February 2010

Obama to Field Questions Posted by YouTube Users

On Monday, President Obama is scheduled to sit down in the library of the White House residence for his first interview since his State of the Union address. The interviewer? The United States of YouTube.

In a first-of-its-kind group interview, President Obama will read and watch questions submitted by YouTube users and answer them in a live Webcast. "It's a way to give people access to the president that feels more participatory," said Macon Phillips, the Obama administration's director of new media. YouTube, which is owned by Google, will allow people both to submit questions and to vote for their favorite ones, "so we get a stronger signal about what the crowd is interested in," said Steve Grove, the head of news and politics at YouTube and a former reporter for The Boston Globe.

New media help conservatives get their anti-Obama message out

The ability of a single e-mail to shape a message illustrates the power of the conservative network -- loosely affiliated blogs, radio hosts, "tea-party" organizers and D.C. institutions that are binding together to fuel opposition to President Obama and, sometimes, to Republicans.

The movement that many date to the 1955 founding of William F. Buckley's venerable National Review now spreads through new media. Learning from the Democratic "Net roots," conservatives use Twitter and Facebook to plan such events as the recent demonstrations against health-care reform at the Capitol. "We're experts at [finding] pro-lifers on Facebook," said Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Arlington-based Students for Life of America, and one of numerous social conservatives who have worked closely with economic conservatives to fight Democratic health bills. Such coordination is increasing. Inside the Beltway, much of it is fueled by the Conservative Action Project (CAP), a new group of conservative leaders chaired by Reagan-era attorney general Edwin Meese III. CAP, whose influential memos "for the movement" circulate on Capitol Hill, is an offshoot of the Council for National Policy, a highly secretive organization of conservative leaders and donors. "There is a definite sense that the various parts of the conservative movement are coming together," said Regnery, a leading CAP member.

Can we stop the global cyber arms race?

[Commentary] In a speech this month on "Internet freedom," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decried the cyberattacks that threaten U.S. economic and national security interests. "Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation," she warned, alluding to the China-Google kerfuffle. We should "create norms of behavior among states and encourage respect for the global networked commons." Perhaps so. But the problem with Clinton's call for accountability and norms on the global network -- a call frequently heard in policy discussions about cybersecurity -- is the enormous array of cyberattacks originating from the United States.

Until we acknowledge these attacks and signal how we might control them, we cannot make progress on preventing cyberattacks emanating from other countries. Simply put, the United States is in a big way doing the very things that Clinton criticized. We are not, like the Chinese, stealing intellectual property from U.S. firms or breaking into the accounts of democracy advocates. But we are aggressively using the same or similar computer techniques for ends we deem worthy. Our potent offensive cyber operations matter for reasons beyond the hypocrisy inherent in undifferentiated condemnation of cyberattacks. Even if we could stop all cyberattacks from our soil, we wouldn't want to. On the private side, hacktivism can be a tool of liberation. On the public side, the best defense of critical computer systems is sometimes a good offense.

Social media play part in recovery efforts

The Homeland Security Department has joined the social-media movement and for the first time is reading Twitter posts, blogs and Internet forums to learn instantly about conditions in Haiti and send alerts to government agencies in the country.

The department's Haiti Social Media Disaster Monitoring Initiative is designed to get information more quickly to people involved in recovery efforts by tracking up to 60 Internet sites including Google Blog Search, The Huffington Post and Twitter, according to a department report. "It's part of the way people communicate, so it should be part of the way we gain situational awareness," said Don Triner, acting director of Homeland Security's National Operations Center. The center was created after 9/11 to be the government's primary eyes and ears about potential security threats, and to share information with emergency workers after an incident. The center expanded after Hurricane Katrina and monitors news websites and TV for information.

At Amazon, Giving in to Demands

After a weekend of brinksmanship, Amazon on Sunday surrendered to a publisher and agreed to raise prices on some electronic books.

Amazon shocked the publishing world late last week by removing direct access to the Kindle editions as well as printed books from Macmillan, one of the country's six largest publishers, which had said it planned to begin setting higher consumer prices for e-books. Until now, Amazon has set e-book prices itself, with $9.99 as the default for new releases and best sellers. But in a statement Sunday afternoon, Amazon said it would accept Macmillan's decision.

Under Macmillan's new terms, which take effect at the beginning of March, the publisher will set the consumer price of each book and the online retailer will serve as an agent and take a 30 percent commission. E-book editions of most newly released adult general fiction and nonfiction will cost $12.99 to $14.99. Those terms mirror conditions that five of the six largest publishers — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster — agreed to with Apple last week for e-books sold via the iBookstore for the iPad.

To Deliver, iPad Needs Media Deals

After seeing Apple's presentation of the new iPad, Karr can't say for sure that future has arrived, "but I'm pretty sure we can see it from here."

Critics who suggested that Apple unveiled little more than an iPhone that won't fit in your pocket don't seem to understand that by scaling the iPhone experience, the iPad becomes a different species. Media companies now have a new platform that presents content in an intimate way. "Looking at it through the lens of whether or not it has new features and applications misses the point," said Craig Moffett, an analyst at Bernstein Research. "It is nine times larger than an iPhone, and that is fundamentally a new application." That application isn't work, not without a keyboard (touch-typing with all fingers on a virtual keyboard is miserable) or a camera.

This is a device for consuming media, not creating it. So are the media providers ready to deliver? Yes and, sadly, no.

Benton

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