Recent postings on internet issues from Benton.org

May 2004

THE WORLD WIDE (TAX) WEB
The Internet -- and its users -- have thrived mainly because government and taxers have "stayed out of the way," writes the author of the Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act. "We must make sure that the avaricious tax commissars from every county, city and state in America do not continue conniving new ways to tax the Internet and the people who use it. Otherwise, the Tax-the-Internet advocates will turn our freeways into toll roads like the New Jersey Turnpike." Sen Allen endorses the McCain amendment to his bill which calls for a four-year moratorium on Internet taxes. The legislation also sunsets any current taxes on Internet access and DSL service in three years. Sen Allen concludes: "With history as our guide, I predict that if we protect the Internet and the American consumer from stifling taxes now, we will see more economic growth in the future. Those same bureaucrats who are hungry for short-term tax revenue today will reap an even greater benefit from increased economic and consumer activity tomorrow. It is up to us to show discipline and restraint and allow the Internet to flourish unimpeded in the decades to come."
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sen George Allen (R-VA)]
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108311007430995505,00.html?mod=todays_us_opinion (requires subscription)

BROADBAND OVER POWER LINE REPORT
A report issued today by the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) examines the potential interference to federal radio systems that could result from the deployment of broadband over power lines (BPL). The report concludes that "rigorous technical solutions" would protect critical federal systems and enable BPL to realize its promise as the "third broadband wire into the home." There are 59,000 federal radio frequency assignments in the affected bands of spectrum between 1.7 and 80 MHz. These frequencies provide multiple services including: fixed, mobile, radio astronomy, radar, and broadcasting. The NTIA report, which analyzed 10 million measurements of BPL systems, suggests mitigation techniques to protect these critical government radio systems. Among the solutions proposed in the report are: a notch solution for the most sensitive and severely impacted systems; local registration of BPL frequency use; intelligent power management; and the use of a Web-based interface for potentially impacted parties. NTIA will complete a Phase 2 study later this year that will assess the potential interference risks due to aggregation and ionospheric propagation of interfering signals from BPL systems; refine and apply BPL deployment models; and evaluate the effectiveness of proposed Part 15 measurement techniques.
[SOURCE: NTIA]
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fccfilings/2004/bpl/index.html

PHILANTHROPIST BENTON CALLS FOR INCREASED FUNDING FOR MEDIA POLICY REFORM
While receiving the Council on Foundations' 2004 Distinguished Grantmaker Award for lifetime achievement in philanthropy, Charles Benton, board chair of the Benton Foundation, expressed alarm over the future of media in America and called for greater funder involvement to encourage more open and inclusive media policymaking. Noting consolidating media ownership and the political and financial pressures faced by public broadcasters, Benton let the audience know that his work in the fields of philanthropy and media policy is far from over. "I believe the future of media and communications in America is cause for serious concern. At stake is who controls what we see, hear, and read. At stake is our ability to get our message out and make a difference. At stake is nothing less than the health of our democracy," Benton said in his acceptance speech. Earlier this month, the Benton Foundation joined the Public Interest, Pubic Airwaves Coalition, an alliance of public interest groups, media activists and grassroots organizers, in urging the FCC to hold the nation's commercial broadcasters to a more responsible standard of public service. The coalition's proposal, since endorsed by FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, asks the regulatory agency to help ensure among other items that licensed broadcasters air: 1) a minimum three hours per week of civic or electoral affairs programming; and 2) independently produced programming for at least 25 percent of their prime time schedule.
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation Press Release]
http://www.benton.org/

700 CHANNELS AND NOTHING ON
Jeff Chester writes: As Congress begins preliminary hearings aimed ultimately at rewriting the 1996 Telecommunications Act, one key goal must be cable TV industry reform. Cable now provides almost 70 percent of U.S. households with daily TV service. A tiny handful of companies, including Comcast, Time Warner, Charter, Cox, and Adelphia (the scandal-ridden company that will soon be consumed by the others), determine what Americans can see on cable. According to a recent FCC filing, this handful of companies control much more than the existing TV schedule, however, for each cable operator is actually capable of delivering more than 700 channels of programming. The public is unaware of cable's capacity to provide greater program diversity. Nor are most local and national programmers well-informed about the potential opportunity. It's time to take action on cable TV reform."
[SOURCE: Center for Digital Democracy]
http://www.democraticmedia.org/index.html

GIVE ME THE NET
Given the choice at work between personal use of the Net or a morning cup of coffee, employees say the coffee can go, according to a survey released this week by Websense, which makes software designed to let companies control employee Net access. We at Headlines say it is not an either-or. Get that cup of coffee, settle in for some gripping telecommunications policy news and we'll have you ready to greet that ten o'clock staff meeting with a smile.
[SOURCE: C|Net News.com]
http://news.com.com/2100-7355-5201726.html?tag=cd.top

HOW VOIP CAN CONNECT THE DISABLED
While VoIP is creating quite a stir in the telecommunications field overall, it's an especially promising technology for people with disabilities. VoIP integrates the phone, voice mail, audioconferencing, e-mail, instant messaging, and Web applications like Microsoft Outlook on one secure, seamless network. Plus, workers can use their PC, laptop, or handheld as a VoIP phone from virtually anywhere, with the same phone number, which benefits telecommuters, including those whose mobility is impaired and must work from home. There's much more on what this technology could mean for the disabled community at the URL below.
[SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Suzanne Robitaille]
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2004/tc20040428_4395_tc116.htm

