CNET’s Declan McCullagh is in Greece to cover a U.N. summit on Internet governance and has this priceless report on how a Chinese official maintains his country does not engage in censorship, despite the fact that Chinese government control over and censorship of the Internet is extraordinarily well-documented.
Here’s one quote from the Chinese official:
In China, we don’t have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that’s a different problem. I know that some colleagues listen to the BBC in their offices from the Webcast. And I’ve heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it’s blocked. I’m sure I don’t know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all.
And here’s another quote from the official regarding the well-documented imprisoning of journalists in China:
Some people say that there are journalists in China that have been arrested. We have hundreds of journalists in China, and some of them have legal problems. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression.
Although it’s kind of funny that this Chinese official is so obviously lying, these kinds of rationalizations — whether uttered by people or governments — are the worst kind because they simply deny reality and attempt to impose a distorted lens on other people’s realities. Lies like these have a way of turning into the truth, which causes no end of harm. At the risk of quoting an over-quoted source, this form of mind bending was a central theme in George Orwell’s 1984:
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.
Moreover, forcing people to believe in falsehoods is “crazy-making,” and making people feel crazy is one of the most painful things anybody — a government, a person — can do, far worse than even physical torture. Again, Orwell nailed this in 1984:
If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death
That’s why it’s difficult to condone the cooperation of U.S. tech and Internet suppliers with the Chinese government’s censorship regime. As Declan also reports, represents from Cisco and Microsoft were lambasted at the summit for their willingness to do business with the Chinese government.
And, as Declan also reports, the notion of the U.S. turning Internet governance over to other countries is a scary one.
Human rights groups, however, have warned that many of the nations most critical of the current arrangement—Tunisia, Cuba, Iran, China—rank among the world’s most repressive. The worry: If those governments have their way, the current, virtually limitless amount of free expression on the Internet may come to an end.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:24 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without Borders last week called those reform proposals alarming and asked: “Do we really want the countries that censor the Internet and jail cyberdissidents to be in charge of the online flow of information?” (The group also noted that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights counted, as members, nations such as Libya and Sudan, no champions of human rights themselves.)
Independent VoIP provider Vonage issued its Q3 06 earnings report today showing slowing growth and higher churn, along with rising revenue and narrowing losses. Revenues soared by 118% year-over-year and rose 12% sequentially, while net loss dropped 6% year-over-year and 16% sequentially.
As good as that sounds, the dark clouds are clearly on the horizon for the controversial company. While Vonage added 359,148 gross subscriber lines, the net additions amounted to only 204,591, highlighting a high degree of “churn,” which in turn is indicative of poor customer satisfaction or a mismatch between some higher-than-expected portion of new customers and the kind of service Vonage delivers.
Indeed, Vonage’s reported monthly churn for the quarter was 2.6%, 13% higher than the churn for Q2 06 or Q3 05. As a consequence, net customer line additions were down 4% year-over-year and 20% sequentially to 204,591.
During the company’s earnings call, CEO Mike Snyder put the blame for the slow-down on competition, lower back-to-school sales than anticipated and Vonage’s advertising, which needs to be revamped to target mainstream users rather than early adopters. The execs assembled for the call tended to address problems with Vonage’s marketing efforts, promising to implement efforts — such as more widely available retail kiosks and a new professional installation service — that cater to the mass market.
But the elephant in the room — cable’s widespread deployment of VoIP services and ramped-up competition from other independent VoIP providers such as SunRocket — was virtually ignored as the cause for the slow-down. Vonage can tinker all it wants with its marketing message and its efforts to reach a new class of consumers, but as long as cable is offering potent triple-play packages of voice, video and data services, Vonage faces further growth slow-down in Q4 06 and beyond.
| Selected Vonage Statistics | |||
| 3Q05 | 2Q06 | 3Q06 | |
| Total Operating Revenue (000) | $ 73,871 | $ 143,378 | $ 160,722 |
| Total Operating Expenses (000) | $141,222 | $ 217,006 | $ 226,520 |
| Net loss (000) | $ (65,955) | $ (74,136) | $ (62,184) |
| Gross subscriber line additions | 282,176 | 377,005 | 359,148 |
| Net subscriber line additions | 213,937 | 255,936 | 204,591 |
| Subscriber lines | 1,061,786 | 1,853,253 | 2,057,844 |
| Average monthly customer churn | 2.3% | 2.3% | 2.6% |
| Average monthly revenue per line | $ 25.8 | $ 27.7 | $ 27.4 |
| Average monthly telephony services revenue per line | $ 24.8 | $ 26.40 | $ 26.33 |
| Average monthly direct cost of telephony services per line | $ 8.6 | $ 7.52 | $ 6.86 |
| Marketing cost per gross subscriber line addition | $ 209 | $ 239.16 | $ 254.26 |
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:26 AM | Print | Comments (0)
As if anybody needed proof that the newspaper industry is in trouble, the Audit Bureau of Circulation released yesterday statistics that show a plunge in newspaper circulation. Average daily circulation for 770 newspapers was lower in the six-month ended September 30, 2006 than in the comparable time period a year earlier, a drop that is being characterized as one of the steepest on record.
The Los Angeles Times was one of the worst hit newspapers, losing 8% of its daily circulation and 6% of its Sunday circulation. These declines are not good news at all, but I had to smile when I read a press release issued by the Times that characterizes the drop as a result of the paper’s efforts to “improve circulation quality,” as if the Times had weeded out the riff-raff readers. (In truth newspapers have been cutting down on their bulk runs that are aimed at institutions such as hotels.)
Even the solid New York Times lost circulation — 3.5% for both its daily and Sunday editions.
The irony, of course, is that newspaper readership is steady and maybe even on the upswing once the publications’ Internet readers are taken into account. But, most newspapers haven’t been able to figure out how to effectively monetize their web traffic and the result is a newspaper business in decline.
That’s why Tribune (owner of the Los Angeles Times), Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal), and the New York Times, among other dead tree publishers, are exploring sales of their companies to private equity holders. Which may not be a bad thing at all…in the hands of private interests, newspapers could get some breathing room to turn things around, space that they don’t have on the public markets.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:46 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The Wall Street Journal’s Elizabeth Holmes profiles today a new micro web video channel called LX.TV Lifestyle Television that is the brainchild of two young former MTV executives Morgan Hertzan and Joseph Varet. The slick channel is, as Holmes writes, “essentially a lifestyle and entertainment guide for young urbanites with a bank account.”
But unlike many broadband channel start-ups, LX.TV uses professional on-air talent and very high-quality digital recording, much the way big TV networks do. And because the former MTV’ers know what they are doing, the site, backed by $1 million in venture investment, has already landed a big ad deal with Absolut Vodka and a distribution deal with NBBC, the syndicated broadband arm of NBC.
Messrs. Hertzan and Varet set the swift pace from the beginning, launching the site in just three months. Mr. Hertzan, who helped get MTVu off the ground, knew a thing or two about starting a network. He created the concept, complete with graphics and music, using vendors he knew from MTV. The industry ties also proved fruitful when he created a staff. Mr. Hertzan describes the recruiting as “somewhat Jerry Maguire-esque.”
So, we’re already starting to see the creation of very narrowly targeted, high-quality video channels on the Internet that resemble cable television’s niche landscape. My guess is that this is just the beginning — stay tuned for young defectors from cable networks launching their own visions of what professionally produced video on the Internet can be.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:26 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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