BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for TUESDAY DECEMBER 23, 2008
Headlines is taking a break. We will return on Monday, January 5, 2009. Of course, Headlines is always live online at http://www.benton.org/headlines
Thank you for a great year and enjoy the holidays!
THE ECONOMY
Proposed Broadband Principles in Upcoming Economic Stimulus Package
Chamber of Commerce backs broadband deployment -- without Network Neutrality laws
Internet Leaders Vie To Remain Strong Amidst Downturn
THE TRANSITION
In search of Julius Genachowski
For Science Adviser, Dogged Work Against Global Perils
Obama will inherit a real mess on Real ID
PSST Pushes Emergency Spectrum Use
'Father Of The Internet' Seeks Expansive Role For CTO
Presidential Advisory '08
INTERNET/BROADBAND
A Gift to the Nation
Wireless Equals Extension Cord
2008 Year in Review: Broadband for the masses idea gains traction
Mobile teleconsulting can evaluate stroke patients
QUICKLY -- Five Stories Vie for Media Attention; Obama Transforms Web-based Politics; Recording labels and websites in a music video tussle; GFEM Links Funders with Film Makers
THE ECONOMY
PROPOSED BROADBAND PRINCIPLES IN UPCOMING ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE
[SOURCE: Media and Democracy Coalition, AUTHOR: ]
More than two dozen organizations have sent President-elect Barack Obama and Congressional leaders a statement in support of investing in broadband deployment as well as the training, tools and other resources needed to connect those that are currently on the wrong side of the digital divide. Until now, the groups say, US policy has been to largely rely on the private market, particularly incumbent large telephone and cable companies, to determine who has access, what they pay for it, and the speed of U.S. broadband infrastructure. This approach has failed, and business as usual will not suffice. Exclusively relying on the market or private industry will not bring broadband to high-cost areas currently un-served or underserved. We did not bring electricity and phone service to rural America or assure the affordability of service to all by relying on the market alone. We simply cannot rely upon one solution, a handful of companies, or a single model or technology to solve this problem. Nor can we count on seeing tangible results if U.S. policy aimlessly doles out tax breaks or public subsidies without accountability. The stimulus package must not degenerate into corporate welfare, as has too often been the sad fate of subsidies to the private sector. The groups offer a number of principles for a broadband stimulus package: 1) Accountability and Results, 2) A Local Approach, 3) Access and Adoption, and 4) Internet Freedom (Network Neutrality). The groups also called for a National Broadband Strategy.
http://benton.org/node/20145
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CHAMBER OF COMMERCE BACKS BROADBAND DEPLOYMENT -- WITHOUT NETWORK NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Stephanie Condon]
The US Chamber of Commerce released two papers Monday arguing that broadband deployment should not be stifled by federal Network Neutrality regulation. The papers, the first in a series of five that will examine the impact of broadband on certain user groups and for certain purposes, argue that the federal government's current loose regulatory structure has enabled broadband to become a "life-altering tool" both for the general population and for senior citizens specifically. The lack of Net neutrality laws or other federally-mandated regulations has spurred telecommunications companies to heavily invest in broadband infrastructure, according to the first paper, "Network Effects: An Introduction to Broadband Technology & Regulation." The second paper, "The Impact of Broadband on Senior Citizens," recommends similar support for broadband deployment as well as educating seniors on the usefulness of broadband and expanding their options for getting online. If obstacles for adoption are removed, the paper says, broadband could transform senior life and senior care, just as the senior population is set to expand significantly. The chamber will later release papers examining the impact of broadband deployment on telemedicine, education, and people with disabilities.
http://benton.org/node/20143
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INTERNET LEADERS VIE TO REMAIN STRONG AMIDST DOWNTURN
[SOURCE: Dow Jones, AUTHOR: Scott Morrison]
The recession is creating a golden opportunity for some Internet industry leaders to solidify and expand their already-dominant positions. Companies like search giant Google, Web-based movie service Netflix, Internet retailer Amazon.com and online jeweler Blue Nile can take advantage of the downturn to reinforce customer relationships, develop new products and services, and take share from weaker competitors that are simply trying to survive. But to come out of the recession stronger, these companies will need to continue investing in new technologies and capacity while keeping an ever tighter lid on costs. They will also have to negotiate market shifts that will inevitably occur as the economy goes through one of its worst recessions since the Great Depression.
