Post Tech

Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski was a frequent visitor to the White House this year, making nearly four dozen trips there between Jan. 26 and Sept. 1, according to a White House release of its visitor log.

Genachowski, who served as President Obama's technology adviser during the election campaign and transition, was named FCC chairman in March. After Senate confirmation, he officially took over the FCC at the end of June.

The data released today are for the first nine months of the year. In September, he announced his controversial plan to create stronger and broader open-Internet rules. The proposal would prevent Internet service providers from blocking or prioritizing content on the Web.

U.S. senators are weighing in on the database software wars, urging the European Union to approve Oracle's bid for Sun Microsystems.

Elsewhere in The Post, check out Book World's Short Stack Blog with a guest post by Coye Cheshire, one of the editors of "eTrust: Forming Relationships in the Online World," published last September. The book explores how to find trusting relationships in a Web 2.0 world.

AT&T doesn’t like the idea of new regulations mandating unfettered access to the Internet, and recent comments from the Obama administration that connected the issue to censorship in China have really gotten under the telecom giant's skin.

AT&T responded forcefully this week to remarks by White House deputy chief technology officer Andrew McLaughlin, who said that free speech and network neutrality are “intrinsically linked.” Net neutrality rules are being crafted by federal regulators that would restrict Internet service providers like AT&T from blocking or prioritizing content on the Web.

In an entry published on the Post Tech blog and in comments at a telecom policy conference last week, McLaughlin compared censorship in China — where President Obama’s recent comments on open Internet values were blocked from Chinese Web sites — to the need for net neutrality rules so as to prevent corporations from acting as gatekeepers of information and speech.

“If it bothers you that the China government does it, it should bother you when your cable company does it,” McLaughlin said at the policy conference. Net neutrality is an issue that the administration has made a cornerstone of its technology agenda.

Those comments did not sit well with AT&T’s chief lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, who issued an angry response. He said it was “ill-considered and inflammatory” to connect censorship in China to the practices of American ISPs, which he said do not threaten free speech.

“It is deeply disturbing when someone in a position of authority, like Mr. McLaughlin, is so intent on advancing his argument for regulation that he equates the outright censorship decisions of a communist government to the network congestion decisions of an American ISP. There is no valid comparison, and it’s frankly an affront to suggest otherwise,” Cicconi said.

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy defended McLaughlin’s comments. “A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history,” the office said in a statement. “Mr. McLaughlin was simply reiterating the Administration’s consistent support for the importance of an open Internet — both at home and abroad.”

McLaughlin’s comments tracked with remarks he made years ago on net neutrality. Before joining the administration earlier this year, McLaughlin was a non-resident fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center and a co-founder of domain name group I-CANN. He served as head of Google’s global policy.

Cicconi has been a vocal opponent of net neutrality rules. Last month, he asked AT&T's 300,000 employees to tell the Federal Communications Commission ahead of a critical vote on the issue that the proposed new rules were extreme and could deter future investment in broadband Internet networks.

The agency later unanimously passed a rule-making proposal that could lead to stronger and broader net neutrality rules. Cicconi, the former deputy chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush, has since met with a top official at the FCC to push for limitations on its net neutrality proposal.

Cicconi took personal aim at McLaughlin, noting that Google would benefit most from new net neutrality rules:

"... The irony is that the FCC is now considering narrowing those successful principles in a way that will exclude Google, a major Internet gatekeeper. If any entity on the Internet today has the ability to chill voices with which it disagrees, that entity is Mr. McLaughlin's former employer," he said in a statement. "To suggest that
companies operating in a highly competitive market are more able to operate as 'gatekeepers' on the Internet, and thus more appropriate targets for government regulation, than a company like Google, which has clear market dominance, is to turn logic on its head."

The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group representing some of the biggest companies in the telecom and high-tech industries, criticized Cicconi’s comments and agreed with the link McLaughlin made between net neutrality and free speech.

“The juxtaposition of these free speech issues – Internet censorship and net neutrality — pulls away the layer of confusion about net neutrality that opponents have hidden behind for years,” said Ed Black, chief executive of the CIAA. “Unrestricted, the Internet may be mankind’s greatest tool ever to promote individual freedom. We ought to do everything we can to protect that possibility — and if we aren’t careful it can become a tool to censor, surveil and manage captive audiences.”

Check out The Post's 44 Blog for its take on the flap over Google and the First Lady's image.

Search engine behemoth Google is apologizing for image-search results delivered for first lady Michelle Obama that show the No. 1 image of her online to be a racist caricature.

