Brookings

[Commentary] The first sale doctrine as it exists today can most easily be understood in the context of books. Suppose someone walks into a bookstore and buys a brand new paperback book. After she reads the book, she could decide to lend it to a friend who lives down the street or donate it to the local library. Under the first sale doctrine, these actions are legal because she is the owner of that particular copy.

This proves difficult with digital versions of creative works. No longer are copyrighted works like CDs or books transferred physically from person to person. The transfers are occurring electronically and a new copy of the work is created at the destination of the transfer. The first sale doctrine does not allow the digital purchaser to electronically transfer their files to someone else pursuant to a loan or sale.

Although Villasenor states that if this first sale doctrine was changed to include digital works, the change would be exploited and would open up a Pandora’s Box of unintended consequences:

• Short duration loans of digital works could be facilitated by web-based services that would match listeners and owners whose copies of requested songs were sitting unused on hard drives. In this situation, the recording artist would only sell a small number of copies to the web-based services as opposed to selling copies to every listener. This would dramatically reduce the market for digital music sales.
• Normally, used printed books, CDs, and DVDs are less valuable than their brand new counterparts. On the other hand, a digital representation of a work can be transferred countless times and stay exactly the same with no wear-and-tear. “Used” digital copies never become less valuable and this would cause the market to behave differently.

[Commentary] In May, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) generated controversy with its ruling on privacy. The case involved a Spanish man’s grievance with Google over a search result for his name that linked to information outlining a 15-year-old bankruptcy proceeding. The ECJ ruled that Google, and other search engines, should be required to remove the information that is deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed”.

The ECJ held search engines responsible for the results delivered to its users. This ruling suggests that search engines can affect the reputation of an individual person, as opposed to functioning as a tool that enables users to access information across the Internet.

The ECJ acknowledges that this ruling will not deter potentially damaging information from being discoverable since the information will still exist on the Internet even if a search engine can’t link directly to the result. Would this type of ruling ever occur in the United States? It’s difficult to imagine a ruling like this to come from an American court, for the following reasons:

• One: Given the First Amendment, it would be difficult to justify limits on publication of digital material.
• Two: The United States and Europe have fundamentally different approaches to protecting privacy. In his recent paper Cameron Kerry describes the political and legal differences between the EU and the US.

Policy recommendations to support the IP Transition:

• Government leaders need to speed up lengthy rulemaking procedures.
• Regulators need to be open to new business models and applications with the potential to improve consumer communications and commerce.
• During the IP Transition, a critical priority is to protect vulnerable populations. To ensure the IP Transition has a soft landing, the elderly, disabled, and those residing in rural areas must be provided the same or better service than they are currently receiving.
• Increase the number of experiments to gauge the impact of these transitions, to assess costs and benefits. Using the information from these trials to enact data-driven regulation. Regulations can use data to match the needs and responsibilities of the public sector with the innovation capacity of the private sector.
• With the insatiable demand for larger amounts and faster content delivery, we need to build a next generation digital infrastructure. This new infrastructure should support innovation in commerce, health care, education, transportation, and energy.

Barriers to Innovation:

• Reskilling current workers for new technologies is critical for future success. Current methods include partnering with local universities and using MOOCs to reskill workers for new technologies, but transforming a mathematics expert into a big data scientist is a difficult and timely process.
• The telecommunications industry needs more spectrum.
• Adaptation is vital to the ever evolving telecom industry. Some television networks have successfully transformed from a content creator to a content distributor.
• There is tremendous competition to hire the qualified tech engineers. The STEM pipeline must be improved.

On May 2, the Center for Technology Innovation (CTI) at Brookings hosted a panel of industry experts to address the future of digital content delivery in the United States, including discussion on how the explosion of video streaming is changing how we consume content. Below are some highlights from the discussion.

Archived video is available on the event's page, and TechTank blog will have a more detailed analysis of the event soon. Panelists included John Donovan, AT&T's senior executive vice president for technology and network operations; Derek Aberle, president of Qualcomm; and Jeremy Legg, a senior vice president at Turner Broadcasting System.

Donovan said that the new environment of networking and technology is "challenging in every dimension: the people, the way we manage the business and then the underlying technology that we've built."

Aberle also spoke to the "tremendous change in the industry over the last ten years."

Legg asked, "What isn't changing in content distribution at this point?

Toward the end of the program, an audience member asked the panelists what they see coming on five- and 10-year horizons.

Legg described a new product, CNNx that allows viewers to annotate videos in real time to get all of the content from around the web about that content, and also to go to the social conversation on Facebook or Twitter about that content. "That's an example of how we're going to have to think in the future," he said.

Aberle said that the place he sees innovation in the future is mobile health care.

Donovan's answer to the future horizon question centered on the possibilities of the Internet of Things, "my things coordinating with each other."