http://benton.org/node/20139
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THE TRANSITION
IN SEARCH OF JULIUS GENACHOWSKI
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
Who is the real Julius Genachowski? He served as law clerk to Supreme Court justices David Souter and William Brennan in the early 1990s. Then he signed on as Senior Legal Advisor to FCC Chair Reed Hundt in 1994. A year later, he went out on a limb and wrote a letter to The New Republic, urging its readers to file comments on Hundt's proposal that broadcasters "generate a minimum amount of children's educational programming each week (say three hours rising to five)." The FCC eventually got this done, settling on three hours. After the FCC, Genachowski sat on the boards of JackBe.Com, Expedia Inc, Hotels.com, the Motley Fool, and Ticketmaster. Plus, he served as general counsel to General Atlantic, USA Networks, Interactive Corp., USA Networks, and USA Broadcasting. He made a chuck of change with Barry Diller. Most recently, he chaired the group that helped craft then-Sen Barack Obama's technology and innovation plan -- a plan he now seems likely to help implement.
http://benton.org/node/20138
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FOR SCIENCE ADVISOR, DOGGED WORK AGAINST GLOBAL PERILS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Revkin, Cornelia Dean]
Dr John Holdren has been tapped to be the science adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, who pledged on Saturday to listen to such advice "especially when it's inconvenient." Many longtime friends, and some critics, of Dr. Holdren said his dogged nature and passion for the power of science would make it hard for the president to renege on that pledge. Dr. Holdren, a 64-year-old physicist and environmental policy professor at Harvard, said he was confident he would not have to fight to be heard. He noted that the position was being restored to the level of assistant to the president, on a par with the national security adviser. "President-elect Obama has made it absolutely clear that he is making science and technology one of the centerpieces of this administration," Dr. Holdren said. With Dr. Holdren, Dr. Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol M. Browner as a White House coordinator for energy and climate, Mr. Obama has chosen advocates for strong action against greenhouse gases. Each has supported a mix of market mechanisms like a legislated cap on emissions and a push to improve nonpolluting energy technology. Dr. Holdren will also be co-chairman of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, along with Harold Varmus, the Nobel laureate who heads the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Eric Lander, who heads the Broad Institute, a Harvard-M.I.T. collaborative for genomics research, and who was a leader in efforts to decipher the human genome.
http://benton.org/node/20160
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OBAMA WILL INHERIT A REAL MESS ON REAL ID
[SOURCE: InfoWorld, AUTHOR: Jaikumar Vijayan]
As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office, it's unclear how his administration will proceed on the technology-heavy Real ID program, the three-year-old effort to impose identification-card standards on state governments. Obama has made virtually no public comments about the initiative, which calls for driver's licenses and other state-issued IDs to include digital photos and be readable by scanning devices. In addition, the one time that the Senate considered a Real ID funding issue during Obama's tenure there, he didn't cast a vote. Meanwhile, Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), Obama's choice to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, signed a bill in June barring her state from participating in the program. And during a Senate committee hearing last year, she said that complying with the rules would cost state governments a total of $11 billion. The DHS is responsible for implementing the Real ID rules.
http://benton.org/node/20137
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PSST PUSHES EMERGENCY SPECTRUM USE
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST) wants President-elect Barrack Obama to make a proposed shared interoperable emergency communications network part of his proposed economic stimulus plan, arguing it could create millions of jobs, upgrade emergency communications, and provide the broadband link to underserved communities nationwide that Obama is seeking. The PSST was picked by the FCC to be the licensee of a 10 mhz swatch of spectrum the FCC set aside for emergency communications as part of its 700 mhz spectrum auction earlier this year. It was to have been paired with a 10 mhz block of commercial spectrum in a public-private partnership, but nobody bid the minimum price for the commercial block and the FCC is now trying to figure out how to attract a bidder when it re-auctions the spectrum next year. The proposal is that all the spectrum, including the 10 mhz allocated to PSST, would be used for commercial purposes, but all of it would be given over to emergency communications in times of natural or man-made disaster. Improving emergency communications has been on the government agenda since 9/11.
