DIGITAL DIVIDE
Clinton Announces Initiative To Close Digital Divide (SJM)
EDTECH
Technology Critic Takes On Computers in Schools (CyberTimes)
E-COMMERCE
Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce Report Hearing (House)
PRIVACY
Should Schools Allow Companies Into The Classroom To Collect
Personal Information From Children? (CU)
You've Got Inappropriate Mail (NYT)
Telecom Firms Lobby for Funding of Upgrades to Ease Surveillance
(WSJ)
MERGERS
BellSouth and SBC Expected to Announce New Wireless
Phone Company (SJM)
ANTITRUST
Microsoft Appeal May Go Directly To High Court (WP)
CONTENT
iWon.com TV Special, to Air on CBS, Raises Questions on
Media Convergence (WSJ)
Computer Programs Protected by Amendment (WSJ)
Eisner Says Net Content Doesn't Have To Be Free(USA)
Primedia and Sony Pictures To Create Soap Opera Site (NYT)
DIGITAL DIVIDE
CLINTON ANNOUNCES INITIATIVE TO CLOSE DIGITAL DIVIDE
Issue: Digital Divide
At a White House East Room ceremony yesterday, President Clinton announced a
"National Call to Action" to bridge the Digital Divide in the United States.
President Clinton proposed two major goals during the event: 1) Giving
students better access to "21st century learning tools" by connecting every
classroom to the Internet, improving access to multimedia computers and
expanding technology literacy opportunities to teachers; and 2) Connecting
every household to the Internet, expanding community technology center
programs and improving technology training opportunities for adults. The
President also announced the details of his 3rd "New Markets Tour," which
will commence April 17 and 18. During the tour he will examine digital
divide issues by visiting a computer center in East Palo Alto, Ca; a Navajo
reservation in Shiprock, NM; and the Comdex computer conference in Chicago,
IL. Ten days following the two-day tour, Clinton will also examine broadband
deployment issues in rural North Carolina.
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Jim Puzzanghera]
(http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/front/docs/clint040500.htm)
See Also:
CONNECTING AMERICAN FAMILIES
In his Fiscal Year 2001 budget request, President Clinton has proposed the
creation of a new $50 million program to increase the number of low-income
families that have access to the Internet in their homes. NTIA has posted a
Fact Sheet on the Home Internet Access Program, which it is calling
"Connecting American Families," to help answer some of the most frequently
asked questions.
[SOURCE: NTIA]
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/hafacts40400.htm)
E-COMMERCE
ADVISORY COMMISSION ON ELECTRONIC COMMERCE REPORT HEARING
The Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection
hearing to receive the report of the Advisory Commission on Electronic
Commerce has been scheduled for Thursday, April 6, 2000 at 10:00 a.m. in
2123 Rayburn House Office Building.
Immediately following the above hearing, the Subcommittee on
Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection will hold a hearing on
H.R. 3489, the Wireless Telecommunications Sourcing and Privacy Act.
[SOURCE: House of Representatives]
(http://www.house.gov/commerce/)
EDTECH
TECHNOLOGY CRITIC TAKES ON COMPUTERS IN SCHOOLS
Issue: EdTech
Clifford Stoll, an astronomer, computer expert and technology gadfly, warns
against classroom computing in his new book _High Tech Heretic: Why
Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer
Contrarian_. "Here's a policy being put into place without any hearings or
public debate," Stoll said . "No one is asking, 'What problem does this
solve? What problem does this cause?'" Stoll believes the computer skills
kids need can be learned in a couple of weeks by high school students and
that the prominent place of technology in the classroom could end up doing a
lot of real harm to students: time on the computer inevitably means time
taken away from real interaction with teachers and other students and means
reduced time for things that children do master more easily than grown-ups,
like foreign languages and musical instruments. "Stoll is back in the old
debate about whether we should have computers in school or not," said Keith
R. Krueger, executive director of the Consortium for School Networking, a
nonprofit Washington group that promotes the use of technology in schools.
"That's the wrong question. The question is, how do we use computers and
technology to improve schools and learning?" Krueger also said that Web
sites and educational software do not necessarily lack intellectual merit
because students find them entertaining. Indeed, he argues, young people
look forward to the increasing levels of difficulty in video games. "I agree
that learning is hard and rigorous," he said. "But that's not necessarily
mutually exclusive with 'fun.'"
