Mediageek Radioshow Notes for April 16, 2009

On this week’s show we led with Streetwise‘s financial troubles, listening to an excerpt of the Feb. 5 interview with Production and Marketing Director Ben Cook and Editor-in-Chief Suzanne Haney. Streetwise is receiving only about $60,000 of the typical $120,000 it gets in foundation support. We made note of a recent New York Times article that reported on other street newspapers doing comparatively well in this rotten economy.

Most of the rest of the show was dedicated to Time-Warner Cable announcement today (April 16) that it was going to hold off on “testing” bandwidth caps in Austin, San Antonio, Rochester, NY and Greensboro, NC. There’s lots of good reporting on the issue over at Ars Technica.

The podcast will be available this weekend.

Inauguration Shows that the Internet Still Isn’t Broadcast

Last Tuesday’s presidential inauguration was one of those moments where I think all business except for vital functions like transit and public safety stopped all over the country as people tuned in to watch Obama’s swearing in. Another thing that stopped for a lot of people was the internet. Arguably this was one of the biggest, if not the biggest live streaming video events in the history of the event. It was also one of biggest tests for streaming video over the internet, and the results were decidedly mixed.

I was at work on Tuesday, where one of my responsibilities is providing instructional media support. As soon as I got in that morning I started getting requests from people all over our building to set them up to watch the inauguration. Now, the building I work in is poured concrete monstrosity that acts like a Faraday cage, successfully blocking reception of most broadcast signals. On top of that, there’s no cable TV in building. So I advised anyone who asked about getting a TV that they should consider viewing a live stream. Then I went to go set up a live stream in a large conference room with a video projector. At that moment I realized that maybe the live stream wasn’t going to work out so well, as it took many different attempts on several different sites before we could get anything to stream for more than a few seconds. That was around 30 minutes before the inauguration was set to begin.

When I returned to my office all attempts to get a stream there–whether from CNN, Ustream or even the CBC–resulted in failure. A few minutes after the ceremony began I received an email from our central IT network department, advising us that our multi-gigabit campus network had ground to a halt due to people watching the inauguration online. Looking at Twitter and the CNN live Facebook stream I saw that we were not alone, as folks all over the internet were finding it hard to get a reliable stream.

In the end it looks like about 7 million people were able to get live streams of the inauguration, according to Dan Rayburn whose estimates are based on talking to actual content distribution networks. By any standard that’s an impressive simultaneous viewership for the internet. But it’s less impressive compared to broadcast television, where 37.8 million people watched the inauguration.

More illustrative of the difference is the number of people who were denied the ability to watch the inauguration due to capacity limits. That is, another 37 million people could have tuned in to the inauguration on broadcast, cable or satellite TV while still leaving capacity for 37 million more. Whereas on the internet 7 million appears to be the upper limit — past that nobody else could watch.
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FCC Chair Choice Sparks Hope for Net Neutrality, Other Issues Less Clear

Last month Matthew Lasar dug up info on this mysterious Julius Genachowski whose name starting circulating as a candidate for Obama’s FCC Chairman. Late Monday night the news broke that Genachowski is slated to be Obama’s nominee for the job. As Matthew noted in his Ars Technica article yesterday, the public interest community is responding positively to this news, primarily based upon Genachowski’s work on Obama’s “Technology and Innovation” plan. Given that candidate Obama was specific in his support for Network Neutrality, the hope inspired by Genchowski’s likely nomination appears to be more well founded than any other news on the Net Neutrality front in the last year.

However, much is still unknown about Genachowski’s views on media issues, like ownership concentration and indecency enforcement. He was an assistant to Clinton-appointed FCC Chairman Reed Hundt in the 1990s, and we might learn a little bit about Genachowski by looking at his former boss’ tenure at the Commission. With regard to media ownership, Hundt opposed lifting the nationwide radio ownership cap. The lifting of the cap–which brought on the Clear Channel era–happened with the passing of the Telecomm Act of 1996 by Congress, signed by President Clinton, and was not decided by the Hundt FCC. Hundt was also a proponent of children’s programming requirements, while also pushing for indecency fines against the likes of Howard Stern.

We’re sure to learn more about Genachowski’s views on a whole panoply of communication issues when he goes up for confirmation by the Senate. Here’s hoping that his apparently progressive outlook on Net Neutrality is combined with the willingness to put the brakes on the Bush FCC’s full-speed gallop on loosening media ownership limits. I must admit that ensuring a free and open internet, along with enacting policies to stimulate high-speed broadband build-out really should be the top priority for media and telecomm, above all.

With the lessons learned from the 1996 Telecomm Act and the ill-considered experiment of taking away common carrier status from internet (therefore creating the need for Net Neutrality) there exists a blueprint for creating a much more vibrant, diverse and free media ecology.

