The House Commerce Committee has finally released its controversial draft telecom reform bill and upon first reading, it’s a remarkable document, obviously a result of intense staff work to smooth out the contentious differences between cable operators and phone companies. The staff has also clearly tried to bridge the gulf between broadband providers and network neutrality proponents, although the bill doesn’t go far enough for the latter group.
Upon first reading, the bill (known as the Barton bill named after Joe Barton (R-TX) head of the Committee) has no horrible uniform pricing requirements that had the cable industry howling a few weeks back. It does establish a national video franchise, which would make it easier for phone companies to compete against cable operators.
In a nod to both cable companies and minority community leaders, the bill has a provision that prohibits the new video competitors from red-lining on the basis of a community’s income, although how that prohibition will play out in reality is a huge unknown. The legislation doesn’t, however, have a build-out requirement that cable operators had sought, which would have required phone companies to build-out video facilities completely throughout any given franchise area.
The most interesting part of the bill is how it deals with net neutrality issues — it incorporates into statute the FCC’s “Broadband Policy Statement” and gives the FCC authority to adjudicate any complaint alleging a violation of the statement or its principles and issue orders that the offender in question comply with the Commission’s statement or policy.
The FCC has released two “broadband policy statements,” and the draft bill says that its provisions incorporate the most recent of these. Although it affirms the concept of an open, unhindered Internet, this most recent broadband policy statement, adopted by the FCC under chairman Kevin Martin, has raised a few hackles among net neutrality proponents for its references to certain “legal devices that do not harm the Internet,” which some have interpreted as a de facto technology standard that could give Hollywood wiggle room to start advocating against new devices or technologies.
Another element of the most recent broadband policy statement is a reference to consumers being entitled to “access the lawful [emphasis added] Internet content of their choice.” Some observers were spooked by this qualifier (in fact the second broadband policy statement is replete with legalistic qualifiers), afraid that it means that broadband providers can block content they believe “harms” theirs network or is somehow in violation of their own or somebody else’s contractual obligations.
The first broadband policy statement, issued under Chairman Michael Powell, was a far more elegant document with far fewer caveats. Still, the Barton bill’s reliance on and affirmation of the FCC’s ability to adjudicate net neutrality disputes seems like a wise compromise between those who fear the detrimental impact of intrusive government regulations and those who fear that broadband providers will lock-down the Internet if they are subject to no government oversight.
Cable clearly is a lot happier now than it was when it heard of some of the Barton bill’s earlier provisions. In a statement, NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow said that the new bill represents “considerable progress.”
Earlier drafts of the House bill focused on picking winners and losers on the basis of technology, and we are pleased that focus has now changed. While our policy recommendation would be to reform and streamline the franchising process to ensure speedy entry by new competitors, we are pleased that the national franchising scheme proposed in the House bill seeks to ensure all providers compete on a level playing field.
NCTA registered only a mild objection to the “net neutrality” provisions of the bill.
Finally, while recognizing that the House bill has a net neutrality provision narrowly tailored to the FCC policy statement issued in 2005, we continue to believe that the better course is for the government to resist injecting itself into a thriving, dynamic market where investment and innovation are flourishing.
Although they are cheered that the Barton bill contains “net neutrality provisions,” advocates of net neutrality requirements say the bill does not go far enough. Gigi Sohn, head of public interest group Public Knowledge, said in a statement
We are pleased that the Committee draft included language recognizing the importance of keeping the Internet open to all consumers. However, we do not believe that the draft bill go far enough. The provisions will not stop the cable and telephone companies from degrading Internet traffic and they do not contain strong enough penalties to discourage misbehavior. Without stronger legislation, the cable and telephone companies will have the power to change the fundamental nature of the Internet. This bill needs significant improvement before it will preserve the open Internet that consumers and service providers expect and deserve.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:55 PM | Print | Comments (6)
The Federal Election Commission made an enlightened decision today — the government agency responsible for election rules decided that political advertising on web sites falls under federal campaign spending and contribution limits, but said that other web-based activities such as blogging, email and online publications are not governed by campaign laws.
“Individual online political activity will be protected from FEC restriction regardless of whether the individual acts alone or as part of a group, and regardless of whether the individual acts in coordination with a candidate or acts independently,” said Commission Chairman Michael E. Toner.
The decision is a win for bloggers and other online content creators, who feared that the FEC’s examination of the applicability of campaign laws to the Internet might end up casting a wide net, pulling the free-wheeling blogosphere into the complex and burdensome set of laws that govern campaign activities.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:34 PM | Print | Comments (0)
For those of you have been out of it today, the biggest news in the blogosphere is that Skype, which eBay bought for a cool $2.6 billion, and its co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, are being sued by Streamcast Networks, maker of P2P software technology Morpheus. (Hats off to Andy Abramson for this scoop.) Although there’s a lot to this suit (Techdirt has a pretty good explanation), it seems to boil down to the fact that Streamcast is ticked off that the Skype founders, who also founded P2P network Kazaa, didn’t give it right of first refusal on the Kazaa technology before spinning that technology off to Sharman Networks.
Somehow Streamcast is suing Skype under RICO or racketeering laws, presumably because the ownership of the original Kazaa technology was complex to the point that Streamcast is claiming that Skype created some sort of confusing ownership shell game, or fraud, in cheating Streamcast out of what it argues was its right of first refusal on the technology.
