DIGITAL DIVIDE
Sen. Dorgan Fears Digital Divide For America's
Rural Areas (Roll Call)
Rep. Closing Digital Divide, Quashing Spam (PNS)
ECOMMERCE
Agreement on Internet Taxes Eludes Deeply Divided Commission (NYT)
A New Wrinkle in Surfing the Net Dot-coms' Mighty Dot-size
Bugs Track Your Every Move (USA)
MEDIA & SOCIETY
TV's White House Is Just Too White (USA)
Impact of Interactive Violence on Children (Senate)
MERGERS
Viacom Buys Chris-Craft's Stake in UPN for $5 Million (NYT)
Extra, Extra! Local Media Battle For Your Loyalty (USA)
MCI Worldcom and Sprint tell FCC Pact would Aid consumers,
Competition (WSJ)
POLITICS ONLINE
After Arizona Vote, Online Elections Still Face Obstacles (NYT)
EDTECH
CyberU: What's Missing (WP)
JOBS
The Global Fight for Talent (WP)
INFOTECH
E-mail Comes Alive with Interactive Technology (USA)
SPECTRUM
18th Annual International Spectrum Management Seminar (NTIA)
DIGITAL DIVIDE
DORGAN FEARS DIGITAL DIVIDE FOR AMERICA'S RURAL AREAS
Issue: Digital Divide
Roll Calls interview Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of
the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, on several communications-related
topics. On the topic of rural broadband infrastructure and the digital
divide, the senator says that if steps beyond traditional market incentives
are not taken, "there are a lot of communities around the country who will
be on the wrong side of the digital divide." For those who believe in the
concept of universal service, the senator continues, "...we have to do
something beyond relying on the current market system." Sen Dorgan said he will
introduce a bill that would create a broadband program similar to the Rural
Electrification Administration program, which brought electricity to rural
areas. Sen Dorgan describes the bill as "a mirror what we did with the buildup
of electricity in the country back in the 1930s -- providing low-interest
loans." The senator claims the bill would be "technology-neutral" and would
be funded by the Universal Service Fund.
[SOURCE: Roll Call, (3/20/200) AUTHOR: Staff Writer]
(http://www.roll.com)
REP. CLOSING DIGITAL DIVIDE, QUASHING SPAM
Issue: Digital Divide
A house bill (H.R. 1685) introduced by U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va) that
will increase the capacity of local telephone companies to provide Internet
service at local rates has a good chance of becoming law in the coming
weeks. H.R. 1685 would allow Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILEC) to
extend out of their local network (LATA) if they do so through the use of
their own network hardware.
[SOURCE: Phillips Business Information, Inc. Author: Eric Ladley]
ECOMMERCE
AGREEMENT ON INTERNET TAXES ELUDES DEEPLY DIVIDED COMMISSION
Issue: Ecommerce
On the eve of the opening of its final meeting, members of a commission
advising Congress on Internet taxation traded heated accusations as it
became increasingly clear that the commission would not be able to return
any recommendations at all. Commission member Mayor Ron Kirk of Dallas
accused the six members from business of a "multibillion-dollar tax grab."
The business group had joined forces with the anti-tax faction of the 19
member commission to back a proposal that no taxes be collected, at least
until 2006, on sales in states where the Internet sellers have no
bricks-and-mortar presence. The alliance controls 11 members of the
commission, two short of the two-thirds majority needed to approve any
proposal. Still, the commission's chairman, Gov. James S. Gilmore 3rd of
Virginia, head of the anti-tax group, said a report would be sent to
Congress based on simple majority vote, though it would lack the "dignity of
being called findings and recommendations." The commission was created by
Congress 14 months ago to advise on taxes on interstate commerce over the
Internet. At the insistence of anti-tax Republicans and Internet companies,
the law required a two-thirds vote for any policy findings or
recommendations, which they felt would curb any pro-tax efforts.
