Category: Verizon

Congressional Internet Caucus—–Break Your Special Interest Ties

Today’s column by Washington Post reporter Jeffrey Birnbaum focusing on the sale of products and services at Congressional Internet Caucus events [“Soliciting for Good Citizens” reg. required] underscores why it’s time for the bi-partisan group to restructure its relationship with the Internet Education Foundation’s Advisory Committee.

This Congress is supposed to be breaking the ties between the powerful lobbying infrastructure and its political deliberations. Permitting the most powerful corporate media and telecom special interests to, in essence, determine the Caucus agenda is inappropriate (to say the least!). No group funded by the telecom and media industry should play a role as well in shaping the Caucus agenda. We hope the Net Caucus will clean house. Will Caucus co-chairs Senator Pat Leahy, Rep. Rick Boucher, and Rep. Robert Goodlatte do the right thing?

Congressional Internet Caucus: It’s For Sale!

Who really runs the U.S. Congressional Internet Caucus–Members of Congress or the companies and special interests with the deepest checkbook? Take a look at how a forthcoming Congressional Caucus meeting on wireless issues is, literally, for sale. At the NetCaucus website for the event, chaired by Congressman Mike Honda [Chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus’ Wireless Task Force] is a pitch for “sponsorship.” Here’s how you can push your message before the Hill:

“Sponsorship Opportunities

We are seeking responsible industry players to help facilitate this important policy dialogue with a few key sponsorships. These promotional sponsorship options will help position your organization as a thought leader during the substantive discussions. Your assistance will help to bring together leading location-service providers, social networking sites, advertising service providers, wireless carriers, government officials and Congressional players will come together to start discussing the range of issues, policies and opportunities presented by this emerging marketplace.

Options include:
Dialogue pens: Distribute pens with your logo in conference bags and binders.
Dialogue breaks: We’ll announce your sponsorship of the morning continental breakfast or mid-morning coffee break and feature your logo or brand in the break area.
Dialogue Wi-Fi Hotspots: We will blanket the meeting area with wireless Internet access and include you as a promotional sponsor.
Post-Dialogue VIP Dinner End the conference on a high note and host a VIP event; choose from some of D.C.’s finest restaurants. ICAC staff will work with you to craft the perfect guest list.

Contact us for details & pricing.”

It’s time that the Caucus break its ties with the Advisory Committee and become a truly independent forum. Take a look at the Advisors!

The Center for Democracy and Technology hosted a “gala dinner” last night featuring Bill Gates. Billed as a “night for networking,” the event was to (self) honor CDT. CDT has long raised tremendous amounts of money from the very industries it is supposed to serve as a watchdog for. How can the organization really press Microsoft on privacy when it uses Mr. Gates to help the group sell tables at $5,000 each! Having a host committee filled with folks opposing network neutrality and safeguards for online advertising doesn’t help either. For a list, see here. Verizon, the Network Advertisers Initiative, Comcast, Progress and Freedom Foundation are just a few listed. There are some public interest folks as well. How can groups such as CDT act as truly independent advocates for the public interest in digital communications when their hands are out for such donations. Ask yourself.

A Post-script. CDT is part of a corporate coalition pushing for a national privacy policy that would not truly protect the public. It would permit Microsoft and the others to continue their unprecedented collection and abuse of our personal information. Note the huge loopholes–and disingenuousness–in this key section from the CDT/Microsoft backed “Consumer Privacy Legislative Fourm:

Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum Statement of Support in Principle for Comprehensive Consumer Privacy Legislation

The time has come for a serious process to consider comprehensive harmonized federal privacy legislation to create a simplified, uniform but flexible legal framework. The legislation should provide protection for consumers from inappropriate collection and
misuse of their personal information and also enable legitimate businesses to use information to promote economic and social value. In principle, such legislation would address businesses collecting personal information from consumers in a transparent manner with appropriate notice; providing consumers with meaningful choice regarding the use and disclosure of that information; allowing consumers reasonable access to personal information they have provided; and protecting such information from misuse or
unauthorized access. Because a national standard would preempt state laws, a robust framework is warranted.

About the Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum: The Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum was organized in the winter of 2006 to support a process to consider comprehensive consumer privacy legislation in the United States. The Forum began with a Steering Committee of companies eBay, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft, the consumer group Center for Democracy and Technology, and Professor Peter Swire of the Ohio State University..