http://benton.org/node/20144
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'FATHER OF THE INTERNET' SEEKS EXPANSIVE ROLE FOR CTO
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Theresa Poulson]
A Q&A with Vint Cerf on the proposed post of chief technology officer in the Obama Administration. Cerf says it could be a hard job to define -- and execute, but that are "some serious contributions that the IT side of the equation can make toward some of the challenges that have been outlined by the president-elect."
http://benton.org/node/20136
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PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORY '08
[SOURCE: PolicyArchive, AUTHOR: ]
PolicyArchive recently released a new online collection of presidential transition papers called Presidential Advisory '08. Think tanks from around the country are busily producing key policy recommendations for President-Elect Obama's upcoming administration, and PolicyArchive is collecting them in one convenient place. PolicyArchive is receiving new policy papers every week from think tanks such as Brookings, Center for the Study of the Presidency and National Center for Policy Analysis, New America Foundation, and Urban Institute. The collection emphasizes policy issues that currently dominate the national dialogue, including the economy, education, energy, foreign policy, healthcare, media and national security. Presidential Advisory '08 is an important website for policymakers, researchers and the public. As a part of PolicyArchive, the Advisory utilizes a specialized search engine that allows users to look for policy papers based on topic areas, author, title and keyword. Its indexing capabilities offer one of the most innovative implementations of digital archiving in the country. Currently, there are almost 100 policy papers in the collection, but new reports will continue to be added through inauguration.
http://benton.org/node/20161
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
A GIFT TO THE NATION
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Charles Benton]
[Commentary] We have just a few days left in 2008, but there's still time for the Federal Communications Commission to give us a gift and correct a great error made on Election Day. There's overwhelming consensus that we should be moving to universal, affordable broadband. Here's how the FCC could set us on that course. Now.
http://benton.org/node/20131
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WIRELESS EQUALS EXTENSION CORD
[SOURCE: App-Rising.com, AUTHOR: Geoff Daily]
[Commentary] Broadband advocates should start thinking about wireless like an extension cord. You wouldn't want to power your house with an extension cord; you need something that's more reliable and has more capacity. But at the same time extension cords are essentially to getting power wherever you need it, which is the same role wireless plays in getting connectivity everywhere. There's also another level of imagery when you think about the problems of trying to connect too many extension cords to the same outlet: it can get easily overloaded and result in big problems. So it begs the question of what do we want for our country? Too many extension cords plugged into not enough outlets providing the illusion of having power/connectivity everywhere but without the capacity to handle all of our needs. Or having enough outlets for all our needs and only using extension cords to fill in the gaps between those outlets.
http://benton.org/node/20142
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2008 YEAR IN REVIEW: BROADBAND FOR THE MASSES IDEA GAINS TRACTION
[SOURCE: FierceBroadband, AUTHOR: Lynnette Luna]
[Commentary] White-space spectrum, M2Z's push for a nationwide wireless broadband network and President-elect Barack Obama's proclamation that broadband and Internet access must be universal, are creating a greater focus on bridging that pesky digital divide. White-space spectrum has been approved, but all has been quiet from the technology companies that have championed the concept. What type of momentum will occur in 2009? The M2Z plan is in limbo now. It's unclear if it will ever see the light of day, and while Obama has made broadband a priority, the heavy lifting has yet to begin.