[SOURCE: The New York Times (C1), AUTHOR: David Cay Johnston]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/03/biztech/articles/21tax.html)
See Also:
PROPOSALS SEEK DELAY OF INTERNET SALES TAX
[SOURCE: Washington Post (E1), AUTHOR: John Schwartz]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/business/A47305-2000Mar20.html)
ADVISORY COMMISSION ON ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
Thursday, March 23, 2000 10:00 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building
Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection hearing
to receive the report of the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce .
Testimony will be received from one witness, the Honorable James Gilmore,
Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and Chairman of the Advisory
Commission on Electronic Commerce, for the purpose of summarizing the
Commission's Report to Congress, as required by the Internet Tax Freedom Act.
[SOURCE: House of Representatives]
(http://com-notes.house.gov/schedule.htm)
A NEW WRINKLE IN SURFING THE NET DOT-COMS' MIGHTY DOT-SIZE BUGS TRACK YOUR
EVERY MOVE
Issue: Ecommerce/Privacy
As if this "cookie" thing weren't enough, now Web cruisers need to worry
about bugs. Not the real critters that you can find in your backyard, but
instead the Web bugs that can hide behind a 1-by-1 pixel dot and track your
wanderings on the Web. The bugs are so small that you can't see them, the
only way to tell that they're there is to call up a Web site's underlying
computer code and look for them, line by line. These bugs are perfectly
legal and have been around for about three years. It's only lately that
they've been garnering attention, ever since their use as a tracking device
has become more prevalent. Web bugs provide exactly the kind of information
sites need to find out whether their advertising is successful. "It allows
us to look at how our customers are using our Web properties, and we adjust
our sites to better meet the needs of our customers," said Gretchen Briscoe
of Proctor & Gamble. But David Medine from the Federal Trade Commission
doesn't agree, "Sure, consumers like to get targeted ads, but not at the
price of giving up all privacy."
[SOURCE: USA Today (3D), AUTHOR: Elizabeth Weise]
(http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000321/2052504s.htm)
MEDIA & SOCIETY
TV'S WHITE HOUSE IS JUST TOO WHITE
Issue: Television/Diversity
Ben Johnson, who runs the President's Initiative for One America -- the
White House office Bill Clinton focused on mending our nation's racial
divisions -- recently made a visit to the set of the The West Wing, the hit
NBC drama about life in the White House. Johnson spoke to the producers
about the show's poor reflection of the racial and ethnic diversity of the
real White House staff. President Clinton's staff is, in fact the most
diverse in history, Johnson explained to Llewellyn Wells, one of the show's
producers. Fourteen of the President's 28 assistants are women or people of
color. In contrast, the show has only one regular black cast member: a young
aide whose job is to wake up the president and keep him on schedule. Wells
told Johnson he'd try to work more people of color into the program. But he
made no promises.
[SOURCE: USAToday (15A), AUTHOR: DeWayne Wickham]
(http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000321/2052365s.htm)
IMPACT OF INTERACTIVE VIOLENCE ON CHILDREN
Issue: Media & Society
Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation, and Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) announced the tentative
witness list for the Full Committee hearing on the Impact of Interactive
Violence on Children.
The Full Committee hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, March 21, at 9:30 a.m.
in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. Senator Brownback will
preside.
Panel I
Dr. David Walsh, President, National Institute on Media and the Family
Mrs. Sabrina Steger, Pediatrics Nurse, Lourdes Hospital
Danielle Shimotakahara, Student
Panel II
Dr. Craig Anderson, Department of Psychology, Iowa State University
Dr. Eugene F. Provenzo, School of Education, University of Miami
Dr. Jeanne Funk, Department of Psychology, University of Toledo
[SOURCE: US Senate]
(http://www.senate.gov/~commerce/press/106-141.html)
MERGERS
VIACOM BUYS CHRIS-CRAFT'S STAKE IN UPN FOR $5 MILLION
Issue: Antimerger
Viacom made a deal yesterday to buy Chris-Craft's half of the UPN network
for the low, low price of $5 million -- setting the stage for the first-ever
ownership of two networks by a single company. If all goes well with
Viacom's acquisition of CBS, which is expected to close in the next month,
Viacom will own both networks, pending Federal approval. That approval
should come, according to executives at all three companies, because UPN
currently has a greater share of minority viewers than any other network,
and without the buyout of Chris-Craft's half, UPN would be in a serious
struggle for its survival. The $5 million deal was forced on Chris-Craft
after Viacom invoked a clause in their partnership agreement which required
Chris-Craft to either buy out Viacom's half, or sell theirs to Viacom. Thus
Chris-Craft was forced to sell just as UPN is starting to gain ratings.