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New Threats to Privacy: Interactive Ad Bureau (IAB) Hires D.C. Lobbyist

The interactive ad lobby–that includes most publishers of major newspapers, magazines and online outlets–is worried that consumer advocates might persuade Congress or the FTC to actually do something to protect digital privacy. Groups such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) are alarmed that if consumers can actually control their data, the ability of digital marketers to collect, profile, track and target us will be threatened. So the IAB–which has a old and new media who’s who on its board–has brought in some political help. According to Online Media Daily:

“AIMING TO INCREASE ITS SWAY over government, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has opened a Washington, D.C. office and hired its first in-house lobbyist, Mike Zaneis…he and lobbyists from the Venable law firm have been talking with Congressional staffers on the IAB’s behalf. “We’ve been educating them on how the Internet works, and what the interactive advertising industry actually is and how it operates,” said Zaneis, who previously served as executive director of technology and e-commerce at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

Presumably, the IAB will be working alongside DC lobbyists for Google, Yahoo!, Time Warner and the like to ensure that our digital media platforms provide a direct connection to Madison Avenue’s data warehouses. But they should be ashamed for creating a business model where direct access to our data across countless online media properties needs to be defended by special interest lobbying tactics.

PS: We just saw the ClickZ story. It’s very telling what the new IAB DC lobbyist said:
“…Zaneis says his initial plan of is, “Putting together a public policy council, developing positions on key issues, and leveraging the contacts that I have on the Hill, and in the FTC and other places. And then it’s a take no prisoners attitude to advocate for our members.”

The Phoenix Center and Georgetown U School of Business: The Latest `Hyperbolic’ Attack on Network Neutrality

Yesterday, the “Phoenix Center” and the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University jointly presented some scholarly-types who, trade press reports, approved the idea of the Internet evolving as a “two-tier” market. They held the event at the Dirkensen Senate Office Building, in order to make it easier for Hill aides to attend. According to Communications Daily, Dr. John Mayo of Georgtown noted that: “net neutrality legislation could limit markets’ flexibility to set prices. Mayo suggested the periodicals model to take the “hyperbole” out of the net neutrality debate, said needs more cerebral discussion, he said. “The level of certainty in arguments is too high,” Mayo said. At the same time, the potential investment at risk, depending on how legislation is written, is “staggering,” he said.

What these academics and groups like the Phoenix Center don’t want to recognize is an old-fashioned power grab. The phone and cable giants are fearful of an ever-evolving Internet where they will face numerous challenges to their monopolistic broadband plans. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner are alarmed about an “always-on” network where anyone can be a multichannel provider of interactive video, or cheaply send voice and SMS messages. We wish Georgetown University would ask its historians, political scientists, psychologists and other academic experts to work with some of the folks at its School of Business. An economic lens is an insufficient instrument when one is discussing the “good and services” required for a democracy. The broadband Internet is a fundamental public service; an essential information utility in this era. We hope that academics and universities will examine this issue in a way which does true service to the debate. When a broadband platform is fundamentally connected to civic participation, cultural expression, journalism & public affairs, diverse ownership, community development and public safety, we suggest that the scholarly analysis has to be elevated to meet the challenge.

 We note, btw, that Professor Mayo has served as an advisor and consultant to a number of companies and government agencies, including Enron, AT&T, Sprint, MCI and the FTC. Professor Mayo is also listed as an “external expert” for the Analysis Group. Among its clients include various telephone and cable companies, including Time Warner.
Source: “View Internet as Two-Sideded Market, Experts Say.” Anne Veigle. Communications Daily. dateline: Feb. 20, 2007. Subscription required.

Yahoo! Exec Dissses Network Neutrality

A Yahoo! News Vice-President just called the battle to restore network nondiscrimination to U.S. broadband a “tempest in a teapot.” That’s according to a blog post from Celia Wexler of Common Cause. Scott Moore, the Yahoo! exec. was also reported saying that “in a competitive media marketplace, any company that withheld content that people wanted would find those individuals choosing another cable or broadband provider.” It’s clear he doesn’t cover the media industry! We’re not surprised that high-ups at Yahoo! would see network neutrality as something less than important to fight for. Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft know they have the clout–and the business partnerships–to ensure their content and service gets carried by AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner. We have also heard–via the Hill–that Google has largely been missing in action when it comes to the net neutral fight.

Ultimately, the big online companies will make their deal with NCTA and USTA. That’s why we urge readers not to believe that network neutrality is some kind of magic digital bullet. Having neutrality alone will not give us the democratic digital media system the country requires. Nor is it certain that Congress will pass anytime soon any policy that truly democratizes the country’s broadband infrastructure. NGO’s and others will still need to build a system, via the marketplace, that places the public interest before profits (although with sites and services that can still makes lots of money to help make sustainable civic expression and social justice work).

