November 2013

The draft "intellectual property" chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership showed that the positions taken by US negotiators largely mirrored the provisions of US law, but the US negotiating position also had an unmistakable bias toward expanding the rights of copyright and patent holders. Those positions are great for Hollywood and the pharmaceutical industry, but it's not obvious that they are in the interests of the broader US economy. To the contrary, critics contend that the rights of copyright and patent holders have been expanded too much.

Two major factors contribute to the Office of the United States Trade Representative's strong pro-rightsholder slant. An obvious one is the revolving door between USTR and private industry. Since the turn of the century, at least a dozen USTR officials have taken jobs with pharmaceutical companies, filmmakers, record labels, and technology companies that favor stronger patent and copyright protection. A more subtle factor is the structure and culture of USTR itself. In its role as a promoter of global trade, USTR has always worked closely with US exporters. That exporter-focused culture isn't a problem when USTR is merely seeking to remove barriers to selling US goods overseas, but it becomes problematic on issues like copyright and patent law where exporters' interests may run directly counter to those of American consumers. USTR's enthusiasm for stronger copyright and patent protections could become a liability for the Obama Administration's broader trade agenda. In 2012, grassroots copyright activists blocked the ratification of one trade agreement by the European Union over its copyright provisions. There's a risk that a similar fate could befall the TPP.

Media Impact Funders’ new report, , is the result of a collaboration with the Foundation Center and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The research offers an exploration of philanthropy’s role in media funding between 2009-2011, and is part of a new taxonomy project to better track and understand trends in media-related funding nationally.

As an organization working at the nexus of media and philanthropy it’s been especially gratifying to dive deep into the data, and to concretely see that this is a field that is no longer at the margins of giving, but is in fact growing at nearly four times the rate of domestic giving in other issue areas. $1.86 billion was invested in media projects between 2009-2011, and the trend lines are promising.

[Commentary] The deadline on which President Barack Obama has staked his presidency is upon us. The President has pledged that Healthcare.gov will be "working for the vast majority of Americans in a smooth, consistent way" by November 30, 2013 -- just four days away.

Already, a CNN/ORC International survey found that for the first time, a "clear majority" of Americans do not believe President Obama is honest and trustworthy. Only four in 10 think he's able to manage the federal government. Where things stand in four days will either reinforce those views or start to repair Americans' trust in their President. Either the site works as promised and President Obama escapes from the quicksand of the last few months, or it's not fixed and the Administration descends further, with each passing day making it less likely that his Administration will ever get back on track. So we'll find out on soon which it is, right? Well, no. The most likely outcome is that there will be enough legitimate progress for the White House to say Healthcare.gov is (almost) fixed -- and also enough problems for opponents to continue to lob criticisms. As such, Nov. 30 is likely to come and go without much changing public opinion around the Affordable Care Act. "The system will not work perfectly on December 1, but it will operate much better than it did in October," predicted Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Evidence that Healthcare.gov will be (sort of) fixed:

• A lower error rate. The rate -- defined as screens that time out or that serve error messages to consumers -- was reduced from 6 percent to less than 1 percent by mid-November.
• Faster load times. Page load times were reduced from 8 seconds to less than 1 second, also by mid-November.
• Increased server capacity. The site is now able to handle 20-30,000 people at a time. A push to double that to meet the original goal by Saturday is underway. "By the end of the month HealthCare.gov will be able to operate at the capacity that was originally intended: a rate of approximately 50,000 users on the site at the same time," Bataille said.
• Hundreds of bugs fixed. There have been more than 300 "software improvements, bug fixes, and hardware upgrades." How many bugs remain is not clear, but CMS officials have emphasized over and over that the work will be ongoing, and that they expect the site to be better each week than it was the last. The bug-fixing does not end Saturday.
• Easier for navigators. The New York Times reports that navigators working to sign consumers up for insurance in person have started having an easier time with the site, though far from a flawless one.
• Less dramatic site outages. On the day HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified before a House committee, Healthcare.gov was down the entire time. Now it's only seeing "intermittent outages," as Bataille described them.

Evidence that it's not going to be fixed:

• Ongoing insurance-form problems. CMS is still declining to specify the error rate for the forms sent to insurers letting them know who has purchased plans, known as "834s." So long as CMS isn't saying that the problem has been fixed—meaning an error rate of 1 percent or less -- it's safe to assume it hasn't been.
• Ongoing site outages. The site had outages both this week and last week. It turns out that fixing one part of the site can crash other parts of it, and CMS says it expects intermittent site outages to continue in the weeks ahead.
• Capacity issues. At the height of interest in Healthcare.gov, as many as 250,000 people were on the site at once -- five times more than the site is expected to be able to manage on November 30 under the best-case scenario.
• The return of the dreaded waiting room. "There will be times that volume on HealthCare.gov will exceed ... demand, and we are preparing for that," Bataille said. "If we experience extraordinary demand, consumers may not be immediately able to complete the application. They will be queued, in order to ensure a smoother process, and will experience some wait time." The new online version of "your call will be answered in X minutes" is being touted as better than the last version, an "online waiting room" in which people had no idea how long they'd need to wait.
• Novel glitches. New bugs will continue to be discovered and need fixing, especially since every new fix risks causing trouble downstream.
• Many parts still not fully built. The small-business site, the Spanish-language site, and the system for actually transferring those federal subsidies to insurers have yet to come online, and that's not going to magically change on Saturday.

Outgoing Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn championed a public-private partnership between the city, the University of Washington, and Gigabit Squared earlier in 2013 that will bring cheaper high-speed Internet service to 12 neighborhoods in 2014. But with incoming mayor -- and current state senator -- Ed Murray’s (D-WA) campaign being financed in part by cable giant Comcast, time will tell if that project retains the support of Seattle’s political leaders.

While State Sen. Murray has publicly countered criticism that he’s Comcast’s puppet, he has otherwise remained silent on broadband issues. Yet the donations to his campaign beg the question whether Comcast’s contributions were an isolated occurrence, or part of a larger strategy to influence local elections when there is support for lower-priced competition in the future?