[SOURCE: The New York Times (C1), AUTHOR: Bill Carter]
(http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/viacom-upn.html)
SEE ALSO: VIACOM AGREES TO ACQUIRE 50% STAKE IN UPN NETWORK FROM CHRIS-CRAFT
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal Interactive, AUTHOR: Joe Flint]
(http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB953599682635925301.htm)
CHRIS-CRAFT SELLS SHARE OF UPN TO VIACOM
[SOURCE: USAToday (3B), AUTHOR: Keith L. Alexander]
(http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000321/2052510s.htm)
EXTRA, EXTRA! LOCAL MEDIA BATTLE FOR YOUR LOYALTY
Issue: Journalism/Mergers
Recent mergers, such as $6.4-billion purchase of Times Mirror by
Chicago-based Tribune, have people questioning where their news will be
coming from in the future. When media forms combine, either through joint
ownership or through the pooling of reporting efforts, figuring out where to
go and whom to trust gets more complicated. According to Philip Meyer, media
outlets will lose readers and their trust if they pander to advertisers and
let them influence editorial content. "Under old technology," he writes
"media companies defined themselves by their delivery systems." Now that the
means of delivery are converging, media forms need to win the audiences'
trust to make themselves distinctive.
[SOURCE: USAToday (A15), AUTHOR: Philip Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill]
(http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000321/2052364s.htm)
MCI WORLDCOM AND SPRINT TELL FCC PACT WOULD AID CONSUMERS, COMPETITION
Issue: Mergers
MCI Worldcom and Sprint said in their 400 page filing yesterday with the
Federal Communications Commission that their planned merger will benefit
both consumers and competition. The filing contained study results that
showed that, after the merger, about 98 percent of US households would be
able to choose from at least three long-distance carriers and more than 90
percent would have a choice of at least four carriers. They also assured the
FCC that they wouldn't dominate the booming Internet-backbone market because
they would be willing to take steps to address any concerns of regulators.
"There's no basis that the merger will jeopardize vibrant competition in
either sector," said Jonathan Sallet, MCI Worldcom's chief policy counsel.
European Union antitrust authorities expressed concerns over whether the
merged company could create a bottleneck for trans-Atlantic telephone
traffic and limit competition in the markets for global corporate
communications and Internet services.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B6), AUTHOR: Kathy Chen]
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB953589496541042507.htm
POLITICS ONLINE
AFTER ARIZONA VOTE, ONLINE ELECTIONS STILL FACE OBSTACLES
Issue: Politics Online
A week after Arizona Democratic Party members were allowed for the first
time to vote in the party's primary on the Web, it is clear to election
officials in other states that there are several problems to be overcome
before Web-based voting becomes more widespread. Arizona voters faced such
pitfalls as an hour-long Web site failure, and user-side software problems.
Despite this, though, some 36,000 individuals cast their votes online
between March 7 and 11, double the number of people who cast ballots at
polling places on March 12, the only day they were open. Mark Fleisher,
chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party said he was "real pleased with the
turnout, considering
that it was a non-competitive race." Arizona's Democratic primary was a
private election,
administered by the party and not under the jurisdiction of the state's
election laws. Election officials from other states, facing much larger
elections, are skeptical. "I call it chaos," said Thomas Wilkey, executive
director of the New York State Board of Elections. "Equipment failure?" he
added, "If you can't get online or if the system is down, how do you
accommodate the voter?" Alfie Charles, assistant secretary of state in
California, was a little more upbeat, but also concerned. "We can learn from
the mistakes in Arizona," He said. "It just shows the need to take a slow,
cautious, incremental approach," he said. "In an election office, we cannot
tolerate an outage or a lack of access to the ballot. That results in a
disenfranchisement of voters."