[SOURCE: CyberTimes, AUTHOR: Pamela Mendels (mendels( at )nytimes.com)]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/cyber/education/05education.html)
PRIVACY
SHOULD SCHOOLS ALLOW COMPANIES INTO THE CLASSROOM TO COLLECT PERSONAL
INFORMATION FROM CHILDREN?
Issue: Privacy
From Press Release: Companies are being allowed into America's classrooms to
collect personal information from students so the companies can learn the
best ways to market their products to children:
* A California company provides schools with free computers, software, and
access to certain web sites. In exchange, the company monitors students' web
browsing habits and sells the data to other companies.
* Children in a Massachusetts elementary school spent two days tasting
cereal and answering an opinion poll to help the company sell to kids.
* Children in a New Jersey elementary school filled out a 27-page booklet
called "My All About Me Journal" as part of a marketing survey for a cable
television channel.
Consumers Union supports the Student Privacy Protection Act, a bill in
Congress that would require parents to give informed consent before
companies can collect information on their children in school. It also calls
for the Comptroller General to conduct a national study on the prevalence
and effect of commercial activity in schools.
"A classroom should be a place for children to learn, not a place for
companies to learn how to market to kids," said Frank Torres, legislative
counsel for Consumers Union.
The Student Privacy Protection Act was introduced by Rep. George Miller of
California and Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. The House bill number
is H.R. 1734 and the Senate bill number is S. 1422.
[SOURCE: Consumers Union]
(http://www.consumersunion.org/other/schooldc400.htm)
YOU'VE GOT INAPPROPRIATE MAIL
Issue: Privacy
More and more companies are storing and reviewing email messages sent and
received by employees. The employers are looking for messages that may be
overloading and/or crashing their network systems, items that have nothing
to do with work, off-color or ethnic jokes that could be fodder for lawsuits
and the possibility that employees are sharing company secrets. The American
Management Association estimates that over 38% of companies will monitor
email this year -- up from just 15% in 1997.
[SOURCE: New York Times (C1), AUTHOR: Lisa Guernsey]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/biztech/articles/05mail.html)
TELECOM FIRMS LOBBY FOR FUNDING OF UPGRADES TO EASE SURVEILLANCE
Issue: Privacy
The telecommunications industry is pressing Congress for nearly $500 million
to help pay for software upgrades needed by law-enforcement agencies to
upgrade their wiretap digital and wireless-telephone networks. The FBI has
warned that the conversion to digital and wireless equipment was threatening
to undermine the usefulness of court-approved phone surveillance. Digital
systems don't have the analog pulses that traditional intercept gear is used
to monitoring. Drug Enforcement Administration Chief Donnie Marshall said
that any further delay in upgrading "[could reduce] our current ability to
listen in on the inner sanctums of drug-trafficking organizations." An
emergency spending bill was approved by the House last week, which would
make $382 million available. But it's part of a larger appropriations
package, involving funding for the Pentagon and to fight narcotics
trafficking in Colombia, that is caught in a Senate battle. The FBI has
reached tentative agreements to pay equipment manufacturers like Nortel,
Lucent, Siemens and Motorola for the cost of developing the upgrades, but
none of the manufacturers are willing to complete a deal until Congress
appropriates the money.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (A4), AUTHOR: David Cloud]
(http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB954898560823693018.htm)
MERGERS
BELLSOUTH AND SBC EXPECTED TO ANNOUNCE NEW WIRELESS PHONE COMPANY
Issue: Mergers
BellSouth and SBC are set to combine their wireless telephone businesses,
creating the second-largest company in the U.S. wireless world. Both
companies' boards were meeting last night to vote on the deal, which is
expected to be announced today. SBC's network extends into the Southwest,
Midwest and California; BellSouth's is in the Southeast. Combined, the two
would cover much of the country, possibly reducing out-of-network "roaming"
charges for its 16.5 million customers. The merger has been in negotiations
for over a month, but the companies have yet to decide on the top executives
for the new company, which will have 25,000 employees. On Tuesday, Bell
Atlantic and Vodafone AirTouch announced a similar deal which will create
Verizon,a giant wireless company with 24 million customers throughout the
country.
