(McLean, VA) If nothing else, the final session at Friday’s Digital Media Conference affirmed the innate wonkishness of Washington. Not only did the “Net Neutrality” session run into a 30- minute overtime (an anomaly in most professions, especially on a steamy summer Friday evening when the event’s cocktail party had already begun), but the partisan panelists engaged in that familiar Capitol Hill practice of vote counting.
For example, Christopher Putala, Earthlink’s executive VP for public policy, told me that he expects the Senate Commerce Committee may split evenly at 11-11 or could come in at 12-10. In either case, he suggested, the close committee decision would not send a clear signal to the Senate to adopt Sen. Ted Stevens’ Communications, Consumers’ Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (S. 2686) if the bill actually comes up for a floor vote.
“Unless there’s something that balances it out, we’re not going to get legislation this year,” Putala said hopefully. And he emphasized that there is “not enough compromise” in the telco-backed legislation, which is laden with amendments as it continues through Committee mark-up this week.
Another panelist, Earl Comstock, president of Comptel, an association of competitive suppliers and vendors, focused on existing Verizon and AT&T structures that, he claims, already bias the market. Comstock cited Verizon’s costly DSL offer in the Washington area of $180 per month for 30 Mbps service as a way in which the telco already manipulates service structure and usage.
Countering those arguments was Scott Cleland, ostensibly an independent researcher/analyst as head of the Precursor Group. At this session, Cleland spouted data points in his role as spokesman for NetCompeition.org, which he said represents 2,000 companies including wireless and cable carriers. Among Cleland’s arguments for carrier control over network traffic prioritization was this factoid: a streamed two-hour high definition video movie consumes the capacity of 35,000 emails.
The Net Neutrality session was a last-minute addition to the fourth annual Digital Media Conference in suburban Washington. The one-day event attracted about 475 attendees, about 50% more than last year. Its “Law and Policy” track included a predictable copyright slap-down between MPAA and RIAA on one side and the Consumer Electronics Association on the other – with lobbyists for the Digital Media Association and games-centric Entertainment Software Association gasping for microphone time. The movie and music lobbyists also focused extensively on the merits of Sen. Diane Feinstein’s “PERFORM Act” (Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act of 2006, S. 2644), which would require satellite, cable and Internet broadcasters to pay fair market value for the performance of digital music.
The panel also touched on the ways in which social network customers create derivative works by doctoring copyrighted content, prompting MPAA’s Fritz Attaway to cite the infringement on artists’ rights.
While the policy sessions generated passionate arguments, the conference’s content and business panels underscored the revitalization of the interactive business itself. Chris Maxcy, VP-business development of YouTube, acknowledged that his site is now serving up to 70 million streams per day, with typical sessions averaging one to two minutes long – and thus “catering to the ADD generation.”
Maxcy was among the many panelists who emphasized that user-generated content (such as the home videos carried on YouTube) and social networks are a primary factor in today’s evolution of consumer Internet services.
Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications Inc, a Bethesda, MD, media/telecom research firm, has analyzed the convergence of digital media applications for more than 20 years. He can be reached at GaryArlen@engineer.com
Gary Arlen at 2:33 PM|Comments(0)
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