The 463: Inside Tech Policy

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From the good people who wanted Big Government to take over the Internet comes a plan to regulate what videos the world can watch. The European Commission proposed new rules this week on content that can be seen over the television, cable or Internet.

In announcing the rules, EU Information Commissioner Viviane Redding said, "It would be a distortion of competition if we were to just regulate one and not all.” Nowhere in her thinking, apparently, did the idea pop up of decreasing regulation for traditional TV rather than increasing for cable and the Internet.

Now, this isn’t merely the FCC saying what CBS or NBC can show during primetime, this is the Internet. Which leads us to our point:

463 is One/DC Happy Hour

463 Communications, or as Tech Daily recently called it, "The Little Boutique That Could," was founded a year ago and we're celebrating on Wednesday in Washington, DC.

Swing by the 463 Happy Hour at Off the Record in the Hay Adams Hotel (800 16th Street NW) from 5:30 – 7:30 pm ET.  Off the Record is on the ground floor of the hotel, with stairs down from the lobby.

Here's what we are most proud of and thankful for in our first year:

Foremski on Tech Policy

Former Financial Times Silicon Valley journalist Tom Formeski and winner of the "Best Bay Area Blog" says today:

"...more tech companies in Silicon Valley are waking up to the fact that you have to be involved in Washington politics otherwise life gets very difficult very quickly."

Formeski also notes that Motorola CEO Ed Zander has taken over as chairman of the Technology CEO Council and plugs 463.  (Thanks, Tom)

Keeping Score on eHealth Savings

You have to hand it to former Speaker Newt Gingrich.  This year he's been tireless in his push for transforming health care towards a 21st model with electronic health care records and a national health information network (check out his Center for Health Transformation).  And, while he tosses out the headline grabbing slogans like "Paper Kills" like few others, Gingrich is also never afraid to get down and geeky and fight at the level where only wonks dare tread.  He does this because as a former master of Congressional process, Newt knows that this where most of his former colleagues glaze over in boredom -- leaving only those who understand the complexities of the Hill to spur real change.

Case in point, Gingrich has an op-ed in the Washington Times today about an all-time, epically unsexy topic:  How the Congressional Budget Office scores the potential cost of legislation.   Here's how Gingrich frames it:

Offshoring Debate, the Sequel

Way back in early 2004 -- during the height of the Democratic Presidential primary -- we thought we were at the peak of the anti-offshoring rhetoric.  And, we were right.  By the time we got the the general election, offshoring was a minor issue in the grand scale of things.

The trouble is that the rhetoric (and the nightly Lou Dobbs onslaught) kick-started the legislative process and now Congress and, according to InfoWorld, every single U.S. state has at least one pending bill designed to minimize the alleged impact of offshoring.

Check out David Berlind's blog for a perspective on the impact of legislation that he wrote after sitting down with TechNet CEOs at a recent Massachusetts media roundtable. An excerpt:

Doerr on Web 2.0

The catch phrase "Web 2.0" is beginning to make it's way out of Silicon Valley and deeper into the conversation in places like 463's other 'hood, D.C.

During recent TechNet Innovation Summit (the 463 covered it here), TechNet co-founder and uber-VC John Doerr spent a few minutes explaining to Dan Farber of CNET/ZDNet what he thinks Web 2.0 is all about, and why, after 10 years of the Web, we could still be at the beginning of something rather profound.  See the clip here.

Is the Internet Industry Maturing?

That is the underlying question at the fall ICANN meetings that 463 is attending in Vancouver. The Internet policy world has always been a geeky wild, wild west, but there are signs that the Internet infrastructure community – operators, users, businesses – are trying to get  their house in order. And none too soon given the fact that the UN, ITU and some freedom-unfriendly countries (read Syria, Iran, Cuba) would like governments to control the Internet.

A big test for the Internet community is whether it can resolve long-standing differences. ICANN announced two months ago a lawsuit settlement with VeriSign, but it has yet to take final action to end the litigation. There are many special interests who justify their opposition using a myriad of arguments but most center on their fear they will lose the ability to dictate ICANN actions by controlling their budget and policy process.

Of course, it’s often easier just to kick...

eHealth: Saving 49,000 Lives a Year

The research analysts at Gartner just released a list of technology predictions for the coming years.  One jumped out at us: 

"Healthcare has historically underinvested in IT, however, this is changing. Gartner analysts predict that by 2009, healthcare investments in IT will increase by more than 50 percent, which could enable clinicians to reduce the level of preventable deaths by 50 percent by 2013."

According to an Institute of Medicine study, anywhere between 44,000 and 98,000 die each year in U.S. hospitals due to medical errors making them the fifth to eighth leading cause of death in the country.  Additionally, medical errors, cost the U.S. health care system approximately $38 to 50 billion a year.   

Sometimes it's necessary to put a human face to these overwhelming statistics, consider this tragic story...