[SOURCE: Cyber Times, AUTHOR: Rebecca Fairley Raney]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/03/cyber/articles/21vote.html)
EDTECH
CYBERU: WHAT'S MISSING
Issue: EdTech
[Op-Ed] A look at how computers and the Internet are changing higher
education. Distance learning programs have doubled in the last three years,
but education -- and especially colleges and universities -- are not about
the size of audience or just filling minds: it is about forming minds.
Higher ed in the 21st century is about teaching people to learn how to
learn, to sort and evaluate information, to make judgements about evidence
and sources. Students need the capacity to imagine, not just know. That's
why one-on-one interaction is so important. The two most significant factors
that contribute to college students' learning are interaction with each
other and their interaction with teachers. Myers concludes: The emergence of
computers challenges us to know what our business is. We must respond that
we are in the business of ideas, not information, of forming minds, not
filling them.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (A25), AUTHOR: Michele Tolela Myers, President of
Sarah Lawrence College]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49560-2000Mar21.html)
JOBS
THE GLOBAL FIGHT FOR TALENT
Issue: Jobs
[Op-Ed] The world is waking up to America's competitive advantage brought
about by "cherry-picking" the international talent pool of high-tech
workers. Germany, Canada, the UK and Australia, among others, are joining
the sweepstakes for these workers. In the information age, the demand for
"knowledge workers" far outpaces the supply -- due, in part, to education
systems' slow adaptation to the new economy. Process-heavy training
programs, like Germany's apprenticeship system, may now ill-serve many
graduates. The "just-in-time" approach to management inventory is spreading
to recruitment of foreign workers. These realities, Papademetriou suggests,
means that the U.S. must do three things differently: 1) we should keep our
eyes fixed on what is best for all of us and convince businesses to improve
the conditions of workers everywhere; 2) if high-end temporary visa classes
are defined carefully and reviewed periodically and impartially, numerical
limits should become irrelevant; and 3) a permanent visa may need to become
part of the "total package" a company can offer a foreign worker.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (A25), AUTHOR: Demetrios Papademetriou, Carnegie
Endowment for Peace]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48541-2000Mar20.html)
INFOTECH
E-MAIL COMES ALIVE WITH INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGY
Issue: InfoTech
Two companies are merging interactive features with e-mail. The first
company, FireDrop, has created a product called Zaplets. A person could go
to www.zaplet.com, write a note and have it sent to any number of their
friends. When each friend opens the Zaplet, it automatically connects back
over the Internet to FireDrop's server and becomes a live window. Responses
to the note pile up in that window, with the note's initial author ending up
with just one file that contains all of the input. The second company is
Gizmo, which is focused more on multimedia than personal interaction. A
person can create a Gizmo and then e-mail it to the intended recipient.
When the recipient opens it, a window that looks like a compact Web page
opens up. It establishes a link over the Net to a server and comes alive
with content. As long as the Gizmo is open, fresh content can find it and
load into it.
[SOURCE: USA Today (B1), AUTHOR: Kevin Maney]
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000321/2052565s.htm
SPECTRUM
18TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT SEMINAR
Issue: Spectrum
From Press Release: The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications
and Information Administration (NTIA) and the United States
Telecommunications Training Institute (USTTI) will conduct an extensive
radio spectrum management training seminar March 20-31 for leading
regulators and communications professionals from 17 developing countries.
Eighteen representatives from 17 developing countries including Sri Lanka,
Morocco, Ghana, Grenada, Ecuador, Pakistan, and Paupa New Guinea will
participate in the training seminar which will be held in Washington. The
seminar will be conducted by NTIA's Office of Spectrum Management with
assistance from experts from Comsearch and Motorola. It will address various
elements of spectrum management principles, engineering analyses, and
computer-aided spectrum management techniques. In the last 18 years, NTIA
has trained 390 individuals from 106 countries in radio spectrum
management.
[SOURCE: NTIA]
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/usttipr31700.htm)
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