

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Are You Watching C-Span’s “The Communicators”?

by on February 22, 2010 · 0 comments

Are you a tech policy geek? Do you have a strange infatuation with nerdy communications, media, and Internet policy matters?  Then you probably need to get out more and get a life. Then you should be watching C-Span’s outstanding program “The Communicators“!  It’s a half-hour weekly program featuring a different guest expert (or 2) discussing hot topics and developments in the fields of telecom regulation, media policy, and cyberlaw.

This week’s show featured Kyle McSlarrow, President & CEO National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), as well as one of the nation’s finest beat reporters in this arena, Kim Hart, who writes for The Hill and the excellent Hillicon Valley blog.  Their “Communicators” discussion an interesting conversation about the FCC, the agency’s national broadband plan, Net neutrality, universal service subsidies, Google’s rising influence in Beltway debates, and more. Other recent “Communicator” guests, among many others, have included: Continue reading →

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Don’t Believe Web Traffic Numbers

by on February 20, 2010 · 3 comments

I’ve always viewed web traffic numbers with great suspicion, if for no other reason than they are all over the board. But the amazing Carl Bialik, the Wall Street Journal’s “numbers guy,” does us another great service today in his latest column, “The Trouble With Web-Traffic Numbers,” by walking us through exactly how big of a mess these numbers really are. Carl is the closest thing we have to a statistical ombudsman for the Internet as he repeatedly illustrates in his column how numbers can deceive and distort.

In terms of bogus web traffic numbers, there’s plenty of distortion going on. He quotes Erin Pettigrew, marketing director for Gawker Media, as saying that “For an industry that relies so heavily on accurate data and numerical accountability, relying on an estimate is embarrassing, antiquated.” Too true.  Of course, with so many people frequently deleting their cookies and now accessing websites from different machines, it’s not surprising that the numbers are such a jumble.

One of the reasons it’s so important to try to improve web traffic metrics is because it is essential to the advertising business, which powers the web and all the great content and services we consume online. More accurate web traffic metrics can help better direct and target ads across the web. But it won’t be easy.

Anyway, read Carl’s piece for all the details. And thank you Carl for always reminding us that there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

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New Year, New Slate of “AWFUL” Internet Laws

by on February 18, 2010 · 0 comments

It was an awfully bad snowfall that paralyzed Washington, DC last week. And though we may curse Old Man Winter, ‘tis still the season for snow.  Unfortunately, it’s also the season for a flurry of bad legislation – and we’re already trying to dig-out the Internet from a pile of bad proposed state and federal laws.

So far this year there have been hundreds of bills introduced nationwide, many that impact the Internet. That’s why today NetChoice released its first iAWFUL list of 2010, taking stock of the most serious legislative threats facing the global Internet.

The Internet Advocates’ Watchlist for Ugly Laws (iAWFUL) is our top ten – or more accurately, “bottom ten” – list of the worst proposed Internet laws in America. We have Congress and 16 states represented on our list (the same bad bills often spread to multiple states).

Our #1 iAWFUL bill is a Congressional bill (HR4173) that would expand the FTC’s rulemaking power. Buried in the 1700 pages plus of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 is a four page amendment to the FTC Act that would dramatically increase the FTC’s rulemaking authority. This expansion would mean the removal of significant procedural safeguards that have existed for the past thirty-five years. Given the aggressively pro-regulatory statements made by FTC officials on privacy and online media, expanded powers could do serious damage to online services and Internet innovation. Reporter Grant Gross wrote a good article recapping the issue here.

#2 on the iAWFUL list are the advertising nexus bills in Colorado (SB 1193), Illinois (SB 3353), Maryland (SB 824), New Mexico (HB 50), Virginia (SB 660) and Vermont (HB 661). These bills declare that some forms of Internet advertising are equivalent to having sales agents in their states.  All these states want to force out-of-state advertisers to collect and remit sales tax on sales to their residents. These nexus bills are popping up everywhere, whack-a-mole style.

Check out #3 – #10. Hopefully DC is done for the year with snow. Regardless, I’ll still need my snow shovel to help dig the Internet out from a blizzard of bad legislation.

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