FCC's Net Neutrality Rules Vacated - Are They Needed?

A Federal appeals court has vacated the FCC's most recent attempt to impose "Net Neutrality" rules, ruling that the FCC overstepped its formal authority in creating the rules in the first case.  While some public interest groups expressed shock and outrage, the ruling was hardly unexpected.  After all, the Federal courts had made essentially the same ruling on the FCC's first set of "Net Neutrality" rules, which the FCC promptly ignored in pushing forth the second set, using essentially the same argument despite some language changes.

So what does this mean?  Well, the special interest group "FreePress" says this could be the end of the Internet as we know it.  But what the end of the current "Net Neutrality" rules (which were largely stayed and unenforced during court proceedings) means is that we're back to the Internet as we know it - the goal of the rules was to change how the Internet worked, after all.  But "FreePress" is right in its call for the FCC to do it right the next time - to actually work within its existing authority, or to seek additional authority from Congress if needed, rather than creating a regulatory framework by administrative fiat (sadly a widespread habit within this administration).

As I've posted before (here and here), I've been skeptical of the need for the currently expressed vision of "Network Neutrality" as preventing ISPs, operators, etc. from discriminating against content (thus sticking it to the "evil" and "greedy" cable and telecomm operators).  Under the historic common carrier regulatory framework for telecommunications, operators could not refuse to offer services or discriminate among users on a content basis.  But the FCC had identified ISPs as information services, which were not subject to common carrier regulation.  While common carrier status was, strictly speaking, a basis of telephone FCC regulation and not computer communications (or information services), I think the common carrier argument is easily extensible since the two networks are essentially converged today.  Redefining ISPs as telecomm common carriers may well take some time and a fair bit of legal wrangling - but would provide the regulatory authority that the FCC needs to prevent unfair discrimination in service.

That may not be enough for some Net Neutrality proponents, who would like to also prevent operators from offering additional services (guaranteed speeds, etc.) at different prices.  That's more problematic in my mind, limiting exploration and diffusion of new services and content - not to mention making it impossible to cross-subsidize services and enable additional infrastructure investment, things that have helped users.

And you also have to worry about the end game of absolute equality - which inevitably can be achieved only at the lowest common denominator.  Do we want a rule that insists that all ISPs and telco operators can only offer one level of service at low prices - at whatever speeds are universally available in the national grid?

So FCC, if you're going to push for Internet regulatory authority and actually try to regulate normal operations, please try to do so correctly.  With proper authority, and with due consideration of that the actual impact of your regulations will be (rather than the political goals you hope to achieve).

Sources -  Verdict: Net Neutrality is Dead... for now,  FreePress.net
Federal appeals court strikes down net neutrality rules, Washington Post

Netflix News: Better signals for all, longform viewing up, Problems for CRTC

Netflix has been experimenting with improved streaming signals for a while, making the 3D and "SuperHD" video streams available to subscribers connecting through ISPs using OpenConnect (which promised higher speeds and no data limits).  Highspeed and no-limit connections are important to improved streaming,  Normal HD signals need 2-3 Mbps bandwidth for live streaming, while SuperHD (1080p instead of 1080i, and less compression) needs 5-7 Mbps, and 3D can require up to 12 Mbps bandwidth.

A couple of cable MSOs, who had previously announced that they'd put delays and/or data limits on Netflix programming (while not doing so for affiliated VOD services), claimed that Netflix was violating the principals of network neutrality (which in fact was what they were doing).  Still, the PR for Netflix providing improvements only to some subscribers wasn't good, so they've now announced that the higher quality streaming options will be available to all US subscribers.  They've also hinted at the possibility of adding 4K (Ultra HD) streams when content is available, likely sometime next year.

