October 2013

Could this Mad Plan Harm the Mad Man?

Congress is thinking about eliminating the tax deduction for advertising expenditures -- but is that a good idea?

This has been good news for advertisers and everybody else in the ad biz, including media offering access to audiences, producers, writers, actors, etc., etc. But it appears that some in Congress have a new approach in mind. According to AdWeek, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Chairman David Camp (R-MI), has discussed the possibility of repealing the deduction available for advertising expenses. The problem with imposing any such limitations should be obvious. A change in the tax treatment of ad expenses could potentially add hundreds of millions of dollars to marketers’ tax bills. That, in turn, would discourage, rather than encourage, advertising, which could significantly reduce ad budgets. And that would significantly reduce revenue for ad-supported media and the broad universe of industries (e.g., production, copywriting, acting) symbiotically linked to advertising. A restructuring of the ability to expense advertising fees would affect the media and advertising industries in much the same way that elimination of the mortgage interest deduction would upset the home lending and housing market. Some representatives of the broadcast industry have recognized the storm clouds looming and have tried to get ahead of the problem.

The six most outlandish tech gimmicks used by TV news

[Commentary] Here are a few of the most outlandish tech attempts television news has made to attract audiences.

Fox has giant tablets
CNN used LEDs to "exclusively display" electoral results atop the Empire State Building
CNN's "virtual senate"
ABC's 2012 election LED video floor
CNN hologram correspondents
Unnecessary remote satellite interviews

Mystery of NSA billboards solved: BitTorrent 'fesses up

The mystery of Silicon Valley's National Security Agency billboard was solved when San Francisco-based BitTorrent, a decentralized file-sharing service that swaps bits of pieces of files between users' computers, revealed that it was behind the campaign.

The billboard along US 101 read: "Your data should belong to the NSA." The company also placed a billboard in New York City that read: "The Internet should be regulated." In a blog post, the company said it wanted to make a point about people's casual acceptance of the trade-offs between privacy and security. "We put these billboards up last week in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco," wrote Matt Mason, BitTorrent's vice president of marketing, "because we wanted to remind the world what’s at stake on the world wide web." The company's bottom line was clear: BitTorrent lets users and artists maintain control over their information rather than big corporations and the government. "This is the generation that will decide whether the Internet is a tool for control, or a platform for innovation and freedom," Mason wrote. “A free, open Internet is a force for change, creativity; the backbone of a society where citizens are stakeholders, not data sets.”

Cybersecurity help wanes due to government shutdown

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), assigned in February by executive order to lead information-sharing efforts for vital systems, has curtailed work groups, conferences and most other work, because of the government shutdown. That's bad news for the global cybersecurity community.

“A downed national security and best practices site signals to the bad guys that federal online properties have been abandoned, with no one to mind the figurative store. Who knows what information NIST and other shuttered agencies house on their Web servers, or what vulnerabilities are going unpatched that criminals can take advantage of,” said Jeff Hudson, CEO of digital certificate management company Venafi. He added that if the government shutdown lasts for an extended period, “there will be an effect on its ability to provide critical and timely guidance. If no one is available to observe, research and report on cybersecurity incidents and situations, then organizations could end up being at a loss when it comes to future standards setting.” He did say that outside resources will continue to have access to NIST’s papers and bulletins.

Online sales tax would hurt minorities, women, says MMTC

An online sales tax bill will disproportionately hurt minorities and women who own small businesses, the Minority Media Telecommunications Council (MMTC) said.

MMTC Vice President Nicol Turner-Lee criticized the Marketplace Fairness Act -- passed by the Senate earlier this year and awaiting consideration in the House -- saying its small business exemption of $1 million is inadequate to protect minorities and women. Brick-and-mortar stores claim the Marketplace Fairness Act would eliminate the unfair advantage online retailers currently have because online retailers don’t have to collect a sales tax. Small-business advocates say the bill’s $1 million exemption is set too low, and it would place undue compliance burdens on small businesses. The current small-business exemption in the Marketplace Fairness Act could keep minority- and women-owned businesses from operating across state lines, Turner-Lee said. To ensure that minority- and women-owned businesses aren’t disproportionately harmed under an online sales tax bill, “we need to think carefully about coming up with a more accurate definition of small businesses,” she said.

President should consult with Congress on rules for cyberattacks, Rep. Thornberry says

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) argued that the President should get input from Congress on the government's use of computer viruses and other offensive cyber weapons. "I think it is really important that the Administration consult with Congress on the rules of engagement for offensive action in cyber space," said Rep Thornberry, a senior member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees. He said it would be unreasonable to expect the President to get congressional authorization before launching every cyberattack. But he argued that Congress should have an opportunity to shape the rules for how and when US hackers attack enemy systems.

How the Press Helped Cause The GOP Shutdown

[Commentary] What's been clear for years is that the press clings to its preferred storyline: When Republicans obstruct President Barack Obama's agenda, the President's to blame for not changing the GOP's unprecedented behavior. In other words, "both sides" are to blame for the GOP's radical actions and the epic gridlock it produces.