NEW INTERNET SITE TURNS CRITICAL EYES AND EARS ON THE RIGHT
Former right-wing journalist David Brock is launching a web site -- Media Matters (www.mediamatters.org) -- he says will monitor and correct the erroneous assertions of conservative commentators and journalists in real time. Funding comes from the Center for American Progress, the policy group headed by John D. Podesta, the former Clinton chief of staff.
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jim Ruttenberg]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/business/media/03BROC.html (requires registration)

GOOGLE PLANS FOUNDATION TO TAKE AIM AT GLOBAL ILLS
Hiding in Google's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are these two sentences: "We intend to contribute significant resources to the foundation, including employee time and approximately 1 percent of Google's equity and profits in some form. We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems."
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Brendan Intindola]
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2JN3C3ONUGVA2CRBAEOCFEY?type=technologyNews&storyID=5004852

NEWSPAPER CIRCULATION CONTINUES OVERALL DECLINE
The Audit Bureau of Circulations reported yesterday that the newspaper industry's overall long-term decline is continuing. The New York Post, the New York Times, the Daily News, the Wall Street Journal and the USA Today all saw circulation gains in the last six months, but for the majority of papers, subscribership is down. "Their readers are dying off faster than they're being replaced," said John Morton, president of Morton Research, a newspaper consulting firm. "The encouraging thing is that nationally, this time, it wasn't a very big drop.''
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jacques Steinberg]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/04/business/media/04circulation.html (requires registration)

TELEVISION GOES TO SCHOOL: THE IMPACT ON STUDENT LEARNING IN FORMAL EDUCATION
Video continues to be an effective, engaging and essential teaching tool, despite the arrival of technologies like computers, DVDs and the Internet, says a new report released by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Television Goes to School: The Impact of Video on Student Learning in Formal Education, prepared by EDC’s (Education Development Center, Inc.) Center for Children and Technology, presents data on video’s impact on student performance and offers practical tips and recommendations to help broadcasters and educators connect video resources and learners with rich standard-based content. CPB commissioned the report to support local public television station’s efforts to inform local policy makers on the important role educational video continues to play in media-rich classroom environments. CPB is distributing the report to public television stations and educators around the country as well as other stakeholders and partners in order to raise awareness.
The report is online at http://www.cpb.org/ed/resources/videoclassroom.html
[SOURCE: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Press Release]
http://www.cpb.org/programs/pr.php?prn=353 (requires subscription)

SELF-CENSORSHIP IN BROADCASTING SEEN AS RISING
In the wake of FCC rulings and legislation making its way through Congress, broadcasters are self-censoring their content. "If you're asking if there has been overcaution on the part of broadcasters today, I think the answer is yes," said Jeff Smulyan, the chairman and chief executive of Emmis Communications, which owns 16 television stations and 27 radio stations in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and other cities. "Everyone is going to err on the side of caution. There is too much at stake. People are just not sure what the standards really are." If the bills moving through Congress become law, at stake are both much higher fines for broadcasters, but also their licenses. FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps, who has been one of the strongest critics of media companies, acknowledged that some broadcasters appeared to be overreacting. But, he said, "I applaud the effort at self policing." He also disputed the notion that the FCC's standards on indecency were too vague. "I think most of the things we're dealing with right now are pretty clear, from the standpoint of being indecent," he said. "There's enough stuff out there that shouldn't be on."
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jacques Steinberg]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/business/media/10FCC.html?hp (requires registration)WEB TV IS CHANGING THE WAY PROGRAMMING IS WATCHED AND SOLD
The movie and TV industries are starting to see the Internet as a new way to sell programming that has already aired on TV. The quality of video on people's PCs is not great yet, but as networks grow faster and easy-to-use Internet-aware devices are sold for the living room, the role of the Internet in TV will only grow. Think about getting "West Wing" without having to deal with Comcast -- or even NBC. "It would be the video analog of getting your music directly from the artist. You wouldn't even need a TiVo, because the whole world would be your TiVo," Gomes writes. Policy decisions will help shape this future. Cable companies sell us both Internet signals and TV programming. Maybe, says Timothy Wu, a University of Virginia law professor who has studied the issue, we should insist they not downgrade their Internet signal as a way of protecting their cash-cow TV business.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Lee Gomes]
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108414174945606228,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

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(c) Benton Foundation 2003. Redistribution of this email publication -- both internally and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this message.
Communications-Related Headlines are compiled, summarized and edited by Rachel Anderson (rachel@benton.org), Andy Carvin (andy@benton.org) and Charles Meisch (charlie@benton.org) of the Benton Foundation -- we welcome your feedback. Based in Washington DC, the Benton Foundation's mission is to
articulate a public interest vision for the digital age and demonstrate the value of communications for solving social problems. Other projects at Benton include:
Digital Divide Network (www.digitaldividenetwork.org)
Digital Opportunity Channel (www.digitalopportunity.org)
OneWorld US (www.oneworld.net/us)
Sound Partners for Community Health (www.soundpartners.org)