"We apologize if you've had an upsetting experience using Google. We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results," says a house ad from "the Google team" served up in conjunction with image results for queries on the first lady's name.

Here's the whole story.

It’s been more than six years since federal regulators looked at competition in the market for video set-top boxes. And in that time, the video landscape has dramatically changed. Telecom companies AT&T and Verizon have joined cable companies in bringing shows and movies to U.S. living rooms. They are also joined by satellite companies such as Dish Network and Direct TV.

So the Consumer Electronics Association wants to make sure the Federal Communications Commission looks at the broader market for video service as it begins its review of set-top boxes.

As reported, the FCC said it is looking into competition in the video set-top box market as it figures out how to blanket the country with access to affordable high-speed Internet. The agency sees the television set--which can be found in virtually every American home--as a vehicle for delivering broadband access. As television and Web converge, the set-top box could become a medium for bringing more people online, the FCC believes.

“We think it is high time the FCC reassess the market, taking into account the current retail market and fragmented nature of pay TV platforms,” said Jamie Hedlund, vice president of regulatory affairs for CEA.

The group met with the head of the FCC’s media bureau, Bill Lake, last September to ask the agency to take a harder look at the video set-top box industry and the control the cable industry has over it (here's an exparte of the meeting.)

They see potential for the market to be structured like the mobile phone industry – an analogy made by Lake in the FCC’s national broadband plan report issued last week. There were about 14 video set-top boxes on the market in 2008, including those leased by cable, telecom and satellite providers. That compares with nearly 900 mobile devices.

Public interest groups say there is no reason why the set-top box can’t be a slimmed down device with scores of applications for videos, movies, games, and Internet content. There are currently two main set-top box makers – Motorola and Cisco – though many more device makers have expressed interest in getting into the industry, particularly as more people spend time in front of the TV (Nielsen reported recently that television viewing is at an all-time high with U.S. households spending an average of nearly five hours a day in front of the tube.) and videos become easier to get online.

In 2009, cable companies will ship about 15.8 million set-top boxes, up from 14.7 million last year. That number will continue to grow to about 16.3 million next year, according to research estimates, the CEA says.

Cable companies argue that the FCC’s criticism of the set-top box market rests with manufacturers, not them.

"We were the first in the industry to publicly propose that consumers should be able to access the video offerings of cable, telco and satellite providers with any device purchased at retail," said Kyle McSlarrow, chief executive of cable trade group National Cable and Telecommunications Association. "Such a solution would spur the kind of innovation at retail that we and the commission believe would meet consumer demand. In that regard, we welcome the opportunity to explore repealing the counterproductive rule that requires a cable card to be inserted in all leased set-top boxes which impose unnecessary costs on consumers."

But the agency says that because the majority of boxes are leased by cable operators, companies like Cox, Cablevision, Time Warner and Cox essentially control the market.

”It’s been a long slog,” Hudlund said. “Cable operators have been loath to give up control.”

For a primer on the Google book search settlement, please take a look at this clip from C-Span's Book TV program over the weekend. In the video, Post Tech dissects the revised agreement between the search giant and publishers and authors groups that was submitted earlier this month to a federal judge in New York.

Please check out this video.

As previously reported, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin last week gave preliminary approval to the new settlement and set key dates for comments by the public and Justice Department. It set a final hearing on the settlement for Feb. 18 2010.

Google said in a statement about Chin's timetable:

"The preliminary approval order sends a positive intitial message; this agreement promises to benefit readers and researchers, and enhance the ability of authors and publishers to distribute their content in digital form."

Opponents of the deal say the settlement still has many flaws. The Open Book Alliance, a group formed by competitors Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, the Internet Archives and library groups say they will urge the judge and Justice to heavily scrutinize the new deal between Google and the Association of American Publishers and Authors Guild.

"The proposed changes fail to address this deal's fundamental flaws. Despite Google's effort to spin this deal, it does nothing to promote competition nor does it reform Google's exclusive access and monopoly hold on this digital database of books," said Gary Reback, co-chair of the group, in a statement.

Rebecca Arbogast, managing director of research at Stifel Nicholaus, says the regulatory review of a merger between Comcast and NBC Universal could stretch out to the fourth quarter of next year.

Much of the scrutiny is expected to revolve around programming carriage agreements as Comcast obtains valuable entertainment content from NBC's Universal studios -- broadcast programs such as the Jay Leno Show and Heroes, and network channels like USA, Bravo and MSNBC.

There will also be a number of tougher questions, such as how the proposed combination would impact the burgeoning market of online video.

