You are here July 2009
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2009-07-10 17:46
Additional new evidence continues to spotlight the Open Internet's growing security problem, and underscore why President Obama effectively declared the lack of cybersecurity as the Internet's biggest problem in his cybersecurity address May 29th.
- The growing catalogue of evidence from mainstream and official sources is getting harder and harder to ignore.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2009-07-14 16:39
At core, Congress has asked the FCC to recommend to Congress HOW "to ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability." Arguably the FCC's main "fork-in-the-road" decision in developing its National Broadband Plan is whether to recommend to Congress to:
- Re-affirm the current competition vision/law/precedent for broadband policy and build upon the strong foundation and momentum of facilities-based competition in the marketplace? or
- Design the more Government-centered broadband ecosystem policy recommended most prominently by FreePress/Open Internet Coalition members, and re-build the common carrier regulation regime of the twentieth century?
What engine of choice will the FCC recommend to Congress:
- Competitive forces and private investment? or
- Government forces and taxpayer money?
In other words, will the FCC:
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2009-07-16 12:08
Pat Brogan of USTelecom and Evan Leo of Kellog Huber have produced an outstanding new report on special access that is the single best and most up-to-date survey and analysis of publicly available information on the status of competition in the special access market.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2009-07-16 22:58
"It’s not our fault that Google has a ridiculously easy way to get access to accounts via their password recovery question" said Michael Arrington of TechCrunch in a post defending his publishing of secret Twitter corporate information that was stolen from Twitter by "Hacker Croll" via Google's password system. See New York Times story.
Only last week I wrote a post "Why Security is Google's Achille's Heel."
My overall security thesis is simple.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Sun, 2009-07-19 17:57
Big kudos to George Ford and Larry Spiwak of the Phoenix Center for their innovative breakthrough in devising a rigorous "Broadband Adoption Index" to replace current highly-deficient international broadband comparison methods.
- Last Wednesday, I attended the presentation of their paper before a largely government audience in Washington and came away very impressed with their clarity of thought and the vastly greater utility of their approach over existing comparative mechanisms.
First, George Ford drove home the point that the much-touted OECD broadband penetration ranking was fatally flawed, in that even if the U.S. reached perfect 100% penetration the U.S. could remain in about 15th place.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Sun, 2009-07-19 20:14
Amazon's decision to seize e-copies of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty Four" and "Animal Farm" from Kindle users after Amazon had sold and already delivered the e-books to customers -- drips with irony.
- For those who have missed the widespread uproar over Amazon's actions see NYTimes or Google "Amazon 1984."
Irony #1: Fans of George Orwell's political satire know that Animal Farm is all about animals who originally profess equality for all the farm animals, but once in power become corrupt and establish rules that make those in power much more equal than others.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2009-07-20 11:04
Kudos to Steve Pociask of the American Consumer Institute for his research reminding regulators that American consumers enjoy the most competitive, useful, and innovative wireless market in the world.
In reviewing the stats that matter most, the U.S. is far ahead of the rest of the world.
- Americans use 600 more wireless minutes a month than the average OECD country, which is 2-5 times more usage to put it in perspective.
- Americans also pay 10 cents per minute less than the average European does.
We constantly hear from anti-competition forces that competition doesn't work.
- The evidence that they are dead wrong is overwhelming.
- Competition works!
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2009-07-20 12:03
Jonathan Zittrain's NYTimes Op-ed today, "Lost in the Clouds" ironically captured three of my big concerns/themes about the Internet and its natural outgrowth -- cloud computing.
- I recommend this op-ed because it pulls together a whole host of converging Internet issues that others generally treat separately.
- The problem with writing about these issues separately is that much of the richness of how these inter-related issues interact -- is lost.
Zittrain: "The cloud, however, comes with real dangers."
- I agree. That has been much of the point of my 13 part series since the first of the year:
- "The Open Internet's Growing Security Problem"
Zittrain: "Worse, data stored online has less privacy protection both in practice and under the law."
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2009-07-21 10:23
FCC Broadband Coordinator Blair Levin described the crux of the National Broadband Plan in testifying before the Commission 7-02 as "identifying where there are currently 'demonstrable public interest harms.'" That central task is essentially defining the problem(s) and is necessary to complete the last task of the plan: "identifying ways to lessen those public interest harms," or recommending solutions. Defining the problem largely defines the range of recommended solutions.
- The plural use of "harms" here suggests that the Plan could end up "identifying" more problems than the obvious core problem prompting the Plan -- that not "all people of the United States have access to broadband capability."
Levin's choice of a classic organizational structure, background-problem-solution, is a wise, useful, and simplifying approach for such an exceedingly complex endeavor.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2009-07-21 20:53
Yahoo lost 11% of its search revenue share to Google during the first six months of 2009 versus the last six months of 2008, per Yahoo's and Google's 2Q09 earnings reports.
- This time period comparison was selected because it represents most of the time period since DOJ blocked the Google-Yahoo ad partnership 11-05-08, where the DOJ concluded that Google and Yahoo had combined market shares of 90% and 95% in the relevant antitrust markets of search advertising and search advertising syndication.
It is relevant, interesting, and instructive to analyze what has happened since the DOJ's 11-05-09 action, and since the economic downturn, given that the DOJ concluded Google and Yahoo commanded 90% and 95% market shares at that time.
This relative revenue share transfer analysis is straight-forward.
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