The Wall Street Journal has this one-on-one debate (free feature) between former Clinton spokesman now turned telco lobbyist Mike McCurry and Craigslist co-founder Craig Newmark on the subject of net neutrality.
In truth neither opponent sheds much light on the issue, although McCurry is clearly a brave man. The guy has been skewered by many of his Democratic party allies for being a paid spokesperson on behalf of big telcos and has stepped, unknowingly, into a blogosphere maelstrom.
The New Republic’s Keelin McDonnell has a excellent round-up (free registration) of how much McCurry has been roughed up because of his new gig. Part of the problem — and I think it’s kind of a crime for a politico, not to mention a media-oriented politico — is that McCurry seemed generally unaware of the power of blogs in politics.
While McCurry was busy reincarnating himself as a techno-communications whiz, the media universe went through a transformation of its own, birthing scads of unruly liberal bloggers that he seemed only dimly aware of. And McCurry seems to have understood their culture about as well as Karen Hughes did the Middle East’s. Confident in his once glorious old-media taming skills, Washington’s former ringmaster made the tragic mistake of confusing the blogosphere with the quaint world of the White House briefing room.
The vitriol against McCurry really ratcheted up when MyDD’s Matt Stoller decried McCurry’s “sell-out” of his services to the highest bidders, phone companies, no less, that want to create a toll-gated Internet.
For my money, I’m particularly saddened at what’s become of Mike McCurry, the former press secretary for Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton changed the world, and while I don’t agree with everything he did, I did look up to the professionalism and idealism of the staffers who worked in the White House with him. McCurry was in the eye of the storm as press secretary, and handled a hostile press corps and a strange media environment with grace and kindness. He was set after his time there to do remarkable and wonderful things for the world, yes maybe make some money along the way, but set to continue a career in politics and public service doing what he thought was right. Like David Gergen, a lot of options were and still are open to him.
Instead, he seems to have taken a different path, selling his service and brand name to whoever will pay the most. In this case, that means heading up a mostly-astroturf group HOTI to eviscerate the free internet. It’s so rare to have a Democrats with the kind of experience that McCurry has, and yet, he chooses in this pivotal moment in history to dedicate his talent and his name to something as grand as … the short-term interests of the telecommunications industry?
Two days following Stoller’s post (a search of MyDD yields several subsequent posts attacking McCurry), McCurry himself posted a comment on MyDD saying “I have to make a buck, sure.” And it was all downhill after that.
McCurry jumped deeper into the doo by defending himself on The Huffington Post a few days after that, with one post filled with rage and typos. The bloggers, as McDonnell in TNR says, then smelled blood.
Here’s how The Huffington Post’s David Sirota put it:
Mike McCurry is in one of those tailspins of dishonesty and contradiction that is so wildly out of control, you just have to sit back, grab some popcorn and watch with laughter.
Against this back-drop, McCurry, then, is a gutsy human being to go toe-to-toe with Craig Newmark in The Wall Street Journal. He’s inviting more blogosphere feeding frenzies but hey, he’s getting the big bucks. And now, at least, he knows what he’s in for.
McCurry, for his part, has finally realized that blogging is less like a witty exchange with Sam Donaldson and more, as he now puts it, like “a primal scream in the darkness.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:07 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The business and tech press is awash in articles today about how Vonage’s stock is seemingly sinking on the heels of its over-subscribed IPO. It’s big news and everybody is portraying the IPO as a flop. Vonage, which debuted at $17/share, closed today at $14.85, down 13%, a disappointing slide for an Internet IPO.
Business Week’s Timothy Mullaney has this article that starts out “What we’re they thinking?” Andy Kessler has this item entitled “Vonage Sucker Punch.”
The list of articles goes on and on. My favorite, though, is CNET’s Marguerite Reardon’s write-up of the stock’s fall. Marguerite offers this tentative reason why the stock is sinking: “The dip could indicate that investors are wary of the company’s future prospects.”
Hmm…ya think? That’s usually why stocks dip…in fact, it’s almost invariably why stocks dip. Investors don’t like the prospects of the company offering the stock.
In the case of Vonage, those prospects are indeed dim…right now. The company offers a technology that is easily replicated. It faces big-gun competition from cable operators, phone companies, eBay, you name it. Making matters worse, Vonage is losing money hand-over-fist and doesn’t really have a believable path to profitability.