While not Netflix-specific, the latest Ooyala Global Video Index is showing continued rapid growth in the use of online video.  Some highlights:

• Mobile and Tablet viewing account for more than 10% of all online video viewing.
• More than 20% of mobile viewing time was for content more than an hour long (i.e movies, live sports)
• Tablet audiences spent more than half of their online viewing time watching premium long-form content (i.e. movies)

In the meantime, Netflix is creating issues for Canadian regulators. A new report from Canadian regulators CRTC reported that in 2012, a third of Canadians watched online TV regularly, and 17% of Canadians had Netflix accounts.  A more recent trade report indicated that 25% of English-speaking Canadians were Netflix subscribers, and 84% of them watched at least one TV show or movie a week on Netflix.  The report also indicated that 20% of Canadian streamed audio content, many from non-local sources.  While great news for Netflix, Pandora, and the like, Canadian broadcasters and networks, who are required to meet minimum requirements for Canadian content, fear that they're at a competitive disadvantage.  And they're protesting to the CRTC, hoping to get the local content rules reduced or waived.
  At a speech to a media industry group recently, CRTC vice-chairman Peter Menzies said that the commission could no longer act as a gatekeeper in a digital world that may no longer have gates.

"(We need to find a way to act) as an enabler of Canadian expression, rather than a protector.  We can't tell Canadians what to watch, nor should we."

Sources -  Netflix expands Super HD and 3D streaming to all of its members,  GigaOm
Ooyala Global Video Index: 2Q 2013, research report
One-third of Canadians watch TV Online, CRTC says,  CBC News
Communications Monitoring Report 2013,  CRTC report.

FCC Votes to End UHF Discount (finally... sort of)

The FCC has had a policy for decades giving owners of UHF broadcast television stations a 50% discount in terms of applying market size to the national ownership caps.  That is, owners of a "UHF" station only counted have of their reach in terms of a broadcast group's total audience reach.  An all-UHF group owner could theoretically have an actual audience reach of 78%, yet still fall within the FCC's national ownership limits of 39%.  This has let a dozen or so of the largest TV station
groups and media conglomerates have an effective reach of 40-65% of US TVHH while technically remaining under the national ownership cap of 39%.  While ending the discount, the FCC will grandfather in those groups, and allow others with station deals in progress to retain the discount (allowing them to continue to bypass the national caps).  So the big guys get to continue violating the official cap limits. That's the "sort of" part of the headline.

The "finally" part is that the policy is a legacy of old technological limits that have long since been bypassed.  The root of the discount is the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, UHF stations in the U.S. were at a serious technical disadvantage to VHF outlets.  UHF signals didn't go as far, and required much more electrical power for transmissions.  In the 50s and early 60s, most TV sets sold in the U.S. didn't even have UHF tuners - and it wasn't until the mid 70s that UHF tuners in TV sold in the U.S. had to meet the same quality standards as VHF tuners.  All of this put UHF stations competing with VHF stations in their market as a serious competitive disadvantage.  In fact, in research I did for my dissertation, I was able to estimate that UHF stations had a "discount" of 50% in terms of the money they were able to get for advertising spots, even with roughly equal audience sizes.
  However, by the late 70s and early 80s, things had turned around for UHF stations - improved standards in TV sets narrowed the viewing difference, and the growth of cable systems removed a lot of the coverage differences.  By the early 80s, my dissertation went on to show, that UHF financial disadvantage in terms of advertising rates (discount) had virtually disappeared.
  Still, the FCC wanted to encourage greater use of UHF frequencies (many remained unclaimed until the FCC started taking back large sections of the UHF TV bandwidth).  When the FCC shifted ownership focus from the number of stations to national reach, it seemed to make some sense to apply a "discount" to UHF to provide an incentive for large owners to start purchasing UHF stations or getting new licenses and putting new UHF stations on the air.  The 50% figure, like many FCC policy numbers, seemed to come out of thin air - although its possible someone in the agency read my dissertation and pulled the number from there (as out of context as that would be).
  However, then came the shift from digital to analog - a shift that required stations to start broadcasting on different channels, and mostly in the UHF band.  But the UHF discount - a discount remember that was supposed to be based on technological disadvantages - was still given, but was based now on the original frequency allocation, not on the actual broadcast channel used.  Initially, an argument can be made that the FCC just didn't want to deal with the additional dislocation of having to refigure ownership reach (or deal with stations pushing for changing their new allocations)  so they continued to apply the discount to the original channel assignment.
   Thus the FCC kept the old policy in place, despite being applied to channel allocations no longer in effect and justified by "technological disadvantages" that had disappeared long ago.
  So it should be no surprise that they finally ditched it - after the industry's been expecting it since 1998, and certainly since 2009 (when the digital transition was completed).  Although, as noted above, with the grandfather clause, they really haven't.  And with the TV national ownership caps under regular review and court challenge, it's not likely to really change anything in terms of concentration in the broadcast TV industry in the long run.

