Miscellaneous

Some Amazing Numbers Re: Growth of Net & Social Media

by on January 24, 2010 · 10 comments

Most of you have probably already seen this but Pingdom recently aggregated and posted some amazing stats about “Internet 2009 In Numbers.”  Worth checking them all out, but here are some highlights:

  • 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide as of Sept 2009; 18% increase in Internet users since previous year.
  • 81.8 million .COM domain names at the end of 2009; 12.3 million .NET & 7.8 million .ORG
  • 234 million websites as of Dec 2009; 47 million were added in 2009.
  • 90 trillion emails sent on the Internet in 2009; 1.4 billion email users worldwide.
  • 26 million blogs on the Internet.
  • 27.3 million tweets on Twitter per day as of Nov 2009.
  • 350 million people on Facebook; 50% of them log in every day; + 500,000 active Facebook applications.
  • 4 billion photos hosted by Flickr as of Oct 2009; 2.5 billion photos uploaded each month to Facebook.
  • 1 billion videos served by YouTube each day; 12.2 billion videos viewed per month; 924 million videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US as of Nov 2009; + the average Internet user in the US watches 182 online videos each month.

And yet some people claim that digital generativity and online innovation are dead!   Things have never been better.

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Last Call for Summer 2010 Internship Applications through Google & Koch Fellowships!

by on January 23, 2010 · 3 comments

The deadline for the Google Policy Fellowship is Monday, January 25.  The Progress & Freedom Foundation, where Adam Thierer, Adam Marcus and I work, is participating again this year, as are the Competitive Enterprise Institute (home to the TLF’s Ryan Radia, Wayne Crews & Alex Harris) and Cato Institute (Jim Harper & Julian Sanchez).

The deadline for the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program, run by the Institute for Humane Studies, is Sunday January 31. PFF, CEI and Cato are all participating, as are the Pacific Research Institute (Sonia Arrison), the Reason Foundation (Steve Titch) and the Washington Policy Center (Carl Gipson). Descriptions are available here (just select “technology” on the right). Also participating, for the first time, is the Space Frontier Foundation, on whose board I sit and for which I served as Chairman in 2008-2009.

If you look through our recent posts, you’ll get a pretty good idea of the diverse array issues we all cover, and who focuses on what. There’s certainly no shortage of interesting technology policy work to be done!

Both programs run 10 weeks and offer stipends. The Koch Program (which I participated in) is specifically geared towards those interested in free market ideas, and includes an excellent retreat, ongoing series of lectures, and group research project. As a “Koch-head” myself (class of 2000), I can attest to the quality of the program and the value of the alumni network. The Google program is in its third year but will, I’m sure, develop a valuable alumni network of its own.

Of course, most of our think tanks would probably be happy to have extra help around, so if you’re interested in an internship during the school year or over the summer, don’t hesitate to reach out to one of us. We may not necessarily be able to pay you but, hey, no one ever went into the think tank world to get rich!

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Privacy Is Not About The Size Of The Pipes

by on January 22, 2010 · 3 comments

Is privacy a broadband issue? We think not. Privacy is based on what consumers care about, not the speed of the pipe.

NetChoice filed comments today with the FCC, which were in response to the agency’s request for comments on online privacy issues. The FCC asked for comments on the use of personal information, identity management services and privacy protections across broadband applications. The questions raised in the request were drafted entirely by the Center for Democracy and Technology, and are an attempt to inject the privacy debate into discussion of the National Broadband Plan.

Our comments took a nuanced approached—we focused our response on the appropriateness of this inquiry as it relates to Internet privacy issues. While we assert that the FCC doesn’t have the legal authority if it were to act, we focus the bulk of our comments on how the FTC has already established jurisdiction and occupies the online privacy issue area. We also highlight how the FCC’s ability to regulate broadband pipes as infrastructure does not convey jurisdiction to regulate that which flows over the pipes as information. Importantly, privacy is not a broadband issue:  the privacy policies of the ends (consumers and online services) are not defined by the middle (the speed of the communications pipe).

