August 2010

District uses Twitter to keep voters informed

The District of Columbia's government is using Twitter to keep voters informed about lines at polling places and other electoral issues. The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics has established a Twitter account that lets voters know the current wait time at its various polling places, along with information on ballot issues and informal tallies of the number of early voters. The account also directs followers to the agency's website, where they can find full lists of candidates and other critical information.

Newspaper Consolidating News Staff with TV and Radio Operations

The Deseret News, Utah's longest-publishing daily newspaper says it will cut nearly half of its staff and consolidate breaking news operations with affiliated television and radio operations. It said 85 newsroom positions are being eliminated, although some staffers will be enlisted for a transition period. Deseret News CEO and President Clark Gilbert said the newspaper is combining operations with KSL-TV and KSL Radio and will move to the broadcast networks' building about five blocks away. He said the layoffs include 57 full-time and 28 part-time employees. The newspaper will continue to publish seven days a week with contributions from readers, community figures and TV and radio reporters.

96% of US Households Have Telephone Service

The Federal Communications Commission released its latest report on telephone subscribership levels in the United States. The report presents subscribership statistics based on the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the Census Bureau in March 2010. The report also shows subscribership levels by state, income level, race, age, household size, and employment status.
In March 2010:

The telephone subscribership penetration rate in the U.S. was 96.0%, an increase of 0.4% over the rate from March 2009. This is the highest reported rate since the CPS began collecting this data in November 1983.
The telephone penetration rate for households in income categories below $15,000 was at or below 92.8%, while the rate for households in income categories over $50,000 was at least 98.0%.
Among the states, the penetration rates ranged from a low of 91.0% to a high of 98.8%.
Penetration rates ranged from 93.8% for households headed by a person under 25 to at least 96.1% for households headed by a person over 55.
Households with one person had a penetration rate of 94.2%, compared to a rate of 96.8% for households with four or five persons.
The penetration rate for unemployed adults was 95.4%, while the rate for employed adults was 96.9%.

Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke went to Nashville on August 30 to address a symposium on intellectual property enforcement, and he threw down the gauntlet: the Obama administration will find, board, and scuttle digital pirate ships, and the SS Copyright is going to get a new coat of armored plating.

"I think it's important to lay down a marker about how the Obama administration views this issue," he said of online copyright infringement. "As Vice President Biden has said on more than one occasion, 'Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft,' and it should be dealt with accordingly." Sec Locke then lamented the fate of songwriters. "Recently, I've had a chance to read letters from award winning writers and artists whose livelihoods have been destroyed by music piracy. One letter that stuck out for me was a guy who said the songwriting royalties he had depended on to 'be a golden parachute to fund his retirement had turned out to be a lead balloon.' This just isn't right." To make it right, Sec Locke pledged to work for global IP norms, enforcement of those norms, and a "strengthening" of the international copyright system.

FCC Releases Details From Comcast, NBCU Meeting

On August 30, the Federal Communications Commission released some details -- though not much -- of a private meeting held on August 27 to discuss economic issues related to Comcast's merger with NBC Universal.

Among the few details included in the disclosure document filed with FCC Secretary Marlene Dortch was who attended the meeting. The meeting was divided up into two panels with the first focused on multichannel video programming distributors.

The first panel included economists representing Comcast and NBCU: Michael L. Katz, director of the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Telecommunications and Digital Convergence, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Deputy Director Gregory L. Rosston and Mark Israel, senior vice president of the economics consulting firm Compass Lexecon. Critics of the deal also attended including Northwestern University economics professor William P. Rogerson, who represented the American Cable Association, and Bloomberg representative Leslie M. Marx, a Duke University economics professor.

The second panel focused on online issues and included other critics of the deal, according to the disclosure filed by William D. Freedman, associate chief of the FCC's Media Bureau. Among those on the second panel were Consumer Federation of America Research Director Mark Cooper, Navigant Economics Managing Director Hal Singer, who represented the Communications Workers of America, and University of Southern California economic professor Simon Wilkie, who attended on behalf of Internet service provider Earthlink and the satellite programming provider DISH Network.

Amazon Kindles Connect Rural Libraries to Digital World

Georgetown County (SC) isn't known as a bustling hub of innovation. But as the county's library system adopts new technology, residents can connect to a world beyond their rural community.

The Amazon Kindle, the popular e-book reader, is the latest tool made available at Georgetown County Library, thanks to a national Library Services and Technology Act grant. With the $25,000 grant, matched by the libraries, the county acquired 25 Kindles for onsite use and about $2,500 worth of e-books. "A library's mission is to preserve information and make that information available to the public," said Dwight McInvaill, director of the Georgetown County Library. "We started out with stone tablets and now we have Kindles." Across the country in the past decade, the marriage between technology and libraries has matured with the rise of interactive gaming and hands-on digital tools. Providing these types of virtual resources to the public has been one component of making the case that Americans still need libraries in the digital age.