http://benton.org/node/20140
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MOBILE TELECONSULTING CAN EVALUATE STROKE PATIENTS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Will Boggs]
Mobile teleconsulting is a feasible way to evaluate remotely located patients who have just had a stroke, according to a report in the current issue of the journal Stroke. Although researchers found that hospital-based, land-line systems still provide better quality communication. In a study involving 2 stroke centers and 14 local hospitals in Germany, investigators analyzed telephone consultations performed at fixed telemedicine workstations using high-speed Internet connections and laptops that could be taken to remote sites. Specifically, the researchers compared the technical parameters, acceptability, and impact on immediate clinical decisions of consultations performed with the mobile vs land-line devices. The teleconsultants reported that the process took longer when the laptops were used, despite almost identical download time measurements. They also rated the video and audio quality to be better with the hospital-based system. Although the technical quality of the mobile communication was rated worse on both sides, "this did not affect the ability to make remote decisions like initiating thrombolysis," a "clot-busting" drug treatment for stroke, and the mobile system was technically stable.
http://benton.org/node/20141
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QUICKLY
FIVE STORIES VIE FOR MEDIA ATTENTION
[SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: Mark Jurkowitz]
As the year drew to a close, something happened last week that hadn't occurred all year: No single story dominated the attention of a news media that had become, increasingly, narrowly focused in 2008. While the ongoing storylines of the struggling economy and the incoming Obama administration were still in the spotlight, other stories rivaled them for attention. And in the end, for the first time in 2008, no single story filled more than 15% of the time studied on television or space online or on the nation's front pages, according to the weekly News Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
http://benton.org/node/20157
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OBAMA TRANSFORMS WEB-BASED POLITICS
[SOURCE: PCWorld, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]
President-elect Barack Obama showed other politicians how to harness the power of the Web in 2008, bringing political campaigns kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Obama went beyond the somewhat static Web pages of most past campaigns, by tapping the power of Web 2.0 tools including Facebook, YouTube, blogs and discussion boards, to create a conversation with potential voters. Republican opponent John McCain used some of the same strategies, but many Internet experts saw the Obama campaign as the ultimate example of a politician embracing the Web. "Obama's campaign created the textbook of how to do online campaigning," said Alexis Rice, creator of CampaignsOnline.org and a fellow at the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University. "Every campaign, from now on -- Republican, Democrat, independent, local level, national level, state level, will look to the Obama campaign as a model of how to do it right." Some dissenters say that McCain and fellow Republicans made use of many of the same social-networking tools, but Obama may have gotten more credit because young voters attracted to him were predisposed to using Web 2.0 applications. Others suggested that Obama's use of Web tools during the campaign may have been groundbreaking for politics, but his campaign made use of Internet tools that have largely been around for years.
http://benton.org/node/20159
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RECORDING LABELS AND WEBSITES IN A MUSIC VIDEO TUSSLE
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Dawn Chmielewski]
The removal of Warner Music Group's videos from YouTube over the weekend highlights the growing tension between music labels and websites over what is becoming an important source of revenue for the beleaguered recorded-music industry: advertising and licensing fees from music videos, the foundation that built MTV but which has now largely migrated to the Internet. The impasse comes at a time when all four major labels -- Warner, Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EMI Music -- are renegotiating their licensing deals with YouTube, the largest video site. Record labels are eager to explore ancillary revenue to help offset free-falling CD sales. Music executives are increasingly pressing for what the industry calls 360 deals, in which the labels grab a share of revenue once reserved for the artist, such as concert ticket sales and proceeds from the sale of T-shirts and other merchandise.
http://benton.org/node/20158
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GFEM LINKS FUNDERS WITH FILM MAKERS
[SOURCE: SF360, AUTHOR: Michael Fox]
Media helps shape thinking. It reflects and shapes experiences. Our democracy depends on a free and diverse media sphere. With this in mind, Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media has launched the GFEM Media Database. This key component of the membership organization's Web site is designed to act as a hub where funders of all kinds can find a rich array of media-related projects that fit their funding priorities. The goal is to advance the field of media arts and public interest media funding.
http://benton.org/node/20135
Media database
http://media.gfem.org/
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... and we, the weary, are outta here. See ya in the New Year.