  To recap, the FCC created a policy in 1985 to allegedly compensate for technical disadvantages that had virtually disappeared a decade earlier, kept it in place for two decades despite knowing there was almost no remaining disadvantages, and for about a decade after the shift to digital began.  With the shift to digital, the new digital UHF allocations actually had a slight technical advantage in reach over VHF allocations, and yet the discount continued to be applied.  Moreover, it was not applied based on to the new allocated frequencies, but to the original analog channel allocations instead that were being phased out.  Now, five years after analog phase-out, the FCC is considering dropping the discount.  However, the FCC has decided it will not let owners apply the "UHF discount" in future purchases of stations, but won't require those who have used the discount to bypass ownership limits to actually come into compliance with those caps by selling off stations.

Sounds about right for government policy - create a solution to fix a problem that disappeared long ago, and continue to apply it to channel allocations that are no longer being used.  And even in "dropping" the policy, continue to allow those who took advantage of the policy to continue to evade the intent and letter of ownership caps.

Source -  FCC Proposes to Eliminate UHF Discount,  Broadcasting & Cable

2012's Top Wireless Nightmares

In honor of Halloween, the folks at FierceMobileContent asked top wireless industry executives what nightmare scenarios might happen next year.  Here's some highlights -

• iPad mini cuts into iPad sales
• Google and Android get into a patent spat like the one between Samsung and Apple
• RIM's new OS (Blackberry 10) is supplanted by Windows Phone 8, then abandoned
• FCC and DOJ object to T-Mobile/MetroPCS deal (like they did with last year's AT&T/T-Mobile deal)
• FCC imposes caps that limit spectrum acquisition in support of new high-bandwidth mobile broadband services
• Nobody wants Leap Wireless (provider of Cricket wireless service)
• Mobile handset makers fail to support global TD-LTE standard

Source - 2012 Wireless industry nightmares,  FierceWireless

Broadband for the World - Still Too Costly

A new ITU (International Telecommunications Union) report argues that broadband services remain unaffordable for much of the world.

  Comparing the cost of broadband access to average national income, the study identified 19 countries where broadband cost exceeded average income, and another 30 where the cost of broadband access was greater than half of national average income.  In contrast, the price of broadband access amounted to less than 2% of national average income in 49 countries (mostly in the developed world).

  That's despite continuing and significant drops in the cost of broadband technologies and service.  The ITU reported broadband access prices in most areas fell more than 50% in the last two years, and mobile broadband access costs have fallen 22%.  In classic bureaucratic understatement, the report concludes that "huge discrepancies in affordability persist."

  The report's authors urge governments to further reduce broadband access costs through subsidies, improved competition and improved regulation - in support of the ITU's goal of having basic broadcast access costs fall below 5% of average income in all emerging markets by 2015.  Telecommunication costs have consistently fallen over time, and where allowed, newer technologies will naturally bring costs down as they replace older technologies.

  But the problem isn't just that broadband prices are too high. The real and more serious problem is the other side of the comparison - that national average income levels are too low.  However, that's both too big, and too impolitic, to be the focus of a short-term UN agency goal, so for now the ITU will stress efforts to reduce costs.

