June 2011

Why social media isn't

[Commentary] Despite all the newfangled ways we've developed to communicate across all sorts of boundaries, we're increasingly deciding to talk, tweet and Facebook with folks who are more or less like ourselves.

We live in an age in which overarching collective identities and institutions are collapsing in favor of narrower groupings by affinity. Think of the decline of network television, the rise of political independents, and the nichification of politics and the marketplace. While social media enthusiasts love to crow about the flowering of a million voices, I worry about the erosion of the social contract and national consensus.

EU body aims to settle web piracy disputes

Copyright holders, Internet service providers and online companies such as Yahoo are to come together in Brussels next September in the first step towards settling apparently irreconcilable differences over piracy.

The European Commission laid out plans for an “alliance” of creative artists, publishers and digital businesses owners, who continue to be at odds over intellectual property rights. The body, which has yet to be given a name, will meet for the first time in late September to try to thrash out solutions to disputes over payment-collection systems and, particularly, enforcement action against piracy. The planned alliance was one of few concrete steps to come out of the Commission’s Digital Agenda Assembly in Brussels last week, a wide-ranging effort to co-ordinate information technologies across the European Union.

Google to digitize British Library collection

Thousands of books and papers from the British Library’s collection will soon be made available online through a new partnership with Google.

Google and the British Library will work together to digitize 250,000 out-of-copyright texts from the 18th and 19th centuries. The British Library’s digital collection is expected to increase from 1.25 million items to 50 million by 2020, as it seeks to find new ways to open its collection to academics and members of the public, often free of charge. Scanning the texts without Google’s help would cost the library millions of pounds.

BBC sets the stage for bigger Hollywood role

The BBC’s commercial division is stepping up its efforts to become a big player in Hollywood after selling more than 20 scripted drama projects to US broadcasters and cable networks. BBC Worldwide Productions, a division of BBC Worldwide, declined to comment on the value of the deals. But the Los Angeles-based company, wholly owned by the UK public broadcaster, has developed several projects for the US market, as well as reformatting BBC series for American audiences.

Internet braces for new addresses beyond ‘.com,’ including ‘.bank,’ ‘.eco’ and ‘.Canon.’

Coming soon to the Internet: website addresses that end in “.bank,” ‘’.Vegas” and “.Canon.” The organization that oversees the Internet address system is preparing to open the floodgates to a nearly limitless selection of new website suffixes, including ones in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts. That could usher in the most sweeping transformation of the Domain Name System since its creation in the 1980s. More than 300 suffixes are available today, the bulk of them country-code domains, such as “.uk” for the United Kingdom and “.de” for Germany. Hundreds or even thousands more suffixes could be created, categorized by everything from industry to geography to ethnicity. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will meet June 20 in Singapore to vote on its expansion plan for domain names. If ICANN approves the plan as expected, new domains could start appearing late next year.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration sent ICANN a letter on June 16, sharing Administration concerns about preserving competition in the DNS marketplace.

Lawmakers say House must move more quickly to embrace new technology

House rules must change more swiftly if the chamber is to benefit from advances in technology. Though the iPad has become a common sight in the halls of the Capitol, Congress has a way to go before shedding its reputation as a digital backwater, lawmakers said. “The fact that this is a place that is laden with tradition is a good thing, but that doesn't mean we can't have the application of new technology that is consistent with the rules we have,” said Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA), the chairman of the House Administration Committee. “One of the things I'm trying to do on House Administration is to make sure that we are more receptive to technology change,” Chairman Lungren said.

Rules dictating the use of electronic devices on the House floor are readopted every two years. The House first adopted a rule prohibiting the use of personal electronic office equipment — including cellular phones and computers — on the floor in 1995 to ensure against disruptions and distractions. That was later amended in 2003 to allow the use of smartphones. In January, the rules were changed again to prohibit the use of any mobile electronic device that is disruptive of decorum. This change allows the Speaker of the House greater latitude in determining which mobile devices may or may not be used by members. The House Administration Committee is reaching out to members of Congress and the private sector to learn how to better modernize information delivery in the House as Congress experiences growing pains in adopting new technology.

Big Cable's Powell: Comcast/NBCU Merger Net Positive for Industry

Appearing on C-PAN's The Communicators, National Cable & Telecommunications Association President and former FCC Chairman Michael Powell said he thinks the Comcast/NBCU merger would be a net positive for the industry, providing some 'real glue' for an industry already melding increasingly disparate interests.

Powell said he was not sure how having Comcast and NBC under the same NCTA tent was going to shake out. "We'll react to how they begin to propagate their interest," he said. Those propagating that interest now include Powell's NCTA predecessor Kyle McSlarrow and former FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who are now in charge of managing the NBCU message in Washington. "It changes the dynamic inside the association, he said, but, "on net, for the better. You have the country's largest cable operator, also a significant programmer. It provides us no real alternative. We are an association that is now bound together, as we should have been anyway. But I think Comcast helps make that real glue."

Comcast to Use NBC Cash to Buy More of Unit, Not Major Deals

Comcast Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts said the cable company plans to use cash generated by NBC Universal to buy the rest of that unit from General Electric, rather than on other acquisitions. Comcast paid about $13.8 billion in cash and assets for 51 percent of NBC Universal in a deal that closed in January and has the rights to buy out the remainder of GE’s share at certain times.

LightSquared Reaches 15-Year Sprint Deal That May Be Valued at $20 Billion

Billionaire Philip Falcone’s LightSquared reached a 15-year deal with Sprint Nextel to share network expansion costs and equipment, and to provide high-speed wireless service to the phone company.

“LightSquared and Sprint will jointly develop, deploy and operate LightSquared’s 4G LTE network,” according to a letter from Falcone to Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund investors. “Sprint will become a significant customer of LightSquared’s 4G LTE network.” The deal is an important step forward for Falcone, whose effort to challenge Verizon Wireless and AT&T was met with skepticism after plans for LightSquared emerged in government filings about 15 months ago. Falcone is gambling more than 60 percent of his hedge fund on LightSquared. For Sprint, the deal would provide a new source of revenue as the third-largest U.S. wireless company struggles to compete with bigger rivals Verizon and AT&T. Sprint has pledged $5 billion to upgrade its network over the next three to five years. The company can use LightSquared’s network to lessen the load on its own network as data demand has skyrocketed, an issue that has plagued other carriers.

Cable Operators Fight Online Competition by Mimicking Web Interface

US cable companies are trying to stem video customer losses by embracing one of the things that’s pulling them away: the Internet.

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s annual show showcased services including Internet-connected set-top boxes and personalized viewing guides. Personalizing the viewing guide is a boon for advertisers, who can eventually utilize Internet provider data to offer tailored commercials to cable customers, according to Thomas Eagan, an analyst at Collins Stewart.

Benton

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