"Comcast-NBCU would be on more sides of programming and carriage negotiations, potentially giving the partners added leverage to obtain favorable terms with other multichannel and content companies and to extend the cable model to the Internet," Arbogast said.

She said by acquiring NBC's 30 percent stake in Hulu.com, Comcast runs into concerns that it could prioritize its own video content over that of competitors. By doing so, it would "ensnare the deal in the broader network neutrality debate," she said.

Comcast has said its online content deals are non-exclusive, meaning the video programmers that contract to run their shows through Comcast's Fan Cast site, are not prohibited from striking similar deals with competitors.

As reported, the Federal Communications Commission and antitrust watchdogs at the Federal Trade Commission are likely to eventually approve the deal. But Arbogast said if competitors decide to follow the proposal with deals of their own, there is a risk that the FCC would block the marriage to prevent further media consolidation and threats to local journalism, tenants that the agency seems inclined to protect.

"Merger proponents would presumably argue that government should get out of the way of an inexorable industry trend, but at some point, we believe a wary Democratic administration could gag on growing media consolidation and move to block the first deal in order to set a firm precedent," Arbogast wrote in a research note.

According to The Walll Street Journal and other reports, the deal is being held up by negotiations for Vivendi to relinquish its stake in NBC Universal. That deal would have to be done before Comcast makes its bid for NBC.

Finally, Liberty Media Chairman John Malone weighed in on the prospective deal Monday on CNBC. He said one key to negotiations and the regulatory review is what to do with local broadcast affiliates (NBC owns 27 local broadcast stations). He said those stations aren't making money on their own but could be helped by the cable subscription model that would essentially subsidize their businesses.

He said it will be interesting to see what the affiliates ask for:

"What will the broadcast affiliates of NBC say they want to not fight this transaction," he said.

http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/faber-report-john-malone/2230197564

When President Obama told university students in Shanghai last week that he’s a “big supporter of non-censorship,” it took 27 minutes for one major Chinese portal to delete that part of his speech. After two-and-a-half hours, almost all portals in the nation took out the comments from news coverage.

Despite what appeared to be the Chinese government’s clampdown on the controversial issue of online censorship, an explosive exchange about Obama’s support for “open Internet use” surfaced on blogs and on Twitter.

“That is the optimistic part of the story,” said Andrew McLaughlin, the nation’s deputy technology officer, recounting the event.

In a telecom law conference last Thursday by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln law school, McLaughlin and Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, talked about how an open Internet, or so-called net neutrality, underlies free speech on the Web. Without it, censorship can occur.

“If it bothers you that the China government does it, it should bother you when your cable company does it,” McLaughlin said.

The two technology-policy experts talked on the panel, moderated by Post Tech, about the balance of promoting U.S. beliefs in free speech and open-Internet policies while also respecting the political and cultural norms of other nations. McLaughlin ran global policy (non-U.S. policy) for Google out of the San Francisco Bay Area before joining the administration earlier this year.

The tricky thing about the Internet is that because of the architecture of the Web that gives access providers -- either a government or telecom/cable company -- control over Web content, those entities have an outsized influence over the flow of information.

“Optimistic view is that censorship is the last-ditch, last-gasp effort by
centralized regimes to control what you do,” said McLaughlin, the former head of policy for Google. “The pessimistic view of the Internet is that it is basically a tool for perfect control.”

Bringing that back to the United States, the Obama administration views free speech and net neutrality as “intrinsically linked,” he said. The U.S. has a long-held belief that free speech is a national core value, even more so than most nations, he said. And key to that is ensuring that the corporations giving users access to the Web don’t act as gatekeepers of information and speech.

The FCC is in the middle of shaping new rules for Internet access that would prevent a service provider such as Verizon, AT&T or Comcast from blocking or prioritizing any legal content on the Web. McLaughlin said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's push for new rules supports the adminsitration’s views on freedom of expression and innovation.

“In this country our commitment to Internet freedom is so strong that we not only have a First Amendment that restricts the government from restraining free speech, but we also think that companies that provide access turn into speech regulators themselves,” McLaughlin said.

“That's how I think about the issue because of the peculiar nature of access providers to ride off of scarcity in connectivity and long-term contracts with customers. Because of that control, they are in a position to potentially favor one competitor or speaker than another.”

So why should the U.S. care if other nations disagree?

Mclaughlin said the reasons are in part tactical. Countries that agree with U.S. principles of free exchange of ideas and free economics and markets are aligned with U.S. strategic objectives, he said.

That becomes trickier when allies like Germany and South Korea pursue divergent policies on free speech. To post a comment on an online forum or blog in South Korea, for instance, a resident has to identify himself or herself through an authentication process that requires a name and national identification number. In Germany, it is illegal to express allegiance to the Nazi party or to express hate language toward Jews online.

