The 463: Inside Tech Policy

Kids These Days and Their Darn Internet

Working with the Congressional Internet Caucus, 463 has helped pull together another fun, yet, hopefully insightful, Internet perception poll with Zogby International and is releasing the results tomorrow.

You remember that when we did our last Internet related poll with Zogby in December, we found that more than 80% viewed the average 12-year-old as smarter than their Congress person on the Internet.  We also learned that there is great skepticism that the next Bill Gates will come from America.

This poll finds that 18-24-year olds feel remarkably different about the Internet and its implication than age groups older than them.   For example:

Deborah Orin-Eilbeck (1947-2007)

For someone who spent the last three decades covering politics and was a fixture in Washington, Deborah Orin-Eilbeck was an enigma to many. Deborah, who died on Jan. 28 after a battle with cancer, was viewed as pugnacious and zealous. She was so known for her battles with the Clinton Administration that she was the inspiration for a Clinton-hating reporter in Joel Klein’s quasi-fictional Primary Colors.

Deborah had her point of view, for sure, but really she had no time for phonies. And no time for the self-absorbed Baby Boomer mentality that sometimes personified the Clinton Administration. You see, Deborah was one of them. She was a Baby Boomer, but rejected what she saw as the generation’s shallow faults. And she was as smart as them – she’d graduated from Harvard with honors alongside many of the Clinton folks. She could go toe to toe with them intellectually; that intimidated a lot of smart white guys.

But there was another Deborah...

Hurly on Copyright & Compensation in Davos

From Jeff Jarvis, who made the trip to Davos so you don't have to.

(We actually miss the security checks and badge envy right now, but there's always next year).

Tech Policy's Power Couple

How to tell when tech policy has made the big time? 

A Bush Administration competitiveness initiative?  Whatever.

Congressional hearings on social networking?  Yawn.

Nope.  It's all about our version of a James Carville/Mary Matalin relationship first publicly appearing on Page Six of the New York Post....

January 26, 2007 -- SEN. CHUCK Schumer's chief of staff, David Hantman, seems condemned to battle his Washington, D.C., girlfriend for eternity. Hantman, who helped shape Schumer's plans to rough up President Bush's Supreme Court nominees, is bolting to lobby for Yahoo!, The Post's Geoff Earle reports. Problem is, his girlfriend, stylish brunette Jamie Brown, is a lobbyist for Yahoo!'s Internet archrival, Google. Before that, she was a White House aide whose job was to quash the Hantman-styled Democratic objections to Bush's court nominees. "We've sort of gotten used to it," cracked Hantman.

Hantman will be taking the lead Yahoo! DC role.  After nearly eight years in the post, John Scheibel left Yahoo! to teach last May.  Hantman will be joining an experienced team that includes Leslie Dunlap and Jamie Hedlund...

Potomac Flack to Join Google DC Team

Adam Kovacevich, author of the DC PR blog Potomac Flacks and former Dittus Assistant VP, must have got good grades in college. He will be joining Google as their DC spokesperson next week. Adam's fancy suits belie the fact that he is a tech policy geek at heart. He should do well at Google.

Adam will be working with former Clinton speechwriter Bob Boorstin, who joined the company last May, and the rest of the Googley crew pictured below for a "Google in DC" piece that ran yesterday in The Politico. For those scoring at home, you can add this one to the list of similar stories that we compiled last September.

The Pole Dance That Caused an Indian Uproar

Recently, an Indian national living in New York posted a video on YouTube of himself doing a (rather unfunny) skit where he dressed-up like Gandhi and did a strip-tease involving a poll.   (The video is still up, the the comedian/clown/yoga instructor has posted an explanation).

There was much shock and anger in India and even some small riots.  Gandhi's great grandson weighed in...

"Some action must be taken on this. The Father of the Nation is being shown disrespect here. Gautam's act is reprehensible, crude and offensive. If the government doesn't take action against the website YouTube, it will just prove its incompetence. Freedom of expression should be accompanied with responsibility."

India West noted yesterday that the Economic Times has reported:

India's Department of Information Technology has asked YouTube to pull out the offensive clips and is also trying to rope in the Indian embassy in Washington to initiate action.

"So far, however, the government's requests have cut little ice with YouTube, which is owned by Google," the paper wrote. "Despite the fact that about 36 hours have elapsed since the DIT fired the salvo at YouTube, the objectionable clips are running openly on the site and, in fact, attracting more eyeballs. The controversial pole dance clip has now attracted 9,600 page views and the number is increasing as we write."