Source -  Broadband still unaffordable in many emerging markets, says ITU,  TelecomEngine
ITU Report - The State of Broadband 2012: Achieving Digital Inclusion For All

FCC backs off Internet tax plan

The FCC has now formerly abandoned a proposal from earlier this year to increase funding for broadband Internet access support by placing a tax on that same broadband service.
  The roots of this issue originate with the Universal Service Fund (USF), and a move by the FCC to shift funds from the USF to help subsidize broadband internet access.  Funds for the USF come from a monthly service charge (tax) on landline and wireless phone services, and was initially designed to help provide affordable basic phone service throughout the nation.  Last year, the FCC took $4.5 billion from the USF to subsidize broadband Internet through a new fund, called the Connect America Fund (CAF)  However, with people shifting to email, texting, IP telephony and other online options, contributions to the USF are declining and would not reach the levels the FCC wanted for further support broadband Internet access.

  In April, the FCC proposed a number of ideas for "reforming" the USF contribution system - releasing a Request for Comment document.  (This is the first formal step in the FCC's rulemaking process and doesn't commit the FCC to any specific action).  Among the ideas for additional funding sources were a fee (tax) imposed on broadband Internet service, taxing text messages, and shifting the USF contribution to a flat fee per line, rather than a tax on interstate phone revenues.  The summer saw plenty of public comment.  A few large Internet players (who would likely get some of the added funds) supported the idea; while comments from the public, and from a range of public interest groups grew increasingly negative as news of the proposed new taxes spread.  The public outcry (followed by Congressional "outrage") over a possible fee (tax) on broadband Internet service in particular has now reached the point where the FCC has dropped the idea - as "politically toxic."
  An indication of how negative the public reaction was to a new broadband Internet tax is that no one at the FCC will admit to suggesting the idea - Democrats claiming it was pushed by Republicans, and Republicans suggesting that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's strong support for expanding broadband subsidies and access (and a number of prior public statements) is behind the push for new funding sources.  Playing the blame game, particularly during a heated election cycle, can be fun, but the basic concept of expanding the USF from basic telephone access to Internet access or broadband Internet access has been floating around for decades.  And the FCC, by transferring USF funds to the Connect America Fund last year has at least informally redefined Universal Service to include broadband Internet access.  What the current kerfuffle is about is how and where to raise additional funds to support the expanded definition.

  But the blame game is fun, so here's my take.  The specific proposals most likely came from FCC staff, who were charged with finding ways to increase USF/CAF funding.  It is true that the sole Republican commissioner at the time supported looking for ways to expand the funding base, as did at least one Republican senator.  But so did the Democratic commissioners, and Democratic congress members on the FCC oversight committees.  In addition, FCC chairman Genachowski has long been a very vocal proponent of the development and expansion of broadband Internet access.  So basically everyone thought looking for additional funding sources was a good idea; yet it seems likely that none of these major players made a specific recommendation for a broadband Internet tax.  Under that kind of directive to search for additional funding options, staffers are usually tasked with coming up with as many different proposals as they can, so that policymakers have a range of options to consider.  It often starts with ideas for new fees for related services that aren't already taxed.  Normally these ideas and proposals are pre-screened to remove those proposals that aren't politically, legally, or economically feasible - but in this case they either didn't, or they missed a few.
  However, if you need to lay the blame on either Republicans or Democrats, I'd give the edge to the Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell over Chairman Genachowski (D).  When the public concern over the proposal first surfaced, his initial reaction was to question whether the FCC had the legal authority to impose the tax.  In contrast, spokesmen for Genachowski said that the Chairman was skeptical that the tax on broadband Internet services would work, but floated the various proposals to judge public reaction - and afterwards blamed Republicans.  In addition, these kinds of policy proposals always come through the Chairman's office and with his (or one of his staffers') approval.  So the buck stops at the Chairman's office - they're at least responsible for the decision to include the various digital IP service fees/taxes in the formal request for comments, if not for coming up with the specific proposals themselves or supporting any one specific proposal.