“You'd have an armed revolt in this country if you tried to do that,” McLaughlin said. “In Germany, they have a unique historical experience and set of democratic institutions that have repeatedly over decades validated that certain kinds of speech are off limits.”

Wu advocates for free speech but also cautions that the government treads a fine line between exporting its values and respecting those of other nations. In the late 1990s, protesters in Seattle demonstrated at a World Trade Organization ministerial meeting against what they thought were flaws of globalization. Now, Wu said, there runs the risk that multinationals of the Internet economy – such as Google – are spreading their cultural norms around the globe.

“In the 1990s, there were some who were afraid that the world was becoming too simple and a single culture,” Wu said. “Now you have people in countries who tend to dislike Google, for example, because they are creating a sense of uniformity by saying what counts as important on the Web because of their algorithm.”

(Photo credit: Harvard Law School)

CORRECTION: AT&T's Cicconi met with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's chief of staff, Edward Lazarus. Genachowski was not in the meeting.

It's been a few weeks since Google told the Federal Communcations Commission that its voice application is still blocking calls, just fewer of them.

So what does the FCC plan to do? That's what AT&T wants to know and the company sent its top lobbyists to the agency this week to talk to Edward Lazarus, chief of staff to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski about the apparent violation of phone calling rules.

At the meeting, Cicconi also reiterated several objections from AT&T to an agency proposal for net neutrality rules that would prohibit the discrimination of content over the Web. (Here's a letter submitted to the FCC describing the meeting).

Specifically, Cicconi said one portion of the proposed open-Internet rules was too strict.

By "imposing a non-discrimination standard that does not contain some form of reasonableness limitation would be more restrictive than the prohibition against “unreasonable discrimination” adopted for monopoly-era telephone companies in the Communications Act of 1934.

And in a meeting with FCC chief counsel Bruce Gottlieb, AT&T's senior vice president of federal affairs Robert Quinn asked "that the commission make clear that Google is prohibited from blocking voice calls irrespective of the underlying technology used to deliver its service.

An FCC spokesperson was not immediately available to comment on the meeting nor on the agency's response to AT&T.

The FCC has been investigating practices of Google Voice, an Internet application that forwards calls and aggregates phone numbers for users. AT&T had complained to the agency that Google had been violating communications regulations that prohibit call blocking. On October 28, Google said it has reduce the number of calls it blocks to under 100.

Hollywood urged key lawmakers Thursday to support trade negotiations that would set rules for policing copyright laws.

The Motion Picture Association of America wrote a letter to several lawmakers including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Va.) and House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, asking them to support the Obama administration's efforts in the trade talks, which are being conducted behind closed doors in Seoul. Other countries participating in the negotiations include the United States, Canada, Japan and South Korea, along with European Union members.

In its letter, the MPAA said that new global rules are needed to protect films from Internet piracy. As more people illegally trade content online, the movie studios businesses suffer.

"The ability to finance, create and distribute entertainment, and the livelihood of the talented and dedicated men and women who work in our industry are dependent upon our ability to protect the intellectual property that is the lifeblood of our industry," wrote MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman. "Technological advances have enabled more copyrighted works to be disseminated to more people in more countries through more media than ever before."

The appeal comes amid protests of the trade talks by public interest groups and legal scholars, who say such negotiations shouldn't take place in secret. The countries are crafting a set of rules known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which would address, among other things, illegal distribution of copyrighted material over the Web.

As reported, sources who have seen drafts of the trade agreement have expressed concern that rules under consideration are too stringent and could lead to Internet service providers filtering content. If the ISPs fail to stop copyright infringements by their subscribers, those ISPs could be held be held liable by the movie, music and publishing industries, according to sources.

Glickman called the protests a "distraction" and said that they flout efforts to deal with a need to figure out how to enforce online copyright.

"Opponents of ACTA are either indifferent to this situation, or actively hostile toward efforts to improve copyright enforcement worldwide," Glickman said.

Similar letters were sent to:
Ranking Member Jeff Sessions, Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Max Baucus, Senate Finance Committee
Ranking Member Charles E. Grassley, Senate Finance Committee
Chairman John Conyers, House Committee of the Judiciary
Ranking Member Lamar Smith, House Committee on the Judiciary
Chairman Charles Rangel, House Committee on Ways and Means
Ranking Member Dave Camp, House Committee on Ways and Means
Chairman Henry Waxman, House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Ranking Member Joe Barton, House Committee on Energy and Commerce