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Associated Press]
(http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/054879.htm)
See Also:
2 PHONE GIANTS SAID TO BE NEAR DEAL TO MERGE WIRELESS UNITS
[SOURCE: New York Times (C1), AUTHOR: Seth Schiesel]
(http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/f/AP-BellSouth-SBC.html)
ANTITRUST
MICROSOFT APPEAL MAY GO DIRECTLY TO HIGH COURT
Issue: Antitrust
U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who ruled Monday that Microsoft
violated the law by attempting to quash competition in the software
business, said yesterday that he might put any appeals of his decision on "a
fast track" to the U.S. Supreme Court. Jackson said that he did not want
"to have caused this thing to drag on through a number of months of
additional proceedings." If he sends the case directly to the Supreme Court,
it could get there as early as this summer, shortening the timeline for a
resolution of the case by many months. Before the judge can send the case to
the high court, the bypass of the appeals court must be requested by one of
the parties in the case. If such a request were to come from the Justice
Department, it would have to be approved by the solicitor general, the
Attorney General or even the President. The law allowing the appeals court
bypass has only been used once in the last quarter century. It was used for
a review of the case that broke up AT&T.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (E1), AUTHOR: James V. Grimaldi]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11689-2000Apr4.html)
CONTENT
IWON.COM TV SPECIAL, TO AIR ON CBS, RAISES QUESTIONS ON MEDIA CONVERGENCE
Issue: Ownership
When CBS airs the "iWon.com Annual $10 Million Giveaway" special, most
viewers won't be aware that CBS will be the biggest winner: the network gets
a
half-hour of prime-time exposure for an Internet company in which it owns a
majority stake. Jeffrey Chester, from the Center for Media Education, says,
"This is clearly a commercial for a CBS investment and needs to be labeled
as such." But its not. ABC ran into trouble last month for airing segments
on "Good Morning America" featuring the sock-puppet spokesdog for Pets.com,
a site in which ABC's parent Walt Disney just bought a 5% stake. "Everyone
talks about convergence in the industry...Here we've done it in an opposite
way. We've taken a site that is 100% Internet and gone backwards to
traditional media." says CTC Bulldog founder Bill Daugherty, which created
iWon. But Chester believes that this type of convergence erodes the
public's confidence in what they are watching.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B13A), AUTHOR: Associated Press]
(http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB954873289140897996.htm)
COMPUTER PROGRAMS PROTECTED BY AMENDMENT
Issue: Free Speech
The Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that computer programs used to
scramble electronic messages are protected by the First Amendment because
those codes are a means of communications among programmers. The finding
came from a lawsuit filed by Cleveland law professor Peter Junger that
claimed that the government violated his free-speech rights by requiring
licenses to export programs that scramble electronic messages. Raymond
Vasvari, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio said,
"This is a great day for programmers, computer scientists and all Americans
who believe that privacy and intellectual freedom should be free from
government control."
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B10), AUTHOR: Associated Press]
(http://interactive.wsj.com)
EISNER SAYS NET CONTENT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE FREE DISNEY CHIEF WANTS TO SELL
TO WEB USERS
Issue: Intellectual Property
Disney CEO Michael Eisner's condemnation of those who say all content should
be free on the Internet was the talk of the Variety/Schroders Big Picture
Media Conference on Tuesday. Eisner says Disney will oppose an effort in
Washington to let Web sites use anyone's content after paying a
government-set fee. "These Internet pirates try to hide behind some
contrived New Age arguments of the Internet. But all they are really doing
is trying to make a case for age-old thievery. . . . Theft is theft, whether
it is enabled by a handgun or a computer keyboard." The entertainment giant
also plans to work with other nations to fight piracy, explain its position
to consumers and support encryption initiatives. Disney will also try to
undercut pirates by selling its entertainment products on the Web. Eisner
cited a UCLA study that found consumers would be willing to pay $2.50 to
download a movie and watch it once.
[SOURCE: USAToday (5B), AUTHOR: David Lieberman]
(http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000405/2112247s.htm)
PRIMEDIA AND SONY PICTURES TO CREATE SOAP OPERA SITE (NYT)
Issue: Lifestyles!
Looking to find new ways to take advantage of the loyal following attracted
by television soap operas, Primedia and Sony Pictures have reached agreement
on a joint venture to create a new online site for soap fans. Thomas S.
Rogers, the chairman of Primedia, said his company's two soap opera
magazines, Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly, would combine with the
Sony Web site SoapCity.com. The new venture -- aimed at the "hard-core
demographic interested in soap operas" -- is expected to generate revenues
through everything from sales of items of apparel worn by soap opera stars
to pay-per-view telecasts of episodes of shows that fans might have missed.
Sony and Primedia anticipate significant e-commerce opportunities related
to the soaps.
[SOURCE: New York Times (C27), AUTHOR: Bill Carter]
(http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/soap-opera-site.html)
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