July 2010

Keeping Politics in the Shadows

[Commentary] Free speech implies responsibility. The Supreme Court said earlier this year that corporations and unions have the First Amendment right to spend whatever they want on independent political ads, but many businesses don't want the responsibility that comes with that new right.

They want to make their unlimited donations anonymously so the public will not know who is flooding the airwaves. On Tuesday, the Republicans in the Senate voted to let them get away with it. The business community, led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, claimed the bill would "shred" the Constitution by imposing onerous restrictions on businesses. Republicans insisted on the Senate floor that the bill was blatantly designed to improve the chances of Democrats in the fall election, citing as one example a provision that allows donations of less than $600 to remain anonymous, while requiring disclosure of the rest. Corporations are more likely to make larger donations, they said, while union members and their smaller donations are protected from disclosure. Of course, one of the founding principles of campaign finance reform is to encourage large numbers of small donations from donors of all kinds, while reducing the influence of wealth. This is not an ideological proposition; it is fundamental to ensuring a fairer political process.

By blocking the bill on Tuesday, opponents made clear that their real problem was disclosure itself. They want the right to poison the political atmosphere without being held accountable for their speech. During the coming onslaught, Tuesday's vote will be worth remembering.

Mobile-TV Push Gets Fuzzy Reception

Chip maker Qualcomm Inc. last week signaled it may give up a costly six-year quest to bring broadcast TV to mobile phones and other devices in the U.S. Not too many people are surprised, however, given the reception for mobile-TV services in the country so far.

But other entrepreneurs remain undaunted, arguing that technology decisions and other factors slowed adoption of a medium that has gained traction in other countries. A group of U.S. local broadcasters, in fact, is just beginning to gear up an effort to deliver a broadcast service called Mobile DTV to U.S. markets, using transmission capacity freed up by a transition from analog to digital technology. Meanwhile, a start-up called MobiTV Inc., which helps carriers offer mobile-TV services, says viewership of the World Cup helped turn June into the best month in its 10-year history. The Emeryville, Calif., company claims more than 10 million users, up from seven million this time a year ago. Yet that's not a very large number when weighed against the U.S. cellular industry's estimate of more than 285 million wireless subscriber accounts. Qualcomm hasn't released usage figures for the wireless network it calls FLO TV, which powers mobile-TV services marketed by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, yet it has conceded that growth has been disappointing.

Reports find technical divide among foreign- and U.S.-born Latinos

The Pew Hispanic Center finds that young Latinos born in the United States are far more likely to use text messages, social networking sites and other digital methods to communicate with their friends than their foreign-born parents or peers.

85 percent of native-born Latinos older than 16 use the Internet while 51 percent of foreign-born Latinos do; that 80 percent of native-born Latinos between 16 and 25 use cellphones compared with 72 percent of their foreign-born peers; and that 78 percent of native-born Latinos 16 to 25 who have Internet access use social networking sites such as Facebook, compared with 62 percent of their foreign-born peers. The biggest discrepancy was in text-messaging: 83 percent of native-born Latinos age 16 to 25 do it, compared with 56 percent of the foreign-born. The studies found that Latinos use digital communication technology less than non-Latinos, with younger people embracing the technology more enthusiastically than their parents.

FCC Cautioned On D-Block Spectrum Auction

House Homeland Security Emergency Communications Subcommittee Chairwoman Laura Richardson (D-CA) said that the Federal Communications Commission should not go forward with selling commercial firms access to communications spectrum needed by public safety organizations until key technical and legal issues are resolved.

She questioned whether the FCC has thoroughly worked out details of its plan to auction off the D-block spectrum to commercial wireless providers. "The plan contends that public safety would be able to leverage commercial innovation, economies of scale, and additional spectrum via priority access and roaming agreements on commercial networks," Rep Richardson said. "These are promising attributes, but the subcommittee needs more assurances that these features will provide adequate resources and capacity for public safety to meet its mission-critical needs."

Google: Foreign Rulings Shouldn't Apply In U.S. Antitrust Case

In general, US courts don't put all that much stock in rulings from other countries. But a recent move by a French antitrust regulator could end up playing a role in an antitrust lawsuit brought in Ohio against Google by comparison shopping search engine myTriggers.

Several weeks ago, the French Autorite de la Concurrence reportedly ordered Google to restore AdWords ads for the technology company Navx, stating that the removal of Navx's search ads "brutally and profoundly affected the revenues" of the company. Shortly after that ruling came down, myTriggers filed papers asking Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge John Bessey to take the French regulator's findings into account in deciding whether to grant Google's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Google recently responded by arguing that decisions by foreign authorities, interpreting other countries' laws, aren't relevant to whether the company violated the law in Ohio. MyTriggers countered in papers filed last week that Google's position "is contrary to the understanding of the proper application of the antitrust laws worldwide." Google almost certainly has the better legal argument on that point: A decision in France shouldn't be all that relevant to whether the company has violated Ohio's Valentine Act.