But my guess is that Vonage executives are popping open the champagne bottles and riding a big high. Why? Because Vonage’s coffers are now stuffed with $531 million that the company didn’t have on Monday.
How many of us can say that? Who knows what Vonage will do with that cash, but they have it and can play around with it and come up with new ideas, new plans, new partnerships or even form new companies in a non-VoIP arena. They could even squander the money. The important point is: Vonage has managed to get its hands on a boat-load of new money.
No one seems to be writing that piece — the one about how Vonage just conjured up $500 billion. This Reuters article, however, quotes one Wall Street expert who seems surprised that the company could pull something like this off.
“It’s a wildly unprofitable company still selling at a very high valuation,” said Tom Taulli of Newport Coast, California, an IPO analyst and author of “Investing in IPOs.” He said he was surprised the company had managed to raise half a billion dollars through the IPO. “That’s not an easy thing to do in this market,” he said.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:37 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Place-shifting is a phenomenon that promises to add another layer of complexity to the quickly changing digital media world. But, according to a group of top executives who spoke today at an audio event hosted by Emerging Media Dynamics and IP Media Monitor, place-shifting technology is not as disruptive to the media world as it has been portrayed.
“A lot of the discussion has placed it as a disruptive technology,” Jason Krikorian, co-founder of Sling Media said. But, all place-shifting really does is give consumers control at the end of a very well-defined media distribution chain.
“For decades, there has been this well-defined value chain,” Krikorian said, leading from the content producer all the way down to the set-top box. “The Slingbox merely enables the consumer to take over at that point.”
However, traditional media producers shouldn’t fear giving consumers this control — they have much to benefit from place-shifting, Krikorian maintained. “Just because consumers are empowered does not mean the industry loses…the companies that survive are those who embrace the technology.”
Joe Costello, founder of Orb Networks, said that “magical things” start to happen when “the command and control” is uncoupled from the digital architecture, which is the brainstorm Orb stumbled upon when trying to solve what initially was an educational application designed for interactive TV.
“TV is a playlist that is fixed in time and space,” Costello said. But “people want to build their own channels” that breaks through this fixed model.
Place-shifting, however, is still not that easy to use, according to Josh Danovitz, General Manager of Tivo, and it needs to become a whole lot more user friendly before it reaches the next level. “Today the user has to crawl across a bit of broken glass to get their content place-shfited,” he said.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:23 PM | Print | Comments (0)
After a bruising battle that pitted unions and cable operators against phone companies, New Jersey is close to enacting a law that creates state-wide franchising. On Monday, the state assembly approved a bill, S.192, by a vote of 61 to 13 that would enable the New Jersey Board of Public Utlities to grant state-wide franchises.
Taking its cue from other states, including Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Virginia and South Carolina, that have passed similar measures, the New Jersey legislature approved the bill to allow faster telco entry into the video business in exchange for stepped-up franchise fees. Despite cable’s opposition to the legislation, last-minute changes that give local governments greater power over how phone companies enter a local market seems to have diminished cable’s anger over the bill.
The National Journal’s Tech Daily has this piece on the bill noting that a signature by the governor, needed for the bill to become law, is not an automatic thing in this case. The legislation won’t be sent to Governor Jon Corzine until the Senate reexamines the provisions regarding franchise fees.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:02 PM | Print | Comments (0)Multichannel News’ Ted Hearn reports that, at a 5/23 press briefing, Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said the agency can and should move to guarantee network neutrality.
Referring to the Commission’s current non-enforceable and somewhat vague statement of “policy principles,” Copps said “I think we have authority to go now to the second phase of network neutrality, to make sure that there’s not discrimination against those that are not affiliated with the network owners.”
According to Hearn, Copps was referring to the FCC’s authority under Title 1 of the Communications Act, which was referenced in the Brand X decision by Justice Thomas, who wrote “The [FCC] remains free to impose special regulatory duties on facilities-based [Internet-service providers] under its Title I ancillary jurisdiction.”
Copps indicated that the FCC could rely on Title I authority to act. “I think we have a good bit of authority in serving the public interest in keeping the networks open to move ahead on this,” he said.
But Hearn also noted that “some have questioned the FCC’s authority to impose net neutrality on information-service providers under Title 1.” He also pointed out that FCC chairman Kevin Martin “has favored a deregulatory approach…[and] has not endorsed the need for specific agency rules that Copps wants.”
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 12:10 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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