To give you a sense of how big of a deal this is, to some, in India.  The president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India is so fed up that he is calling for regulation and/or government action to deal with objectionable content.  In an op-ed that appeared yesterday on the Financial Express site, he says...

There's iMusic and Then There is Other Music

We're on record saying that we think the iTunes walled garden stands as much chance as standing as CompuServe's or Berlin's, but we don't think it will get busted down anytime soon.

There are cracks caused by the legal issues that we covered when the phone currently-but-probably-not-inevitably-known-as-the iPhone came out.  And, here, there is an update from Ars Technica today...

Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon told the Associated Press that France's consumer lobby group, UFC-Que Choisir, and Germany's Ferbraucherzentralen are now part of the European effort to push Apple into an open DRM system, with more countries considering joining the group.

Way more interesting to me is real competition that offers better content at a higher bit-rate in MP3 format.  Enter Other Music.

if you aren't an indie rock geek, you might know that Other Music is a revered Manhattan record store that has a highly selective and quality offering.  Now, according to Wired News, Other Music will soon be offering MP3s to compete with iTunes and the more indie-friendly (yet subscription) eMusic.  The model according to Other Music co-owner Josh Madell:

We will be selling high-quality files without DRM copy protection (our music is encoded at 320 Kbps rather than 192, the iTunes model, so the sound will be much better). All our pricing is not set yet, but we will definitely have to be a little more expensive than iTunes -- probably $10.99 per album rather than $9.99. I hope we can more than make up for the price with our selection, service, knowledge, features and, of course, the quality files. As for the label deals, this business works on percentages; you split revenue with the label for sales, and typically labels make 65 to 70 percent of the retail price.

The store will be here.  Long tails make cracks, too.

PornoTube & Politicians

What's one of the fastest growing online video sites?

Sure, YouTube has vaulted itself into becoming the fifth-most popular site on the Web according to Alexa's traffic rankings.

But, YouTube has a dirty cousin who likes girls gone wild, gay sex, and fetishes of all stripes.  This bad boy is named PornoTube, and he's sprung into the top-200 most visited sites on the Internet.

Just to name two examples, consider how PornoTube is doing against Sony's owned online video site, Grouper, and the venerable Washington Post....

The tech policy implications should be obvious.  If they're not, here's blurb from the DailyReel that looks at the recent explosion of easily accessible online video porn on the Web ....

The SWAT Team vs. Copyright Reform Mixtape

 
Wonder if the copyright system is flawed?  Watch this eye-opening, depressing video above and wonder no longer.  What's worse is that the SWAT team might be in the legal right.

Why is DJ Drama's RIAA-led arrest a big deal?  From a Friday Boston Herald piece...

When it comes to developing street buzz, hip-hop artists don’t look to record companies for help. Instead, they turn to DJs such as Atlanta’s DJ Drama, whose “Gangsta Grillz” mixtape series has been crucial to the success of rappers such as Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne and T.I.

Mixtapes usually feature unreleased and often unlicensed material coveted by fans. But since the mixtapes provide free guerrilla marketing, record executives generally ignore copyright infringement issues associated with them. But the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) isn’t turning a blind eye....  Mixtapes - which despite their name are actually CD compilations - have served as the most powerful underground marketing tool for major record companies for more than a decade.

The RIAA, in response, told the New York Times...

Brad A. Buckles, executive vice president for anti-piracy at the Recording Industry Association of America, said, "A sound recording is either copyrighted or it's not."

Then Buckles said this to Reuters/Billboard...

PFF's Tech Policy Agenda

   
The Progress & Freedom Foundation announced its 10-point tech policy plan for the 110th Congress on Friday.  The 10...

1 - Renew fundamental reforms of communications regulations.
2 - Leave network neutrality concerns to the market and antitrust.
3 - Leave content business models and fair use to the market.
4 - When addressing patents, take a first-principles approach to property and innovation.
5 - Enact meaningful reform of archaic media ownerships laws and regulations that hinder media marketplace experimentation.
6- Pursue greater First Amendment parity among modern media providers by leveling the playing field in the direction of greater freedom for all operators / platforms.
7 - Subject data security and privacy proposals to careful benefit-cost analysis, including full examination of consumer benefits from services and technologies affected by these proposals.
8 - Promote pro-competitive, non-regulatory internet governance.
9 - Avoid open-ended, intrusive data retention mandates.
10 - Promote more efficient taxation of telecom services and Internet sales.

The full study with further descriptions of the positions can be downloaded here.  After the jump are two of the full recommendations....