Last month, Tom Evslin and Jeff Pulver petitioned the FCC to require phone companies to provide voice mail and call forwarding any time a phone line goes out for more than twelve hours (more about this petition here.) The goal is to have in place some kind of consistent communications “home base” for displaced families, particularly low-income families, in the event of a natural disaster.
Last week, the FCC put this post-disaster communications petition out for public comment and Jeff is asking the public to please weigh in with comments.
Comments are due by: April 27, 2006 so the window is short for both spreading the word and for submitting comments. The FCC has made the electronic comment filing procedure VERY simple. All you really need to do to weigh in is go to: http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi, enter RM-11327 in the first line where it requests the “Proceeding” (this is the Petitions “RM” number), fill in the other minimal contact info requirements, and submit a brief statement in support.
On the eve of hurricane season, a simple system that allows loved ones to reach each other makes a lot of sense. I haven’t heard of any real objections to this kind of system either. Remember, the deadline is April 27.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:36 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Apple Computer has set its legal sites on bloggers, charging a group of web scribblers with leaking trade secret information. The titan of Silicon Valley’s fight against a bunch of probably underpaid John Does attracted the top defenders of the First Amendment when a California court ruled last year that the harm to Apple outweighed any free speech rights held by the bloggers.
Now the case is in the California Court of Appeals, with the bloggers supported by EFF, the AP, the San Jose Mercury News, The LA Times and the Society of Professional Journalists. Although the issues are, as is true of almost every lawsuit, complex, one view is that Apple can only win if it succeeds in distinguishing bloggers from journalists.
Why? Because the case hinges on a journalist named Jason O’Grady who published in his blog an obscure bit of non-public information about an Apple product. Had the New York Times, for example, done the same thing, Apple would have never sought to sue. But because O’Grady wrote this in a blog, he (or more weirdly his tiny ISP) got hit with a lawsuit.
Veteran tech journalist Michael Malone has this lengthy essay/report on the upcoming decision in California and why a win by Apple would mean only one thing: bloggers don’t hold the same First Amendment rights as journalists, even though bloggers are often also journalists.
Ultimately, however, I think this case really comes down to the definition of “journalist.” Ask yourself: If O’Grady’s original story had appeared under his byline in The New York Times, would Apple have ever brought suit? Of course not. Note that Apple didn’t even have the guts to take on Ziff-Davis, but rather went after O’Grady’s poor little ISP. What the Apple lawyers have bet on, it seems, is that they can pivot the case upon the question of whether a blogger is a real journalist or not — and then convince the judge he’s not. In other words, Apple v. Does 1-20 is turning into one of those cases that define an era, an attempt to freeze and categorize a world that is undergoing a massive transformation. And whenever you try to do that (from Dred Scott to the latest FCC regulations) you not only get the answer wrong, but you don’t even ask the right questions.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:47 PM | Print | Comments (0)
This is almost a week old by now, but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. DV Guru reviewed ten of the top video sharing sites out there by uploading a demo reel. The sites examined: Eyespot, Google Video, Grouper, Jumpcut, Ourmedia, Revver, Videoegg, Vimeo, vSocial and YouTube.
Vimeo won out for ease-of-posting while YouTube, not surprisingly, got high marks for generating the highest level of viewership. Jumpcut stood above the rest in terms of editing ability. (Hat tip to Micropersuasion.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:39 PM | Print | Comments (0)At the center of every major technological shift in the electronic media (and the Internet is an electronic medium, however archaic that term seems), there are winners and losers but rarely are the winners and losers one and the same. Now, however, with broadcast television (another archaic term) programmers shifting their shows to the web, the networks have a lot to gain and a lot to lose simultaneously.
The biggest gains for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox are a wider audience for their programs and a bigger share of the growing Internet ad market. The risk to the networks, however, is the loss of affiliate loyalty and trust, which could diminish what is still the vast bulk of network revenues.
Crossing this chasm between old and new distribution is a tricky feat, one that Fox and ABC hope to pull off. Fox yesterday announced that it will make available online around 60% of its programming line-up, with the shows accessible on the web the morning after they originally air. To keep local affiliates in line, Fox will split the online ad revenue with them under a complex formula that boils down to about 12.5% of online revenue for the group of 187 stations.
Meanwhile, although no formal deal has been announced, ABC is talking to affiliates about sharing online ad revenue with affiliates. These moves to cut affiliates in on web-based revenues will no doubt help to ease the networks’ transition from the outmoded broadcast television business model to…something else.
The real fear for TV networks is that the “something else” isn’t yet entirely real. Distribution over the web is still an experiment and what if it doesn’t pan out as a viable new outlet for content? Time will tell and in the meantime keeping the affiliates happy while embracing the Internet as a TV platform is the fine-line the networks must walk.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:18 PM | Print | Comments (0)As the FCC becomes increasingly aggressive in hitting television broadcasters with indecency violations, the broadcast networks, or so it appears, are beginning to fight back. The four leading broadcast networks and their affiliates have filed court challenges to a March 15 decision by the Commission that several programs were found to be indecent because of language.
The legal challenge comes on the heels of increasing FCC enforcement of what many believe are vague indecency rules — the most recent high-profile case came when the FCC fined CBS affiliates for airing an episode of “Without a Trace” that contained a teen sex scene that the Commission thought crossed the line. That particular scene contained no nudity or other material that has clearly brought down the FCC’s wrath in the past, leaving programmers puzzled as to what the ground-rules are.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:16 PM | Print | Comments (1)
Blogs We Read