Source -  FCC backpedals from Internet tax, Hillicon Valley blog, the Hill
 

Germany Ponders New Copyright for News

There's a new intellectual property right being considered by the German legislature.  While precise language is still being developed, proponents have talked about new type of copyright as indicating that the use of any published content online, no matter how small the snippet, would require payments to publishers, at least if the use was commercial or generated value associated with the use.  One scenario discussed was online news aggregators who have advertising on their site.  Another would seem to extend to any use where someone along the line obtained some value.

"The example that was given at the hearing was: a bank employee reads his morning newspaper online and sees something about the steel industry, and then advises his clients to invest in certain markets," Mathias Schindler, who helped found Wikimedia Deutschland, told Al Jazeera.
"The publishers argued that the bank consultant was only able to advise his clients because of the journalistic work in the published article," said Schindler, who's been attending recent government hearings into the proposed copyright amendments. "So that means the publisher deserves a fair share of any money made from that scenario. This was the proposal from the start."

The Federation of German Newspaper Publishers understandably applauded the idea -

"In the digital age, such a right is essential to protect the joint efforts of journalists and publishers," it said in a statement, noting that such revenues were "an essential measure for the maintenance of an independent, privately financed news media."

Like other recent proposals to find new revenue streams for traditional media, this is a proposal that looks good at first (at least to the rights holders).  However, if you start considering the downstream implications of the proposal a lot of problems emerge. A researcher at the Bureau for Information Law Expertise in Germany argued that this kind of copyright expansion being pushed by publishers was likely to lead to significant "collateral damage to fundamental freedoms like the freedom of the press, the freedom of expression, the freedom of science and education as well as the communication and publication practices on the Web."  At the very least, it revokes any kind of fair use/fair dealing principle.

  Another problem mentioned by critics is the inherent difficulty in determining and tracking whether information going through multiple intermediaries leads to some eventual commercial value that would trigger the licensing payments, or (using the above example) determining which specific publisher was the source of the information whose consequent use created commercial value.  And following that logic a bit further, if reading a local German newspaper online would be more costly (because of the licensing fees), wouldn't the online user go to a non-local news source in a country that didn't have this enhanced copyright?  Would information sites and sources flee German jurisdiction to avoid the costs and enforcement requirements of such an extension of copyright?  And then there's the enforcement issues related to dealing with all the small blogs, social media, emails, and other digital sources that might post a snippet of news - particularly those located outside Germany.  Turning the simple idea of creators of news and information sharing in any rewards from other people's use of that information into a viable and functional system for identifying, determining the values and appropriate "share," tracking, collecting, and distributing licensing fees equitably could easily become a operational nightmare, if not outright disaster.

  But the real problem will turn out to be that such moves aren't really likely to generate much added revenue in the first place.  Newspaper publishers think: sure, I get paid for people's use of my online content - that's great.  But they tend to forget that newspapers are news aggregators themselves - studies show that only 5-10% of a newspaper's news content is produced entirely in-house (where they would be the sole owner of copyright).  So if these kind of copyright extensions are enacted, the newspapers might well be receiving licensing fees for 10% of their content, but would be required to pay licensing fees for the remaining 90% of their total output.  On average, and in the long run, these new licensing schemes are likely to cost news organizations dearly, rather than be their salvation.

Source -  Germany Wants To Charge Google For News Snippets,  Information Week

UK will miss Broadband target dates

The UK agency overseeing their project to provide broadband access to 90% of homes by 2015 recently reported that the project is behind schedule, and is unlikely to meet that time goal.
  Under the Broadband Delivery UK program, incumbent telco BT will spend some 2.5 billion pounds to expand broadband access in commercially viable areas, while the British Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was allocated 530 million pounds to subsidize broadband infrastructure in more rural areas.  Despite a target of completing procurement deals by the end of this year, the DCMS has acknowledge that about two-thirds of local authorities covered by the policy have yet to start the procurement process.  Legal challenges to the procurement process have delayed implementation; in addition, the costs involved in having to submit separate bids for each contract (rather than allowing bidders to combine coverage areas under a single bid), have led many potential bidders to drop out and leaving BT as the default contractor in many cases.
  As a result, expansion in rural areas has already fallen seriously behind schedule, with indications that many in those areas will end up having broadband access with speeds less than a tenth that of urban customers.