Will this development knock eBay back on its heels? Probably not. For one thing, it isn’t clear that the technology in question is actually used in Skype’s VoIP service, although several reports suggest that it is. For another, from the sounds of its, Streamcast may be just looking for a way to make a buck from the new, well-heeled owner of Skype — the company has previously and unsuccessfully pressed claims against Skype.
Finally, the market doesn’t seem to care much about the long-term prospects of this litigation, and investors are typically overly sensitive about this kind of legal threat. As of 3:33 ET, eBay’s stock was actually up by $.02/share at $37.32.
But, so much is unknown at this point — it isn’t even clear that Andy got a hold of the final suit filed against Skype.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:04 PM | Print | Comments (0)Courtesy of the Personal Democracy Forum, this intriguing campaign that uses text messaging to recruit new voter registrations. It’s an SMS campaign called TxtPower that will kick off at rock concerts in June — the musicians onstage will ask the concert-goers to sign up for the text-messaging service. (One of the partners in this effort is something called Music for America, a politically oriented coalition of professional rock bands, including The Beastie Boys, Death Cab for Cutie, Green Day and other top acts.)
Once the concert-goers respond to the message, they will receive voter registration forms or absentee ballots via email or snail mail, and they’ll also get a text message on election day reminding them to vote. A cool way to use technology to reach the hard-to-mobilize youth of the country.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:32 PM | Print | Comments (0)
OK, at the risk of adding useless commentary regarding Newsweek’s breathless, over-excited coverage of social networking and other “Web 2.0” developments, I’ll acknowledge the magazine’s zippy, overly bright and kind of exhausting-to-read coverage of “The New Wisdom of the Web” (I know, ick.)
The colorful and eye-popping profiles of the latest Internet trends are almost a parody of “zeitgeist” newsweekly journalism, replete with too-cute quizzes (“How Geeky Are You?”) and snappy phrasing (on Flickr: “What was once the digital equivalent of a shoe box became a vibrant community built around photos and a vast collaborative effort to produce an infinite scrapbook.”)
I’m with Paul Kedrosky who calls the cover story “terrifying” and adds
Combined with the recent explosion in the number of unsolicited “MySpace-of….” business plans showing up in my inbox, and the ongoing AdSense obsession, I’m thinking of putting an anti-Web 2.0 filter in Gmail and my feed reader.
Paul, however, retreats from his refreshingly honest assessment to reclaim some kind of nice-guy role by offering congrats to Flickr’s Stewart Butterfield and Catarina Fake for making the cover of Newsweek.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:41 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The New York Times’ Matthew Healey has this item today about about a intermittent feud between the Beatle’s Apple Records and Apple Computer. The two companies will meet in court for the third time this week — Apple Corps, as the record company is called, first sued Apple Computer in 1980 over the Silicon Valley giant’s name.
In 1989, Apple Corps sued Apple Computer again, that time over the Mac’s ability to create, edit and play music, a suit that was settled in 1991 with an agreement, or so the record company contends, that blocks Apple Computer from selling music. When Apple launched iTunes in 2003, Apple Corps filed suit again for violating the 1991 agreement, and that case is slated to be heard in London this week.
While kind of fun to watch, this most recent case will probably be resolved in the same manner as all the other suits — with Apple Computer ponying up a pile of cash for Apple Corps. One sign-of-the-times tidbit: the judge hearing the case, Justice Edward Mann, owns an iPod.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:16 AM | Print | Comments (0)A fight between two entertainment giants, Comcast and Major League Baseball, might be headed for Congressional intervention, according to this piece by The Washington Post’s Amit Paley. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-VA), chairman of the Government Reform Committee, has threatened to hold hearings on a dispute that has kept most of The Washington Nationals’ games off of Comcast’s line-up.
The complex dispute centers on MLB’s decision to grant the TV rights to Baltimore Orioles’ owner Peter Angelenos even though Comcast had submitted a higher bid for the games via its regional Comcast SportsNet. The Nats games are aired on an MLB-Orioles regional sports network called the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network.
Despite the fact that MLB won’t budge in its contract demands with Comcast, the cable operator is taking most of the heat.
Some of the elected officials who directed their ire at Comcast yesterday said they were focusing their energies on the cable giant because it is the only party that can resolve the problem now. “You can’t change history regardless of who is right or who is wrong,” said U.S. Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.). “So now it has to be up to Comcast to swallow a bitter pill for the sake of the fans.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:57 AM | Print | Comments (0)
It’s been about a month since Cablevision announced that it will test a networked DVR service (see here), but USA Today has this item about the Long Island-based cable operator’s actual launch of the test, which kicks off today.
Multichannel News’s Matt Stump covers the controversial networked DVR experiment, called remote storage DVR (RS-DVR), which involves 1,000 customer homes that are able to store about 25 hours of programming on centralized servers. The RS-DVR obivates the need for an actual PVR-enabled set-top — in essence it turns every digital box into a PVR.
As all the articles on the RS-DVR today note, the move by Cablevision follows Time Warner’s long effort to develop a similar service called Mystro, which the company abandoned mostly because it could not figure out the copyright aspects of the arrangement. Cablevision believes that the law allows it to copy and store programming on behalf of consumers, who have well-established rights to “time-shift” programming.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:19 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