ITIC: 'Significant Progress' on Net Neutrality Talks

Information Technology Industry Council President and CEO Dean Garfield put out a progress report August 31 on his group's efforts to find some middle ground among the stakeholders battling over the issue of network neutrality, saying there has been "significant progress" while declining to provide any details.

"As we work to reach final consensus, we're focused on solidifying what unites us, incorporating new ideas and viewpoints, and, above all, delivering a series of constructive, pro-consumer and innovation-based principles that will only strengthen the Internet as we know it today," Garfield said in a statement. "Past precedent shows that when we work together and integrate the best ideas in a coordinated fashion, the stronger the outcome." Garfield's group represents major tech firms such as Apple, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.

AT&T Misleads FCC about 'Paid Prioritization' on the Internet

AT&T has filed a confusing and misleading letter with the FCC in an attempt to justify charging content companies for priority access to its Internet subscribers. In the letter, AT&T conflates "paid prioritization" - the anti-consumer practice of speeding up and slowing down Internet traffic according to which service provider pays more - with far more accepted business network management practices.

Free Press and other Net Neutrality proponents oppose discriminatory "paid prioritization," not these other arrangements. Despite high-pitched rhetoric and name-calling by an industry fighting to avoid any government oversight, Free Press and other Net Neutrality advocates have consistently argued for open Internet rules that reflect those agreed to by AT&T in 2006 as a condition of its merger with Bell South. Those conditions required AT&T not to "provide or to sell to Internet content, application, or service providers ... any service that privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet ... based on its source, ownership or destination." During the two years that AT&T lived under this merger condition, the company accelerated its deployment of advanced DSL services and increased its capital expenditures by $1.8 billion, more than any other ISP in America.

S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, said: "With this letter to the FCC, AT&T deliberately tries to confuse anyone who will listen about the facts of Net Neutrality. AT&T is trying to move the goal posts on what is acceptable network management behavior. They think they can take advantage of the vacuum created by inaction at the FCC to redefine the terms of the debate. AT&T incorrectly implies that the ban on paid prioritization proposed by the FCC last year would prohibit practices that are commonplace today, by constructing bogus interpretations of 'paid prioritization' that reflect no arguments or statements made by the FCC or any proponents of Net Neutrality. AT&T then suggests that the company is engaging in rampant discrimination, which is either an illusion or an admission that the company has abandoned the commitment it made in 2006 not to prioritize any packet over its Internet access services. The practice AT&T describes in its letter involves businesses purchasing dedicated access lines in the enterprise broadband market. This is a far cry from the harmful practice of paid prioritization that the FCC proposal would bar. The FCC's proposal would permit standard enterprise service-level agreements, but would prohibit ISPs from limiting consumer choice and stifling competition and innovation by charging third-party content, application or service providers for prioritized access to the ISP's subscribers."

Legislation gap grows

When the Senate returns from its summer break in September, lawmakers will have quite a full plate of legislation to address: 372 bills, to be exact. That's the number of bills passed by the House that are awaiting action in the Senate.

And with the midterm elections in high gear and partisan rancor already poisoning a potential lame-duck session after November, it's likely most of the House-passed bills will stay on the shelf. A large legislation gap between the House and Senate is not unusual; the Senate was designed, in the famous description by George Washington, as a cooling saucer. But food left out to cool too long will spoil, and so will federal legislation: By law, if a bill is not passed by both chambers in the same Congress, it must be re-introduced in January.

Comcast and NBC - No Merger, No Way

[Commentary] There's no way the Comcast-NBC merger should be allowed by federal regulators. The fundamental objection to this merger is that businesses that provide the transport of media should not be allowed to own the content that travels over their channels.

This is in keeping with fundamental beliefs that network neutrality (requiring carriers to in fact carry any legal traffic without any right of censorship) and open access (requiring any technologically-compatible subscriber unit to be used on any given network) are both central to a functioning democracy and in getting the consumer the best deal, a fundamental tenet and objective of capitalism. Say what you will about what passes for capitalism today, but this albeit imperfect system offers the widest variety of goods and services possible, with the best quality and price, thanks to the competition absent in competing economic disciplines. Someone has to be the big, dumb pipe.

Perhaps, dare I say it, the time has come for (gulp) the government to assume responsibility for basic services where competitive returns for investors can only be achieved by screwing customers -- telecommunications, banking, healthcare, utilities, and a few more. It's sad to see honest value disappearing for those who pay the bills, and the ethos of customer as prey essentially codified in practice.

Benton

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