Source  -  UK to miss 2015 target for high-speed broadband,  telecoms.com

Analyst suggests a la carte pricing for cable disastrous

With the FCC and the DOJ looking into cable pricing policies - with a focus on why consumers are not given the option to pay only for the channels they want (a la carte pricing) - analysts are pondering what the impact of a la carte pricing would be on the cable and other multichannel video programming services (MVPS).
  One, Laura Martin, an analyst with Needham & Co., suggests that the impact of an imposed a la carte pricing strategy could be a disaster for cable and consumers both.  Using the FCC's own numbers, she calculates that with a la carte pricing, the cable industry would lose 75% of its advertising revenues and 15-20% of its subscription revenues.  In addition, going to a direct consumer purchase model will cost consumers and additional $5 billion annually, as with the loss of advertising value, channels and programmers would need to increase their prices to consumers. Finally, she estimates that only 5-10 hit channels would be profitable enough on a stand-alone basis to survive unbundling (another 125 channels examined would likely become uneconomic to produce).  The long-term impact of unbundling could put more than a million jobs in the cable, networks, and TV production companies at risk.
  Information economists have long found that the bundling of information goods can have substantial benefits to consumers and to society.  Bundling tends to reduce price, while giving consumers access to a wider range of information sources.  With bundling, consumers also benefit from being exposed to valuable information and content that they might not have specifically been looking for.  Bundling also encourages the development of new channels, promoting diversity.  That added diversity, and the ability to access sources as needed (particularly in unanticipated circumstances) benefits society generally, as well as the consumer.  Forcing unbundling, particularly if the government doesn't also allow for those who wish to take advantage of the bundled services, would be harmful for society, most people, and a broad swath of media industries and firms.  If the FCC and DOJ are truly acting in the public interest, they need to test the impact of unbundling and the offer of a la carte pricing before imposing it on all.  I suspect that if they did so, they'd quickly find the economic, social, and political costs would overwhelm any putative value of the move.

Source -  Federal intervention could slam TV biz, analyst warns,  Variety

Will the Internet remain free?

There have been moves by various UN-related agencies to try to assume regulatory authority over the Internet for a decade or more.  In the past, the US and saner countries managed to keep these largely at the discussion level, aided by the fact that the U.S. funded key infrastructure components.
  A while back, UNESCO took a swing, hosting a number of Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meetings, culminating in a series of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) meetings.  The primary impact of most of these was to raise the question of whether the US should be allowed to unilaterally "run" the Internet.  These arguments contributed to the formation of an independent oversight authority (ICANN), who has used the need for a new addressing system (the original one was running out of viable addresses as net usage exploded) to establish new rules and options for domain name and IP addresses to create new operational nexuses outside of the U.S., and thus outside of U.S. control.  And the U.S. didn't help it's case when, after years of pledging that yes, while technically the U.S. could legally exert control - it never would - it suddenly started interfering in a very big and public way.  Under the premise of Intellectual Property Rights enforcement, it started seizing the websites of alleged violators, (as well as the site's content, if hosted on a US server), most of whom were non-US operations, simply because the DNS system was located in the U.S.

  In one of the most publicized cases, the U.S. seized the MegaUpload site and all of its content, on the argument that a few users might be engaged in illegal file-sharing.  To date, legal users of the remote hosting service have been unable to regain access to their own files, the hosting site has asked for court permission to delete all the files, and the government has floated the idea of charging legal users to re-acquire their own files, but only after proving in Court that all files in their area were legal copies.  The U.S. has gone from hand-off sponsor of an open Internet, to egregious Internet Bully(see earlier post)- giving support for shifting Internet governance elsewhere.
  Now, a more serious attempt to wrest control of the Internet is surfacing at another UN-related agency, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).  The ITU has a World Conference coming up in December, and sources indicate that there forces seeking to use existing telecommunication regulations to place control of the Internet within the ITU.  A leaked copy of the planning document used by governments to prepare for the meeting "show that many ITU member states want to use international agreements to regulate the Internet by crowding out bottom-up institutions, imposing charges for international communication, and controlling the content that consumers can access online," according to one scholar whose website is hosting a copy of the document.