It is a time of great change in telecommunications -- new platforms have emerged that stream video and voice over the Internet and deliver content via tablets and smartphones.

These systems have broadened our horizons with respect to communications, entertainment, and commerce.

This paper examines the future of video streaming and digital content delivery systems during a time of major transformation. It discusses what these changes mean for people, businesses, and governments.

The argument is made that there are many opportunities in the move to a multi-platform world and new models have the potential to become more flexible, adaptive, and cost-effective. But Federal Communications Commission leaders need to promote innovation that maximizes the benefits of new developments.

We need to make sure that those living in rural areas, in addition to elderly and disabled populations, are able to reap the benefits of the technology revolution. Several benchmarks in the evolution of video streaming and digital content delivery include:

• The explosive growth of video streaming
• The Internet protocol transition
• Smart devices and the “Internet of Things”
• Improving spectrum access
• Protecting consumers during periods of technological disruption

Streaming video sites like Netflix and YouTube account for more than half of downstream Internet traffic. These tectonic shifts require new infrastructure investments to ensure quality and consistent delivery.

These changes also create opportunities for consumers across the economy in healthcare, education, and entertainment. The speed at which Internet services are evolving presents challenges for government regulators tasked with ensuring access to disadvantaged populations. It also strains a national broadband system that faces steep demands for faster Internet from consumers.

On May 2, 2014 the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings will host a panel of industry experts to address the future of digital content delivery in the United States, including a conversation on how the explosion of video streaming is changing how we consume content. Darrell West, Vice President of Governance Studies and Founding Director of the Center for Technology Innovation will lead a discussion on his findings and data from the forthcoming paper “Video Streaming and Content Delivery”.

Imagine a mobile application where you can share messages and photos with other users, but without an Internet connection.

These applications take advantage of mesh networking. In a mesh network devices use Bluetooth peer-to-peer connections and Wi-Fi networks to communicate “off the grid“.

Engineers originally developed the technology for the military. Over the years small scale projects have found varying levels of success but few have broken through to the mainstream.

The newest version of iOS has incorporated mesh networks into its operating system, which allows developers to create applications that take advantage of this technology without having to reinvent the wheel. Beyond messaging applications, mesh networks have the potential to make hard-wired Internet devices obsolete.

Mesh networking has a number of policy implications. Here are a few that TechTank will look out for in the future:

1. Natural Disasters
2. Promoting Democracy and Activism
3. Expanding Connectivity Benefits to Rural Areas

How sustainable are technology-based initiatives? Certainly in some cases they are intended as short-term solutions, such as is the case with post-disaster deployments of GIS platforms like Ushahidi.

But in other instances the ICT initiative must be relied on until the emergence of consolidated statehood. Until states around the developing world have fully functioning agricultural extension services, for example, farmers must rely on programs such as the Grameen Foundation’s Community Knowledge Workers.

It is too soon to say whether digital initiates of this sort have the staying power to serve as long-term alternatives to a fully functioning state exercising proper and accountable administrative capacity. There are also important questions about the scalability of ICT initiatives. Different NGOs and community groups pursue similar initiatives in different areas, and sometimes even in the same community. This creates a patchwork of uncoordinated efforts.

A final concern is found in what might be called governance displacement. To the extent ICT governance initiatives are successful in offering an alternative to a consolidated state, they may sap the motivation to improve state-sector governance capacity.

[Livingston is Professor of Media and International Affairs at The George Washington University]

[Commentary] In this post, I offer examples of the use of technology that at least partially address governance shortfalls in areas of limited statehood.

Put another way, I describe how technologies are used to provide for public goods, such as security, sanitation, drinkable water, and economic opportunity. Where states are consolidated, agricultural extension services, for example, provide farmers with information essential to the important work of feeding families and communities. Where states lack that capacity, NGOs use available technologies to fill the governance void.

For instance, the Grameen Foundation’s Community Knowledge Workers initiative serves more than 176,000 farmers living beyond the reach of state services through a network of more than 1,100 peer advisors. Using mobile technology to connect the advisors with the latest developments and to other farmers, smallholder farmers get accurate, timely information to help them meet their goals. M-Farm in Nairobi similarly provides Kenyan farmers with the latest crop pricing information and other valuable knowledge needed to sustain viable operations. International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations based in Geneva, offers a variety of similar services -- called Trade at Hand -- to farmers around the world.

[Livingston is professor of Media and International Affairs at The George Washington University]

[Commentary] How do improvements in information and communication technology (ICT) effect governance? Many have studied the role of the Internet in governance by state institutions.

Others have researched how technology changes the way citizens make demands on governments and corporations. A third area concerns the use of technology in countries where the government is weak or altogether missing. In this case technology can fill, if only partially, the governance vacuum created by a fragile state.

[Dr. Steven Livingston is professor of Media and International Affairs at The George Washington University]