In E-Publishing Revolution, Rights Battle Wears On

The publisher Random House is in a dispute with the powerful Wylie Agency over an exclusive deal Wylie recently signed with Amazon to sell digital versions of some bestsellers -- books like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man that came out before e-books even existed.

"When an agent becomes a publisher, that is sort of contradictory," says bestselling author and Authors Guild President Scott Turow. Turow says the guild is concerned that Wylie may have a conflict of interest in taking on the role of both publisher and agent. The guild is especially critical of Wylie for signing an exclusive deal with Amazon -- which dominates the digital book market in both electronic readers and e-books -- but it's also troubled by Random House's response that it wouldn't do business with any of the English language authors Wylie represents until the dispute is resolved. Turow says something like that only hurts the writers. "I think the most amusing part of it is that we're gonna beat up on those poor authors who have Andrew Wylie as their agent, but we're not gonna take anything out on the behemoth Amazon," Turow says. "In other words, we're gonna walk down the beach and kick some sand in the face of the 99-pound weakling." Understandably, writers are worried about royalties. Amazon angered the publishing industry when it set the price of an e-book at $9.99 — much lower than the cost of a hardcover — which, Turow says, has already had a negative effect on writers' compensation. But writers also want more than the 25 percent royalty most major publishing houses have been offering for digital rights. That's an issue Jane Friedman, a former CEO of HarperCollins who co-founded the digital publishing company Open Road, says can't be resolved until the question of who owns the rights to older books that were published before the advent of digital publishing is settled.

Revolutionary Intel chip uses light to send data

In a development that could revolutionize how PCs and other tech gadgets communicate, Intel announced that it had made the first chip that sends and receives information using beams of light.

The chipmaker said the fingernail-size research prototype already can move 100 hours of digital music or 45 million tweets in a second from one device to another. And the company expects to make one eventually that can transmit a laptop's hard drive in one second and the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in less than two minutes. Moreover, because the chips are made of the same material the company uses for its brainy microprocessors, Intel envisions mass producing these "silicon photonic links" at low cost, making them practical for use in everything from personal computers to smartphones.

Europe Unleashes Online Gambling to Fill Coffers

Across Europe, cash-strapped governments looking for ways to reduce yawning budget gaps are embracing online gambling, a source of revenue they once viewed with wary skepticism.

While U.S. opposition to Internet betting has centered on concerns about gambling addiction, European politicians previously objected for a different reason: liberalizing the practice, they feared, would undermine state-sponsored lottery monopolies and gambling operators. But more and more gamblers are spurning land-based casinos anyway, and logging on to Internet poker and sports betting sites — many of them based in places that are out of reach of tax collectors. As public finances worsen, governments are trying to bring this once-shadowy business into the mainstream of Europe's digital economy, where it can be regulated and taxed.

"What's happened is a realization that you can't uninvent the Internet," said David Trunkfield, a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "People are gaming online. You either try to regulate and tax it, or people are going to go to the offshore operators, where you don't get any revenue."

18 States and District of Columbia Are Finalists for Education Grants

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia were named as finalists on Tuesday in the second round of a national competition for $3.4 billion in federal financing to support an overhaul of education policies.

The much-anticipated decision by the federal Education Department eliminated almost half of the 35 states that entered the competition, called Race to the Top. The contest is intended to give financial rewards to states that show a willingness to innovate. States are judged on a scale of zero to 500, with points awarded based on educators' support for charter schools, for incorporating student performance in teacher evaluations and for intervening in the lowest-performing schools.

The finalists are Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

FCC Launches Consumer Help Center

Consumers have a new, easy-to-use, Consumer Help Center that puts them within one click of all the information they want from the Federal Communications Commission. The new portal will allow consumers to learn about different issues in telecommunications, make it easy for consumers to find out what's going on at the FCC, get tips for making the best choices in purchasing communications devices and services, have their voices heard by filing comments on issues that interest them, and file a complaint when there are problems. The Consumer Help Center is produced by the FCC's Consumer Task Force, an inter-bureau group established by Chairman Julius Genachowski at the beginning of 2010. The Task Force has led several recent initiatives on major consumer issues.

The Consumer Help Center includes:

Everything consumers need to know about Bill Shock and Early Termination Fees -- two common issues that affect wireless customers;
Savvy Traveler tips -- advice on making phone calls when travelling abroad;
Broadband Speed Test -- consumers can test the speed of their broadband service;
Fact Sheet Library - more than 150 consumer Fact Sheets on telecom subjects;
Links to additional resources on a range of issues, including privacy;
Links to file a complaint to the FCC or comment on our rulemakings;
Blog posts about consumer issues -- with consumer comments welcome;
News releases, statements, and FCC actions.

Benton

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