Privacy is an important issue not because it is specific to broadband; rather, because privacy is a consumer-driven expectation that must be met regardless of transmission technology.

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    Welcoming Carl Gipson to the TLF!

    by on January 22, 2010 · 8 comments

    It’s my pleasure to welcome Carl Gipson as our latest contributor to the Technology Liberation Front.

    Carl is the Director for the Center for Small Business, Technology and Telecommunications at Washington Policy Center where he regularly writes about current technology policy issues. He’s also the author of The Fallacy of Network Neutrality, RFID: Balancing Technology and Privacy, Restrict VOIP Regulations to Federal Standards and more. Carl is also is a voting member of the Telecommunications and I.T. Task Force with the American Legislative Exchange Council.  He holds a degree in Political Science from Western Washington University.

    We look forward to Carl’s contributions to the TLF and we welcome him to our merry band of cyber-liberty loving radicals!

    P.S. You can follow Carl on Twitter here.

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    Regulatory Whack-A-Mole, Part II

    by on January 21, 2010 · 0 comments

    Congress and the Federal Communications Commission periodically get upset over wireless phone early termination fees. The latest uproar has occurred during the past couple months in response to Verizon’s doubling of the early termination fee on “smart” devices. The fee falls by $10 per month, leaving s $120 early termination fee in the last month of a two-year contract.

    Policymakers still have not gotten the message that they cannot really do much about this “problem” unless they comprehensively regulate wireless rates and terms of service. (I would not recommend this, since a competitive wireless market has brought us rate reductions that even perfectly-functioning regulation would be unlikely to achieve. ) Attempts to poke and prod early termination fees are like the carnival game “whack-a-mole.”  As soon as you whack one mole with a stick, another one pops up out of another hole.

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is taking another whack.  In 2007, she introduced legislation requiring wireless companies to prorate early termination fees “in a manner that reasonably links the fee to recovery of the cost of the device or other legitimate business expenses.”  Coincidentally, the major carriers promised to prorate their fees at about the same time her bill got a hearing.  Then last November, up popped a mole from Verizon’s hole. Early termination fees for smart devices are prorated, but doubled. Now the good senator is whacking away at that mole with legislation that requires wireless companies to prorate early termination fees AND mandates that the early termination fee cannot exceed the size of the subsidy the carrier is giving the consumer on the phone.

    Smart whack, huh?  Doesn’t cost-based regulation of early termination fees eliminate the loophole (oops, mole-hole)?

    Not necessarily. In the first place, the legislation could create an accounting nightmare with plenty of opportunities for companies to game the system, especially if they offer different subsidies on different phones. Recall that the original impetus for breaking up the old AT&T landline monopoly was that AT&T was gouging consumers by charging them inflated prices to lease equipment manufactured by its subsidiary, Western Electric. With the AT&T breakup, the government essentially gave up on managing that problem and completely prohibited the monopoly local phone companies from manufacuring equipment. I think George Santayana just left me a voice mail. Even if the game board is restricted to early termination fees, we’ll soon see uglier, nastier moles emerge from uglier, nastier holes.

    But the wireless phone contract is about more than early termination fees. Even if policymakers succeed in imposing effective,  cost-based regualtion on early termination fees, wireless companies can still change other terms of the contract to compensate for any revenue losses. The law must have a truly long arm to reach the diverse array of rodents that will scurry forth from diverse orifices.

    Stay tuned for the next whack.

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    AFF Doublethink on Transparency

    by on January 12, 2010 · 0 comments

    AFF’s Doublethink has a nice story on “Open Source Democracy,” featuring TLF’s own Jerry Brito, founder of StimulusWatch.org.

    Yours truly and WashingtonWatch.com get a little mention too. Media darling Jerry gets top billing because he’s so darn good looking. And yes, a very clunky early version of WashingtonWatch.com was launched in 2001. The story slightly overstates the capabilities of my project, but we’ve got improvements along those lines in the works.