The broadest proposal in the draft materials is an initiative by China to give countries authority over "the information and communication infrastructure within their state" and require that online companies "operating in their territory" use the Internet "in a rational way"—in short, to legitimize full government control. The Internet Society, which represents the engineers around the world who keep the Internet functioning, says this proposal "would require member states to take on a very active and inappropriate role in patrolling" the Internet.
Several proposals would give the U.N. power to regulate online content for the first time, under the guise of protecting against computer malware or spam. Russia and some Arab countries want to be able to inspect private communications such as email. Russia and Iran propose new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic, as with international phone calls. That would result in new fees to local governments and less access to traffic from U.S. "originating" companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple. A similar idea has the support of European telecommunications companies, even though the Internet's global packet switching makes national tolls an anachronistic idea.

  Perhaps also unsurprising, but disappointing, is the weak responses and reactions to these restrictive proposals by the Obama administration, given its own authoritarian approach to violating the underlying tenets of an open Internet when it conflicts with its own interests.  Congress, at least, seems to be taking the issue seriously, with full bipartisan agreement that a government (or ITU) top-down approach would be a threat to the developing Internet Economy and a mechanism for regimes to restrict content they disliked.  At one of the hearings addressing the issue, Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and spokesman for Google, stated that ITU-focused governance of the Internet would be "potentially disastrous."

  Meanwhile, apologists at the NY Times want to frame this as a debate over "mere money," and falsely state that there are no proposals to change how the current oversight group (ICANN) operates (he apparently didn't get to the proposal for replacing ICANN, or doesn't consider creating a new authority a "change").  Rather, he takes at face value a proclamation that it's not about "internet governance", because that phrase doesn't appear, even though every proposal in the document would clearly and directly affect how the Internet would be regulated and governed.
  The NYTimes argument might have been better, if they'd bothered to check with any of the myriad public interest groups concerned about the openness and freedom of speech the Internet provides. Those folks, and those who know the technology, are pretty concerned about some of the specific proposals (including the ones "merely about money") and the potential disruption of internet operations and services, as well as being concerned with the significant threat of censorship of "inappropriate" information from both internal and external sources.  Better yet, they could consider what might happen if a regime unfriendly to the NY Times took issue with some of their online content, and used the pretext of "simple internet regulation" to seize their site, servers, and all of the information they contained.

   On the positive side, international bodies like the IGF, WSIS, and ITU tend to work slowly, seeking consensus, so perhaps the threat isn't imminent.  Still, there are some very big players behind many of the proposals, and those countries are actively seeking sufficient support to achieve their goals.  While perhaps not immanent, that doesn't mean the threat of achieving their goal of greater regulatory oversight over content and communications isn't real - or that there aren't serious potential consequences.  I'd be less worried if this administration took a more forceful approach in opposition to at least the more consequential proposals, and wasn't actively trying to frame the issue of international regulation of the internet as being merely about "money" or combating internet fraud or piracy.  It'd be nice if they also used words like "openness", "free speech", or privacy.  After all, that's what the U.S. is supposed to stand for.

