April 2012

Jeff Bezos’ annual letter to Amazon shareholders is a timely manifesto, unifying the company’s expansive range of businesses, justifying its approach to established markets, and marking as a target anyone who stands in its way. The letter begins with extensive quotes from customers praising Amazon Web Services, Fulfillment by Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing. The unifying thread? All three platforms are “self-service.”

“The most radical and transformative of inventions are often those that empower others to unleash their creativity – to pursue their dreams,” writes Bezos. “These innovative, large-scale platforms are not zero-sum – they create win-win situations and create significant value for developers, entrepreneurs, customers, authors, and readers.” The only people and institutions who lose in this scenario, according to Bezos’ logic, are the intermediaries: salespeople, lawyers, publishers. These interests, whether they realize it or not, only stand in the way of the innovation and beneficence Amazon’s inventions help to unlock. At least, that’s how Jeff Bezos sees it. “I am emphasizing the self-service nature of these platforms because it’s important for a reason I think is somewhat non-obvious: even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation,” writes Bezos. “When a platform is self-service, even the improbable ideas can get tried, because there’s no expert gatekeeper ready to say ‘that will never work!’ And guess what – many of those improbable ideas do work, and society is the beneficiary of that diversity.”

Facebook defended its support for a controversial cybersecurity bill that has raised the ire of Internet activists. Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of U.S. public policy, wrote that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) "would make it easier for Facebook and other companies to receive critical threat data from the U.S. government."

CISPA would tear down legal barriers that discourage companies from sharing information about cyberattacks. But activists fear it would undermine the privacy of Internet users. They argue the broad language of the bill could lead companies to hand over information unrelated to cyberattacks, including users' names, addresses and Internet activity. They are also concerned because the bill would give military spy agencies, such as the National Security Agency, access to the information the companies share with the government. Kaplan noted that the legislation does not force Facebook to hand over user information to the government. "Facebook has no intention of doing this and it is unrelated to the things we liked about HR 3523 in the first place — the additional information it would provide us about specific cyber threats to our systems and users," he wrote. Kaplan explained that when one company detects a cyberattack, promptly sharing information about that attack can help other companies to protect their systems and users. He said that Facebook has been working with lawmakers to amend the bill to address the privacy concerns, and said the bill’s sponsors have indicated "the door is still open to change the bill."

American companies are discovering the perils of politics as activists and public pension fund officials apply new pressure on corporations to disclose their political spending — or cease it entirely.

Companies holding their annual meetings this spring will face a record number of shareholder resolutions demanding companies reveal whether corporate funds have been spent on politics. A coalition that includes Public Citizen, Common Cause and other groups that favor campaign limits has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to require publicly traded companies to disclose campaign spending on their filings to regulators. And in recent days, Wendy's and several of the nation's most recognizable companies have dropped their affiliation with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group linked to the spread of Stand Your Ground laws and state efforts to toughen voter identification rules. The companies' actions came after a civil rights group, ColorOfChange, spotlighted the firms' ties to ALEC and argued African Americans should boycott their products.

The Federal Communications Commission entered into a contract with the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism to provide a literature review of research into the critical information needs of the American public and the barriers to participation in the communications industry that might limit the extent to which critical needs are met. The study is intended to inform the FCC’s 2012 report to Congress on barriers to participation, also known as the Section 257 Report. The work will be managed by the FCC’s Office of Communications Business Opportunities (OCBO). The award was made after careful review of responses to a Request for Quotation involving a number of highly qualified applicants. USC assembled a broad coalition of over 30 academics to inform their work. (BO Docket No. 12-30)