1. Monthly archive
  2. December 2014

December 2014

Vessel subscription service looks to reshape economics of online video

A growing contingent of videomakers plans to post videos to a new subscription service, the well-funded and much-anticipated start-up Vessel, at least 72 hours before the same videos go live on YouTube or elsewhere on the Web.

Whether the key demographic of 14-to-24-year-olds sees $2.99 a month as being worth that early access to fresh content could determine what video built for the Web looks like for years to come. The plan is to make Vessel’s website and mobile app available to consumers early in 2015, giving content owners a chance to polish their pages in the meantime. Vessel is banking on a mix of premium advertising and subscription revenues to pay video creators at least 20 times more than they typically make from advertising revenue alone on YouTube. Vessel calls itself a “missing piece of the puzzle for content creators,” and one that’s not going to displace nonsubscription video services.

Senate Confirms FCC Commissioner Michael O'Reilly to Full Term

Commissioner Michael O'Rielly of the Federal Communications Commission was confirmed by the Senate for a full five-year term on the FCC.

He had been filling out the unexpired term of former Commissioner Robert McDowell, which ended June 30, 2014. (Commissioners are allowed to continue serving for what can be an extended period before being officially confirmed to a new term.) O’Rielly has been a commissioner since November 2013. Before that he was policy advisor in the Office of the Senate Republican Whip.

The 3 Big Myths that Are Holding Back America's Internet

[Commentary] The US is lagging its competitors in the quality of its Internet access, and the people in charge are hearing excuses. It’s time to debunk the myths. Here's my list of the Three Great Myths about US Internet access:

  1. "There's no problem because everyone who wants high-speed Internet access has it." The Federal Communications Commission's most recent data on sign up for high-speed Internet reports just 40 percent of Americans had signed up for wired download speeds of 3 Mbps or higher in 2012, with expense as the most-cited reason for not signing up.
  2. "The industry has invested a tremendous amount in high-speed Internet access infrastructure; we would lose that investment if there was any attempt to regulate high-speed Internet access." Yes, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and AT&T have invested in their networks  --  but their capital expenditures for 2009 to 2013 amount to just 15 percent as a percentage of the $1.5 trillion in revenue during that time (quite a bit less than the 20 percent for all four during 2001–2005). These companies are in harvesting mode.
  3. "Who needs fiber? Mobile wireless is the future." This is like saying that because we have airplanes we don’t need airports. To haul all our mobile wireless data back from us to the Internet, particularly when we’re uploading a ton of data, we’ll need fiber deep into the places we live, work and entertain ourselves.

[Susan Crawford is the author of The Responsive City]

ICANN transition plan needs new ideas to ensure accountability

[Commentary] The US government announced earlier this year that it would give up its historic oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the principal organization responsible for managing the Internet's domain name system. Since then, ICANN has launched a series of parallel processes to develop a proposal for the transition and establish accountability mechanisms to protect the organization from corruption and malfeasance.

Although the National Telecommunications and Information Administration originally planned to transition control to ICANN by September 2015, this deadline looks increasingly unlikely as stakeholders struggle to find a workable proposal. One particularly thorny issue in this process has been the question of how to replace the unique role the US government has played in protecting ICANN from both internal and external threats, such as capture by government, capture by private-sector interests, improper management and internal self-dealing. Without the US government involved, the Internet community needs to find another check on the ICANN board to ensure its long-term accountability and legitimacy.

[Daniel Castro is a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]

Phone companies would like to cut your landline cord for you

[Commentary] The Illinois Telecommunications Act is up for review the spring of 2015, and big phone companies are expected to push to eliminate a legal obligation to provide landlines, which are still the cheapest and most reliable form of phone service. In a measure being pushed by AT&T in states across the nation, consumer advocates say, the company wants to eliminate the act's "obligation to serve" requirement, which gives everyone in the state the right to landline service. That would open the door for phone companies to abandon areas they deem unprofitable. AT&T has said it plans to abandon the old Time Division Multiplexing system (your landline) by 2020.

Tech firms tussle with Department of Justice over the right to say 'zero'

A growing number of technology companies seeking to promote transparency have been testing the limits of new government guidelines on how they can disclose national security orders for their customers’ data.

Over the past year or so, about a dozen online and communications firms have reported that they have never received such a request, effectively breaching the spirit if not the letter of government guidance issued in January 2014 intended to make it more difficult for would-be terrorists or spies to identify services that could be used to evade detection. Their decisions have frustrated US officials, even as they privately acknowledge there is little they have been able to do about it.

2014 is ending, but this wave of technology disruptions is just beginning

[Commentary] Changes in technology are happening at a scale which was unimaginable before and will cause disruption in industry after industry.

Here are five sectors to keep an eye on: 1) Manufacturing, 2) The Reinvention of Finance, 3) Health Care, 4) The Energy Industry, and 5) Communications.

AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint have seen their landline businesses disappear. These were replaced by mobile -- which is now being replaced by data.

[Vivek Wadhwa is a fellow at Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University]

Reporters Without Borders Publishes 2014 Round-Up of Violence Against Journalists

Reporters Without Borders published its round-up of abuses against journalists in 2014. According to RWB’s tally, 66 journalists were murdered, bringing to 720 the number of journalists killed in connection with their work in the past 10 years. A total of 119 journalists were kidnapped in 2014, an increase of more than 35 percent on last year’s figure. Forty journalists are currently being held hostage.

Google in the European Union: A victim of its own success

[Commentary] Google is under fire across Europe.

European Union regulators and others may criticize Google, but it plays an important role in enabling the information society that the EU desires. Theoretically, it can help the EU realize one of its key goals, helping small- and medium-sized enterprises conduct e-commerce across the continent and beyond. Simply put, the fault is not on Google, but on the European Union itself. Rather than regulate Google, the smart answer for the EU would be to create a common legal framework that applies equally to all service providers.

[Layton studies Internet economics at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies at Aalborg University]

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