Sources  -  Crovitz: The U.N.'s Internet Power Grab, Wall Street Journal
Congress United Against ITU-Centric Net Governance, Multichannel News
Planning document at WCITLeaks.orghttp://wcitleaks.org/ site (other drafts and responses are also available)
Attempted debunking by the NY Times
Megaupload Files Remain in Limbo, Online Media Daily

Television's Digital Future (online)

  Television has already undergone one digital revolution - the shift to digital transmission systems for both terrestrial and satellite broadcasting.  It's facing another in the Internet and online video distribution.
  When the Senate held hearings of the future of television in April, however, the focus was on traditional regulation of traditional TV media (broadcasting, cable, satellite).  One commenter on GigaOm, Stacey Higginbotham, concluded that the Senate hearing had it all wrong -

 The future of TV isn’t to be found in deregulation — it’s on the Internet. We just have to let it happen. And to do that, Congress needs to look at how broadband providers control access to content, through caps, specialized offerings and deals.

The Internet has become a platform for services and TV is just one of those services. We need to start thinking about TV in terms of who can deliver it at a transport layer (the pipes), how it gets delivered (via a pay TV subscription, YouTube channels, Netflix subscriptions) and where the value is and who gets to charge for that. 

  That revolution is likely to have even greater impact on the television industry, as it exponentially expands the television programming market.  While there's been expansion in regular TV programming access via streaming and "TV Everywhere" offerings, the greatest expansion has been in the flourishing of legal (and illegal) movies and TV program access, in User Generated Content (UGC) available through YouTube and other hosting services, and other online videos marketed directly to users.

 Sandvine, an ISP equipment provider, recently released a report of mobile Internet traffic as of March, 2012.  Among its findings was that the volume of Internet traffic generated by Real-Time Entertainment (streamed audio and video entertainment) increased 55% in North America over the previous six months.  The growth was global (40% gains in Latin America and Europe, 39% in Asia-Pacific).
YouTube, on its own, generated 27% of mobile traffic in North America, and audio streaming service Pandora contributed 6% of all North American mobile traffic.

  Looking at it another way, Sandvine found that smartphones and tablets accounted for 9% of all fixed access network traffic in North America, including 16% of Real Time Entertainment, 9% of Netflix traffic, and 28% of all YouTube traffic.
  Further, improved mobile network capacity, mobile device capabilities and screen resolutions, higher resolution content and the availability of longer duration content (and live streaming), means even greater growth in traffic, as data files get larger.  In other words, online video traffic expands to match capacity - when capacity is scarce, users downscale video quality (from HD to SD), but when capacity is there, users return to the higher-quality streams and sources.
 
 A very different indicator of the shift to online can be seen in the efforts of Nielsen and other audience measurement firms in redefining many of their measures to include viewing through the Internet.  In comments to the Audience Research Foundation's ;annual Audience Measurement Conference, Nielsen officials indicated that they're considering redefining the concept of the "TV Home" - the foundation of all their measures.  What has prompted this is a unreleased study showing that the percentage of time spent watching video content on a traditional TV set has fallen to 93.7% from 99.4%.  The coming Cross-Platform Report suggests that the non-traditional viewing is about evenly split between computers online and mobile devices.  A related study found that up to 25% of all media consumption takes place while people are working, and that much of that media usage isn't currently being measured.  Some 15% of American workers report watching live TV while doing their jobs.  Nielsen is working at developing better measures for such viewing, and revising current definitions and measures to include alternative viewing options and behaviors.

Add in multiscreen viewing, social TV, "TV Everywhere", and a variety of new services looking to put local broadcasts online, and you can clearly see the shifting dimensions of TV media markets, use, and audience behaviors.  The trend is towards providing TV audiences with greater choices of video content, delivery mechanism, and viewing options.  The industry is, at least, recognizing this, and looking for better ways to deal with the changing situation, or at a minimum, being able to track changes.  But one thing seems clear, the future of TV is not likely to be decided by minor regulatory tweaks to existing TV industry models and markets.  If policy is to maximize both the public and private value of TV, it also needs to raise its head out of the sand and look at the real emerging issues, not the detritus of claimed "market failures" in traditional media models.

 Sources -  The future of TV isn't TV, it's broadband,  GigaOm

Want to see how close TV and broadband are? Check out this chart,  GigaOm

TV Begins Eroding As Primary Video Device: Forcing Redefinitions of 'Households,' Work Vs. Leisure Time, MediaDailyNews