Conflict of Interest: Why NY Times, Wash Post, USAToday, CNN, NBC & More Should Acknowledge Role Promoting Threats to Privacy and other Interactive Marketing Problems

Interactive advertising and marketing are helping shape the transformation of the media, here in the U.S. and everywhere else. A infrastructure is being put in place, without the public’s consent, designed to better sell to us 24/7. It’s using some of the most powerful communications technologies ever created to do so. Among the key issues society should be debating right now include the need for privacy safeguards to protect our personal information online, and what kind of limits should be put in place to check the excesses of interactive marketing (think personalized ads flooding your PC, mobile and TV screens, propelled by a data profile of you created via artificial intelligence technologies, and designed to get you to feel or think in a way positive to the brand).

But critical commentary about interactive advertising is largely missing from the ever-present coverage of the digital marketplace. Each day, major papers run stories in their business section about the latest triumph of technology or company. But too rarely do they examine the negative consequences, let alone the role of their own publisher or media firm. One glaring omission by such major news outlets as the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, etc. is the relationship they have with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The IAB is a trade group whose mission is “helping online, Interactive broadcasting, email, wireless and Interactive television media companies increase their revenues.” Among its goals include: “[T]o prove and promote the effectiveness of Interactive advertising to advertisers, agencies, marketers & press;” and “[T]o be the primary advocate for the Interactive marketing and advertising industry.”

On the board of the IAB include officials from the New York Times Company (Martin Nisenholtz, its leading digital exec); Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, Cox Newspapers, USA Today, NBC, CNN, and Disney. They work alongside board members representing Google, AOL, Conde Nast (attention New Yorker magazine!), Verizon, Comcast, Yahoo!, Forbes and others.

There is a clear conflict of interest here when newspapers, television, and online news report on interactive marketing and have a representative helping direct the key group promoting the industry. These news outlets should be disclosing their membership in the IAB and any other industry trade group (which have a political or marketplace mission). Editors at the Times, Post and other papers should commission stories which more effectively analyze the digital marketing industry, including raising the critical issues which the public should debate. They must also prominently disclose their conflict of interest with the IAB as they report on the industry they are working to serve.

The AEI-Brookings Joint

As we note in our book, there is an endless supply of academics and private scholars who engage in the communications policymaking field. Usually, most academics work for industry hire and supply–surprise–what is deemed intellectual support for corporate political agendas. Missing always is a clear statement of who is funding them. A November paper by two well-known researchers at the “AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies,” now being hailed by anti network neutrality supporters, attempts to undermine the effort to restore non-discrimination safeguards to U.S. broadband networks. Messrs Hahn and Litan acknowledge in a cover footnote that they “have consulted for telecommunications and information technology companies on issues discussed in this paper.” They do not actually list such consultancies. But a glaring omission is the failure to identify who helps fund the Joint Center they co-direct. They include AT&T (and its predecessor SBC), Verizon and the super media monopoly lobbying shop Wiley, Rein and Fielding (which has represented BellSouth, Verizon and others). Such conflicts of interest should have been prominently displayed by the authors, as well as full disclosure of their consulting contracts. We note that pro-net neutrality firm Interactive Corp. is also a Joint Center supporter. But how much each gives and the terms of the grant must be disclosed in any related research. Research from the Joint Center, and all other scholarly and advocacy groups, should clearly and prominently identify their funders and their related political positions on the issues raised within the main body of the paper.
The public deserves better from the folks at the Joint Center.

For an example of the paper’s reception, go to Forbes.com and see the 1/24 online piece entitled “Is Network Neutrality a Myth?”

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Washington

We wish the editors and reporters covering telecommunications would follow the money–and ask all the interested parties who foots their bill. They would find–with academics especially–so many financial links as to wonder whether these so-called experts aren’t violating some scholarly code of ethics. Take today’s psuedo scholarly attack on network neutrality by David Farber, Michael Katz and Christopher S. Woo. No where in the piece does it state that both Professors Katz and Yoo have taken money from the cable industry. Such funding led–natch–to industry supportive research pieces. Disclosure of such financial ties is required to be prominently displayed in such a piece, so readers can better place in context what is being said. Super cable monopoly Comcast hired UC Berkeley’s Katz in 2003 to produce research which placed the industry in favorable light. Comcast, of course, opposes network neutrality [I cover the role of Katz and other communications -academics-for -industry hire in my new book, btw]. Professor Yoo worked for the cable lobby NCTA last year to write a net neutrality study as well. Even Davd Farber should have disclosed he has spoken under the banner of the Verizon Foundation at Carnegie Mellon.

The Post’s editors must have asked if contributors have any conflicts? If so, what exactly did Professors Farber, Katz, and Yoo reply? We urge the Post to publish any such submissions. Moreover, the Post op-ed page must now seek response from parties who don’t have a money trail littering their “scholarship.”

Sources: “Study Slams Cooper’s Cable Research.” Multichannel News. 8/26/03

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