The State vs. Technology-Controlling Wireless Communications

Blackberry and Skype are facing a combination of bans and pressure for more government control as the services seek expansion across the globe.

Communications technologies have been the concern of government since the printing press. Any means which allows greater ease and reach of information and ideas can be seen as a threat to any form of government seeking to manipulate and control public access to such technology.

As digital and wireless technology erases distance and boundaries, whether physical, social or political, the levers of power can change. Ranging from the public becoming aware of  how "official" news may differ from actual events to the support of individual thought, there are many governments that see threats from new communications.

At the same time, these governments can see how the same technologies offer means of greater means to track what their citizens see and read, who they talk to and where they go.

As always, the technology we create only offers tools and means to connect, to share, to create. How we use such technology, and react to it with fear or excitement, remains our individual and collective choice. The particular genie of new communications technology is released and offering the world many wishes. Those choices, and how some are made and achieved, will likely be increasingly difficult--but unavoidable.

Broadband, American Style

Recent stories about secret/ex parte meetings between FCC officials and major Internet access providers and the FCC Chairman denying and rejecting a reported Google initiative to pay Verizon for faster speeds, highlights the ongoing divide between digital public policy and private commercial interests.

The domestic "digital divide" and the difference between US and other nations' broadband deployment and capacity results from many factors, some of which are particular to American political and economic history and philosophy. The national highway system saw its greatest impetus from the 1950's and concerns about national security in the Cold War.  Federal communications policy is rooted in a broadcast philosophy of localism and private commercial exploitation of the "public's" air.

The cyclical expansion and contraction of federal regulation of cable and broadcast is often fueled by political recognition of cost and competitive concerns that many times lags behind market and technology developments. In an effort to spur growth of broadband, federal philosophy has been to regulate with a very light hand while public concerns over patchwork deployment and access has grown. Add that to current issues of privacy  private decisions over access to speed and even content, and the role of a national broadband policy becomes more crucial--and controversial.

Private investment, risk and return is at the heart of American belief in economic and technological growth. Recognizing that in a global digital/information economy, having access to reliable and consistent broadband service combines issues of perceived equality of opportunity and ability to compete both on an individual and international level.

The ongoing effort to find an American balance among all these competing interests will impact not only corporate strategic plans and means, but in how each of us interacts with each other and the world.

CBS Uses Retrans Consent To Leverage Fees and Cable Distribution

There was a time when CBS seemed to lag behind other broadcast nets both in using retrans consent to leverage increased distribution for owned and/or managed cable channels like CBS College Sports and Smithsonian Channel.

The announced 10 year retrans agreement with Comcast, which includes increased linear, digital and on-demand distribution of Showtime, Smithsonian and CBS College Sports, as well as fees for carriage of the broadcast stations, shows powerful retrans consent has become as both a revenue stream and multichannel distribution lever.

Comcast gains the long-term assurance of locked in rates and increased access to CBS content across platforms from cable and broadcast content. Similarly, CBS is assured of a locked in revenue stream and obtains the ad sales, marketing and promotional value from increased distribution of its content.

With Congress and the FCC apparently satisfied with the current must-carry/retrans regime, the power of restrans consent to create revenue and distribution opportunities is stronger than ever.

Privacy and Plagiarism In The Digital Age

Two articles, one from the WSJ about Microsoft's alleged efforts to have technological end-runs around user privacy interests and another from the NY Times about tracking plagiarism in a digital environment, point to ongoing challenges to traditional legal and social conventions.

The pressures on digital media companies to offer increasingly targeted and data rich consumer/user information to advertisers and marketers is increasingly coming up against public policy concerns over presumed consumer privacy interests.

Sometimes it appears that there is a mixed message from the digital user community where time online increases and social communities multiply like the first life forms on a young Earth. The currently accepted notices and opt-out statements in website privacy statements no longer meet demands for greater user controls over what personal information (even as the definition of "personally identifiable information" evolves) a consumer wants to share. Evidence that major players like Facebook and Microsoft may be willfully ignoring such user interests only increases the tensions and pressure on lawmakers to enact new laws.

As for the almost cosmically infinite range and availability of online  information and ideas, in addition to the challenge of sifting the factual from the fanciful and just plain wrong, we now add the question of who originally sourced or even owns the information.

Most of us engage in some copying and pasting and hopefully we remember to cite sources and links, as well as make an editorial judgment as to the information's validity. But the online history and culture of searching, finding and sharing leads not only to issues of early Napster copyright infringement and student plagiarism, but to a deeper question of how to maintain the integrity of original and independent thought and expression in a digital age. More than rights to control and exploit such original expression, there is a question how we maintain boundaries of self amidst a sea of readily intermingles links, pastes and fevered sharing.

Privacy and pride of authorship are words that express ideas and desires that are central to a society that values--or claims to value--individual rights. At the same time, as social and creative beings the digital environment offer exciting ways to express those fundamental parts of our nature as well.

The challenges of law, commerce and individual choice is to try and find a sometimes uneasy harmony among all these competing interests.