Martin’s Straw House of Network Neutrality

After listening to Chairman Martin’s testimony [PDF / webcast] to the Senate Commerce Committee today, along much of his Q&A with members of the committee, I can’t help but think that Martin is really walking a tightrope. On the one hand, he asserts quite confidently that the Commission has the legal right to enforce its Internet Policy Statement [PDF], while acknowledging that Comcast and other ISPs dispute that ability. On the other hand, he also refuses to recognize the rather obvious utility of Congress enshrining these principles as law so that the FCC’s ability to protect internet freedom is no longer so easily subject to question.

The problem with the Commission’s Internet Policy Statement is that it is, fundamentally, just a statement. It represents the Commission’s interpretation of what it is supposed to do, but does not necessarily represent actual regulation or law. Per the statement itself, the FCC says:

In this Policy Statement, the Commission offers guidance and insight into its approach to the
Internet and broadband that is consistent with these Congressional directives.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but “guidance and insight” do not law nor regulation make.

And so it is as if Martin insists on building a straw house of network neutrality, even as prominent congresspeople offer to give him bricks. Of course, I doubt many (if any) congresspeople will be deterred from supporting Net Neutrality legislation simply because Martin refuses to ask for it. But it provides good cover for those who want to duck under it.

It would be one thing if Martin were ignoring Comcast’s blocking, or defending Comcast’s “network management” practices. Instead, he expresses forthright criticism of Comcast, especially the fact that it hid the fact of its practice. In fact, especially listening to today’s testimony, it appears that for Martin the hiding is almost the greater sin than the blocking itself.

That sounds like Martin acknowledging market failure–where consumers don’t have the proper information to make informed broadband choices–but yet he remains still faithful in so-called market solutions in lieu of actual law or regulation with teeth.

But honestly, I still can’t quite figure out where he’s coming from. He’s definitely sounds more net neutrality friendly than ever before — and likely more friendly than either the big ISPs or congressional Republicans would like. But he won’t cross that line and make any guarantees. Remember, this is the same chairman who oversaw the elimination of common carriage requirements on the Internet, sparking the whole need for network neutrality law and regulation in the first place. Is he truly acting on principle or is he just avoiding a strong position, biding his time until the election when he might have the opportunity to bail and get a cushy industry job?

Larry Lessig Explains Network Neutrality, now with slides

Stanford law Prof. Larry Lessig apparently recorded his own testimony at the FCC hearing last week, and sync’d it up with his PowerPoint/Keynote slides into a nice little video that he’s posted to his blog.

I tuned in too late to catch his presentation last Thursday, and the hearing wasn’t even over by the time I needed to have last week’s radioshow finished, so I unfortunately wasn’t able to include any of it in last week’s show. I’m glad that I went back to hear/watch it because it’s a very succinct, yet penetrating summary of the issues at hand. I don’t have time to play the entire thing on this week’s show, but I will be sure to include an excerpt.

You can watch all 25 minutes–with not a minute wasted–after the jump.

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Senate Comm Hearing on Net Neutrality Right Now

I didn’t even know it was happening, until I saw Free Press’ tweets this morning. They’re live-twittering it right now if you want to follow along:

Martin: Failure to disclose network management practices or tolls would be unreasonable. Actual practice of discrimination may or may not be

Dorgan is questioning Martin, trying to make a point that nondiscrimination regulation wouldn’t be heavy-handed, intensive or onerous. 7 minutes ago from web

Martin is recapping testimony FCC has received re:Comcast from previous hearings. He paints a pretty negative picture of Comcast’s practices 11 minutes ago from web

Martin concerned with ISP disclosure/transparency, and making sure consumer expectations are appropriate to the service purchased… 14 minutes ago from web

First witness is FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, fresh off the Stanford hearing, saying FCC has responsibility and authority to address problems. 16 minutes ago from web

Stevens: It’s “unfortunate” that Net Neutrality debate has become drawn out along political lines. 19 minutes ago from web

Sen. Ted “tubes” Stevens: Ne Neutrality is a solution “in search of justification” 20 minutes ago from web

For those more A/V inclined, there’s a live stream, too.

Free Press Live Blogging from Stanford FCC Hearing

Free Press is keeping a live blog of the FCC Hearing on Net Neutrality at Stanford University. Looks like at least 300 people have showed up to be in the audience so far.

I got too hung up with work to tune in right at 2 PM and the FCC’s RealAudio feeds are all full and I unfortunately missed Larry Lessig’s testimony (anyone able to record it?). Luckily there were still streams available at VON TV.

I just heard the rep from the Christian Coalition testify that the King James Bible–I believe that’s in the public domain, no?–is being shared over BitTorrent, therefore also blocked by Comcast. Interesting.