January 2012

The raging battle over SOPA and PIPA, the proposed anti-piracy laws, is looking more and more likely to end in favor of Internet freedom — but it won't be the last battle of its kind.

Although, ethereal as it is, the Internet seems destined to survive in some form or another, experts warn that there are many threats to its status quo existence, and there is much about it that could be ruined or lost. A vast behemoth that can route around outages and self-heal, the Internet has grown physically invulnerable to destruction by bombs, fires or natural disasters — within countries, at least. However, while it's essentially impossible to cripple connectivity internally in a country, it is conceivable that one country could block another's access to its share of the Internet cloud.

The collapse in support for two anti-piracy bills last week leaves the door ajar for movement on alternative legislation offered by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA). The shelving of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act after massive online protests might have changed permanently the landscape of lobbying on tech issues. Issa and Wyden’s OPEN Act, which seeks to stop the transfer of money to foreign websites with a primary purpose of piracy or counterfeiting, is likely to get the full scrutiny of policymakers and the tech world in the coming weeks. Although whether it can move forward remains in serious doubt.

Among 160 brands, Amazon was the only technology company to rank as “excellent” in Forrester’s latest customer experience index.

The achievement is all the more impressive considering that, as Forrester found, U.S. customers are becoming harder to please. Indeed, the percentage of brands in the excellent category dropped from 6% last year to just 3% this year -- continuing a steady downward trend from 2008 to 2012. Difficult as it may be, however, “improving customer experience can have an enormous positive impact on a firm’s bottom line,” according to Forrester analyst Megan Burns. To calculate its customer experience scores, Forrester asked some 7,600 U.S. consumers about their interactions with a variety of brands, and then subtracted the percentage of customers who reported bad experiences from the percentage who reported good experiences. Brands typically rate “OK” (65 to 74) to “very poor” (less than 55). This year, 64% of brands got a rating of “OK,” “poor” (55 to 64), or “very poor” from their customers, while 37% rated “good” (75 to 84) or “excellent” 85 and higher). Technology-focused brands with “good” consumers ratings included eBay, Apple and iTunes, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo, Vizio, and Samsung. “Poor” performers included AOL, Blackberry, T-Mobile, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Verizon, and Cox Communications.

K Street boom days have come and gone. A bad economy and rigid stalemates on Capitol Hill took its toll on big firms for the second year in a row, with seven out of the 10 biggest lobbying groups reporting flat or negative revenues in 2011, a significant contrast with the double-digit growth many of the same firms experienced in the mid-2000s, according to recently filed federal lobbying reports.

And the stagnant revenues aren’t expected to pick up in the coming year with the economy still slow and an even bigger change afoot in the industry. Fights are no longer just about which side has the most — or best — lobbyists. The new world of Washington influence is more diverse: Traditional access lobbying is waged alongside campaigns that use media, grass-roots activism and the Internet — activity often not reported in federal lobbying filings.