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    Imagining a world without the Internet

    by on January 11, 2010 · 0 comments

    The fun folks at Cracked.com tried to imagine what the world would be like without the Internet. Think porn, piracy, and pranks . But beyond that, the remaining examples point out how ill-suited the offline world is for the types of interpersonal communications that take place online. Maybe that’s why, without the Internet, these Photoshop pundits predict we’ll all be reading newspapers and getting perfect scores on grammar tests.

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    Mississippi leads the nation …

    by on January 6, 2010 · 2 comments

    … in receiving support from the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund.

    In case you missed it, on December 31 the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service issued its 2009 Universal Service Monitoring Report. This 568 page report compiles a massive number of statistics on the Federal Communications Commission’s $7.6 billion Universal Service Fund.  This fund subsidizes phone service in high-cost areas, phone subscriptions for low-income households, Internet service for schools and libraries, and Internet connections for rural health care facilities. About 60 percent of the money — $4.4 billion — goes to “high cost” (usually rural) phone companies.

    U Service fun facts 2009

    The money comes from the universal service charge on your wired, wireline, or VOIP phone bill. (That’s why the phone companies put the FCC’s phone number on the bill, so you can call the FCC if you have questions about this charge. Isn’t that thoughtful!)

    Virtually every table in the Monitoring Report is fascinating. But check out some of the statistics to the right, which came from Table 1.12.  After substracting the universal service charges paid by its citizens, Mississippi received the highest net amount from the Universal Service Fund — $258 million. Alaska, Puerto Rico, Kansas, and Oklahoma round out the top five net recipients.

    Some states are net payers. Florida paid $304 million more into the Universal Service Fund than its phone companies, low-income consumers, schools, libraries, and rural health facilities received back. Not surprisingly, other big, high-income states with large urban areas are also big net payers.

    Some states receive close to what they pay in. Although Texas is a big Universal Service Fund recipient ($511 million in 2008), Texas telephone customers also pay a lot into the fund ($508 million in 2008). Thus, Texas received a net $3 million from the Universal Service Fund. Other states close to breakeven are Arizona, Missouri, Oregon, and South Carolina.

    For 2008, I counted 22 states that are net recipients of $15 million or more, and 23 states that are net payers of $23 million or more.

    And you thought you had fun on New Year’s Eve!

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    TPS’ Guide to Tech Policy at 2010 CES Show

    by on January 5, 2010 · 0 comments

    Yo, tech policy geeks attending CES this week… The Tech Policy Summit team has put together a terrific “Guide to Tech Policy at 2010 CES.”  [PDF here] Very handy for tech policy wonks! I hope to see some of you at some of these sessions and keynote addresses.

    As I mentioned a few days ago, Tech Policy Summit has put together a terrific mini-summit with outstanding panels and speakers.  I’ll be hanging out at their sessions most of time out there.  If you see me, come chat.  We’ll plan a spontaneous happy hour or late-night drinking session!

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    Great PBS News Hour Debate @ Impact of the Net & Technology

    by on January 5, 2010 · 2 comments

    Great video here from the PBS News Hour featuring three tech visionaries debating the impact of the Internet and digital technology over the past decade, plus a look forward to the future. It features Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and author of the forthcoming book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” Esther Dyson, chairman of EDventure Holdings, which invests in technology startups, and Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consulting professor at Stanford University.

    I like Esther’s line, “the Internet has given each of us the power that you needed three secretaries to have and an institution behind you.”  It’s true.  Even though many people complain about information overload, the Internet and digital technologies have also given us the unprecedented ability to gather and filter through massive amounts of information and then put that information to work for us. You really did need 2 or 3 people, or an entire institution behind you in the past to accomplish things that you can now handle yourself in just a few hours (perhaps just minutes)  with your computer or smartphone.  Progress is good.

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