The Senate Commerce Committee held its third hearing today on telecom reform legislation, specifically its revamped telecom reform bill, S. 2686, the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006.
It was a lengthy affair, consisting of two panels and fourteen witnesses. It was noteworthy because Ben Scott, Free Press policy director, got a lot of airtime and a lot of softball questions, which strikes me as unusual for a public interest group witness. (See Ben’s testimony here.)
In any event, the statements and testimony were predictable all the way around, except one interesting debate point cropped up over and over again: whether the Internet has ever been regulated. For most of us the answer is no — the Internet is the one pure, unregulated medium we have.
However, Scott, along with other witnesses, said that the FCC used to regulate DSL as a telecommunications service, but no longer does. Therefore, Internet service was regulated but no longer is. “There has always been regulation of the Internet. There’s title II that has always been a part of the Internet,” Scott said.
NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow took on that claim and said that while telco-delivered Internet services were subject to common carrier regulations, cable modem services have always been free of regulatory requirements. “There is an issue as to whether the Bells..were regulated, that is true,” he said. But, “cable has never been regulated. We have always operated in an unregulated environment.”
Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) got a little testy with the idea of regulating the Internet and imposing Title II (common carrier-type) regulations on broadband providers. “We’re not going to do that,” the powerful Senator said in an emphatic way, referring to the prospect of anything that smacks of common carrier regulation applying to Internet service providers.
“We have a watchdog in the FCC and they’re told annually to report to us,” Stevens said in reference to the revised bill’s requirement that the FCC monitor and report annually on net neutrality matters. “If they see something that is a problem with net neutrality they can immediately report to us.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:58 PM | Print | Comments (1)
USA Today’s Jefferson Graham has this almost-funny article today on how the CEO of the RIAA Mitch Bainwol believes that the record companies have succesfully “contained” music file-sharing.
“The problem has not been eliminated,” says association CEO Mitch Bainwol. “But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat.”
Not sure what Bainwol is smoking, but the article contains a contrary view that is probably closer to the truth: file-sharing of unauthorized music continues to grow.
Even with Grokster and WinMX shut down, their software programs still exist. Eric Garland, CEO of Internet measurement firm BigChampagne, says that more people than ever are using file-sharing networks. “Nearly 10 million people are online, swapping media, at any given time,” he says. That May figure is up from 8.7 million people in 2005, he says.
I’m with Gizmodo, which titles its entry on this absurd assertion, “RIAA: Mission Accomplished.” Mike at TechDirt applies his BS scan to this article and concludes
It appears that the RIAA goes through a slightly different “stages of grief” than your average person. It starts with lawsuits, is followed by gibberish, and then comes denial.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:22 AM | Print | Comments (0)
I watched in fascination over the weekend when the blogosphere went nuts over something that in the grand scheme of things isn’t that important: famed blogger Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft to join PodTech.net. The surge of blog postings about this development, which then attracted the attention of the mainstream press, was worthy of a major international crisis or the second coming or something along those lines.
Even Scoble himself, who no doubt loved the attention, wrote about the crazy media storm. Now, another uber-blogger, Om Malik, is making a move. Om is quitting his day job as a reporter for Business 2.0 to focus solely on his blogging/web business. Based on the enormous response from the blogosphere (the news takes up half of TechMeme this morning) you’d think that Google just announced it’s buying Microsoft.
While it’s great that such a nice, smart guy is going to use his savvy to create something new, I find all this fascinating because it demonstrates one thing: the tech blogosphere is truly an industry unto itself. Moves by major tech bloggers become big news in the tech blogosphere, just as is the case with any industry or community or group. While not earth-shattering, these developments are HUGE events to tech bloggers.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:37 AM | Print | Comments (1)The revised telecom reform bill introduced by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) does not contain new net neutrality provisions, despite Stevens’ stated willingness to beef up this section of the draft legislation. The bill still has its provision that requires only that the FCC “study” the matter.
The game isn’t over yet. There’s still some negotiating to do.
Nevertheless, a committee aide said Stevens is open to fortifying those provisions, which would govern the ability of cable and telecom providers to control the content flowing over their high-speed Internet lines.
The new bill also contains a host of tweaks and one big red-flag. In terms of the tweaks, it asks the incumbent telcos to report to report to the FCC within three years where they are building video distribution systems, a nod toward the cable industry which wants a full-fledged build-out requirement. But it does say that a phone company that receives funds from the universal service fund for broadband deployment must offer that service to the entire rural community it serves.
The red-flag: the bill contains a provision proposed by Commerce Co-Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) that stipulates a video flag designed to thwart unauthorized video distribution over the Internet.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:18 AM | Print | Comments (0)
For those of us following this sector, everyone knows that publishing/conferencing/Internet voice hot-shot Jeff Pulver has already declared that the “V” in VON now also stands for “video,” not just voice. The rest of the world knows it today because Pulver gets B1 treatment from the Wall Street Journal in this piece penned by Amol Sharma.
Although the article uses as its starting point Pulver’s role in launching Vonage (he mostly got out before the IPO, however), the focus is on Jeff’s foray into the Internet video sector, which he thinks will be hotter than hot.
Mr. Pulver is creating his own Internet TV show, which he is modeling on Rocketboom, a popular Internet video-blog that broadcasts a three-minute news show daily. He is considering launching a broader Internet TV subsidiary and is weighing whether to invest in several emerging Internet video companies, though he won’t name them. Someday he wants to start an Internet reality TV show.
“The same DNA that disrupted the telecom industry is well on its way to totally revolutionizing the way the TV, film, and broadcast industry is going to be,” Mr. Pulver says, adding that he’s now looking for “the Vonage of Internet video.”
Meanwhile, on his blog (which the WSJ piece says is “widely read at the Federal Communications Commission and by some staffers on Capitol Hill”) Jeff rues last week when, first, the House passed the COPE bill with no meaningful net neutrality amendment and then, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the imposition of CALEA on VoIP providers. He writes
For the moment, suffice it to say that there is an emerging divide between those countries that get it and those that don’t, and, I hate to say it, but in just two short years, America has switched sides.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:41 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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