The media lesson for Republicans? There's very little political downside to pushing extremism if the press is going to give the party a pass. Unfortunately, old press habits die hard and the "both-sides-are-to-blame" angle continues to be invoked by journalists who should know better. It does seem hard for mainstream reporters to drop the "both-sides-are-to-blame" angle. Yet every one of them must understand that that tired old trope doesn't apply to this weird Republican crack up.

Enter The Quiet Zone: Where Cell Service, Wi-Fi Are Banned

There are no physical signs you've entered the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area that covers the eastern half of West Virginia. But the silence gives you a signal.

Somewhere around the Virginia-West Virginia state line, the periodic buzzes and pings of smartphones stopped. "Zero [service]. Searching," said National Public Radio photographer John Poole. Almost every radio station disappeared, too, except for Allegheny Mountain Radio, which broadcasts at a low enough frequency to avoid being banned. The inconsistent connectivity is because the county sits within a zone designed to protect a sophisticated radio telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory from interference. The energy of Wi-Fi or cell signals can confuse or interfere with the telescope's readings — and it can trip the receivers at the government's nearby Sugar Grove research facility, which is also in the zone. "Because we're looking at these very, very faint signals, we need to live in a very, very quiet area. In the same way where if you had an optical telescope, it needs to be high on the mountain away from other light," Karen O'Neill, who oversees the site, says. So a federal quiet zone law and an accompanying state law — the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zoning Act — combine to keep the area very radio quiet. No interference is allowed. "We still have communications. I mean, it's just ... older. Dial-up telephones. We still have phone booths," says Chuck Niday, an engineer for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and a volunteer at Allegheny Mountain Radio.

Emergency communications are allowed in the zone, as is ham radio, a hobby among a set of West Virginians who chitchat or coordinate plans over their ham radios as they would their cellphones — if they had cellphones.

How we actually build Google Fiber

Today your Internet and TV service are probably connected to your home via copper wires. This technology has been around for over 100 years, and it just wasn’t built for what we’re trying to use it for today. My job with Google Fiber is to build thousands of miles of brand new fiber-optic cable, which is far better and faster than copper at transmitting information, such as the bits that make up your favorite websites, YouTube videos, video chats, or online games.

Fiber-optic cables are made of glass, and they use lasers to transmit information — close to the speed of light! It’s amazing technology, but unfortunately very few homes have direct access to fiber networks today. That’s where my team comes in. Every day, we’re working to plan and build brand new Google Fiber networks in Kansas City and Austin.

There are a few big steps:

Figure out where we can put our fiber. First, we use the infrastructure data that the city has shared with us to create a base map of where we can build (existing utility poles, conduit) and where we should avoid (water, sewer and electric lines). Then, a team of surveyors and engineers hits the streets to fill in any missing details.
Design the network. A hub-and-spoke design (30 utility poles per mile, for thousands of miles).
Build the network. Only once we have a solid plan can we get boots on the ground to start building our network. That’s when you’ll start to see crews out in the streets with their boom trucks, boring machines, and rolls of conduit and cables.

[John Toccalino is construction manager at Google]

US Must Modernize Regulatory Framework to Spur High-Speed Broadband Deployment

Policy scholar and communications industry analyst Dr. Anna-Maria Kovacs authored a new 45-page analysis, “Telecommunications Competition: The Infrastructure-Investment Race,” that examines the existing regulatory framework’s impact on the communications marketplace.

Outdated regulations that force companies to build and maintain obsolete copper-based legacy telephone networks are unnecessarily diverting investment away from modern broadband networks and services that 95% of US households prefer, desire and use.

The report finds that the overwhelming majority of US consumers rely on the use of smart wireless devices, cellphones, wired Internet-enabled VoIP services, and over-the-top Internet-enabled applications (i.e. Skype), far more than on traditional telephony to stay connected in today’s digital age. The study notes that 99% of all US communications traffic is now carried over these platforms in Internet Protocol, while legacy circuit-switched traffic is now less than 1% of traffic and likely to further decrease to a small fraction of 1% by 2017. Where incumbent telephone companies invest in IP over fiber-fed infrastructure they are gaining share against cable companies’ Internet-access and video, even as they lose subscribers in places where legacy services such as POTS and low-speed DSL are provided. To illustrate how the current regulatory framework is slowing investment in broadband infrastructure, one need only look at the incumbent telephone companies’ capital expenditures during the 2006 through 2011 period. Dr. Kovacs estimates that the incumbents spent a total of $154 billion on their communications networks. More than half of that was spent on maintaining fading legacy networks, leaving less than half to upgrade and expand their high-speed broadband networks. In contrast, cable providers, who are free from legacy network rules, spent a total of $81 billion in capital expenditures over the same six-year period, and were free to dedicate all of it to their broadband infrastructure.

Benton

Search