Blog - Page 8

Testifying today before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, Google’s copyright counsel, Katherine Oyama, made a number of useful observations about the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261). For example, she claimed that the bill could require U.S. Internet and technology companies to monitor Web sites and social media for infringing content. It would make no sense to make companies like AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo! and Zynga responsible for the content that their customers link to or post on the Web. On the other hand, it would also not make sense for these companies to remain free to ignore obvious copyright infringement. Say the owner of a copyright notifies these companies about infringing Read More ›

Futurists have been predicting for years that there will be diminished privacy in the future, and we will just have to adapt. In 1999, for example, Sun Mcrosystems CEO Scott McNealy posited that we have “zero privacy.” Now, Wall Street Journal columnist Gordon Crovitz is suggesting that technology has the “power to rewrite constitutional protections.” He is referring to GPS tracking devices, of all things.
The Supreme Court is considering whether it was unreasonable for police to hide a GPS tracing device on a vehicle belonging to a suspected drug dealer. The Bill of Rights protects each of us against unreasonable searches and seizures. According to the Fourth Amendment,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In the case before the Supreme Court, U.S. v. Antoine Jones, the requirement to obtain a warrant was not problematic. In fact, the police established probable cause to suspect Jones of a crime and obtained a warrant. The problem is, the police violated the terms of the warrant, which had expired and which was never valid in the jurisdiction where the tracking occurred. Therefore, first and foremost, this is a case about police misconduct.

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Tomorrow the United States Senate will vote on S.J.Res. 6, a joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to regulating the Internet and broadband industry practices. An identical resolution (H.J.Res. 37) has already passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 240-179. Today Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) explained why Congress should protect the Internet from unnecessary government regulation — because regulation inhibits investment and innovation. If the Senate adopts the resolution, the President will use his veto to block the will of the people as expressed through their Congressional representatives, according to reports.

Is the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, H.R. 3261 (SOPA) a “massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation,” as our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation claim? According to the sponsor of the proposal, House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), there is an urgent need to protect American innovators from foreign theft via the Internet. Rogue websites that steal and sell American innovations have operated with impunity. The online thieves who run these foreign websites are out of the reach of U.S. law enforcement agencies and profit from selling pirated goods without any legal consequences. According to estimates, IP theft costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs. The Stop Read More ›

At next week’s administrative session, the Georgia Public Service Commission will consider a proposed order from the Public Interest Advocacy Staff concerning the applications of three small telecom service providers for subsidies from Georgia’s Universal Access Fund. The companies are: Chickamauga Telephone Corp., Public Service Telephone Co. and Ringgold Telephone Co.
According to Kristi E. Swartz, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in August,

The Public Service Commission held two days of hearings this week on three requests of more than $1 million each. Opponents took particular aim at executive and owner compensation.
Ringgold Telephone, which serves northeast Georgia, paid five executives more than $950,000, according to testimony and documents filed with the PSC. Public Service Telephone, which operates in Middle Georgia, doled out $2 million in dividends to its three private owners, according to testimony and documents filed with the PSC.

We are talking about government-mandated subsidies, which force urban and suburban telecom consumers in Georgia, without regard to individual economic circumstances, to pay inflated prices for wireline telephone service for the purpose of subsidizing telephone service in rural communities. Will rural consumers really be cut off from the rest of the World without these subsidies, or do the subsidies mainly benefit richly compensated executives and owners of legally-privileged telecom service providers? It is hard to tell. “Because the rural companies are private,” notes Swartz, “much of their financial information is undisclosed.”

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski’s criticism of intercarrier compensation in extensive remarks on telephone subsidies last week is a reminder for many states of the need to reform intrastate switched access rates.
Although Congress mandated the elimination of implicit subsidies embedded in the rates for both interstate and intrastate telecommunications services in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it did not set a deadline. The FCC has substantially reduced interstate switched access rates in recent years, but a considerable amount of hidden subsidies remain in intrastate switched access fees.
In Florida, for example, one telecom service provider charges 5.64 cents per conversation minute for intrastate long distance versus only 1.65 cents for interstate long distance. The difference represents a hidden subsidy component that operates as a form of tax that only residents of Florida pay, since the lower interstate fees apply to calls which cross state lines.

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Chairman Julius Genachowski of the Federal Communications Commission spoke of the need to reduce subsidies for traditional wireline telephone service last week, as well as a perceived need for his agency to use the savings to subsidize broadband services (see the press release and the text of the speech).
Genachowski is absolutely correct about the need for reforming universal service and intercarrier compensation. Unfortunately, his determination to reform telephone subsidies is not for the purpose of generating consumer savings, but about redirecting resources currently at his disposal for the purpose of gaining some measure of control over unregulated broadband networks. Though cleverly disguised, this is actually a third major attempt to (slowly) impose public utility regulation on broadband service providers.

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You gotta love this guy. Or do you? Referring to the Department of Justice’s challenge to the AT&T + T-Mobile USA merger, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse (mug shot to the right} claims, I don’t believe that what the DOJ said in any way, not even a little bit, should be viewed as we want to keep four [major telecom carriers] …. My view is [the DOJ] would look at other consolidation very differently. What is he saying? According to another report, Hesse believes, [Y]ou could make a very, very strong argument, I believe, that if you have two value players that, let’s say, got together, that gave them more scale and a better cost structure to compete with the twin Read More ›

Congressman Lee Terry (R-NE) and Congressman Mike Ross (D-AR) are encouraging their colleages to co-sign a letter urging Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski to reinvent the Universal Service Fund that subsidizes telephone service in rural areas served by small telecommunications common carriers. The USF is an inefficient subsidy mechanism that may no longer be necessary. The Government Accountability Office made a similar observation in a 2008 report to Congress. While considering legislation codifying universal service, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation anticipated that competition and new technologies would reduce or eliminate the need for universal service support mechanisms. However, rather than decreasing, the cost of the high-cost program has grown substantially to $4.3 billion in 2007, increasing Read More ›

Does Google present Google products at the top of search result lists? That was the question Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) asked at a congressional hearing this week. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) complained that Schmidt’s response was “fuzzy.” See, e.g., this. If the Google algorithm does favor Google products, is the implication that consumers are so stupid that they will not compare search results, but rather home in on the top search result? That’s absurd. Most consumers use the Internet in search or value, looking for the best products at the most reasonable prices. Consumers who want to save money are accustomed to hunting and searching. Google makes it easier than ever to hunt for bargains. Consumers can access the offerings Read More ›