February 28, 2007
Tech Policy Summit Parting Shot
Sean Garrett at the 463 Blog offered some final thoughts on the Tech Policy Summit. His headlines: Just because you are wearing a tie doesn't mean that you aren't a techie. Tech Policy 1.0 exists, but there is no new beta version. People are too busy trying to get bought by Google to notice that they might get screwed. The older kids need to help the younger kids.
In an earlier post, his takeaway was: "The old-guard of tech policy (basically any company founded before 2001) is almost exclusively still using traditional communications platforms to get their point across in DC and other policy centers. While, those born after the bust like the four companies on this panel, almost exclusively use new media to get their viewpoints across."
Conference organizer Natalie Fonseca, whose team worked around the clock to pull off an excellent couple of days, also shared some thoughts after catching up on much-needed Z's.
ZDNet's Dan Farber complained on his blog that the Silicon Valley contingent was missing in action. "You would think that such a gathering of personage would be incredibly compelling, a kind of mini Silicon Valley Davos," he wrote. "Unfortunately, the only people who showed up were the speakers, many of whom didn't stay long, and a few journalists and interested parties."
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February 27, 2007
Social Media Magnates Speak
High-tech author Kara Swisher sat down at the Tech Policy Summit with some of Silicon Valley's most prominent social media tycoons to get their opinions on the technology policy issues of the day.
Swisher asked Jonathan Adelson, founder of content rating site Digg.com: "If you were an artist today, what would you do?" He said most musicians are "looking for exposure and if they can get exposure, the revenue will come." Fans are finding new artists through sites like MySpace and bypassing the old-world record label dependent model, he said.
"We will continue to see the coexistence of traditional distribution supply chains and dis-intermediated ones," Adelson said. There will be "a few survivors on the big media side but there will be a lot of new guys on the block," he predicted.
Technorati founder David Sifry echoed Adelson about the ease with which Internet users can create and distribute their own music. "We're leaving the world where you need to have a big production facility that presses lasers onto plastic and big distribution capabilities," he said.
On digital rights management, panelists said the technological protection measure will stick around for some time whether "fair use" activists like it or not. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of networking site LinkedIn, said DRM is "already irrelevant." Friendster creator Jonathan Abrams predicted that content creators will continue futilely to enforce it.
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AT&T Exec Lauds 'Vibrant Marketplace'
Communications policy pundit (and my former colleague at Technology Daily) Drew Clark posted an interesting item on his blog about remarks made yesterday by AT&T Senior Vice President Jim Ciconni. Ciconni said the telecommunications world is fundamentally different from 1968, when the FCC required AT&T to allow competing telephones onto its network. "Unlike 1968, we have a pretty vibrant market out there," he told the Tech Policy Summit. Read more at Drew's blog.
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Experts Debate Data Retention
Center for Democracy and Technology Policy Director Jim Dempsey and Lauren Gelman, associate director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, weighed in on the hot-button issue of high-tech firms and data retention during a Tech Policy Summit panel today.
Dempsey said he believes some policymakers will continue to advocate for last year's controversial Justice Department proposal to preserve certain data on Internet activity. The good news, he mused, is that "Europe is further down the wrong road than the U.S. is."
As the momentum builds for Internet service providers to store data for law enforcement use, federal agencies "are drowning in information," Dempsey pointed out. "They are getting referrals from ISPs that they can't follow up on. Their response is 'give us more information so we can drown even quicker,'" he said.
As lawmakers and stakeholders contemplate how such a data retention mandate would be implemented, Gelman said it is important to realize that technology has changed over the years. "A lot of privacy protections we had 10 years ago were based on frictions in the system [that no longer exist]," she said. It used to cost more money to keep data for longer periods of time but "those disincentives have gone away," she said.
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More From The Tech Policy Summit
Coverage of the Tech Policy Summit continues in today's Technology Daily PM edition. Find out why Patent and Trademark Office Director Jon Dudas has a beef with critics of the U.S. patent system and see how much VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos thinks competitors spent trying to take down his company's lucrative .com deal on Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, Jim Goldman, CNBC's Silicon Valley bureau chief has served as emcee for the conference over the past two days. This morning, he reported live from the event. You can watch the video here.
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February 26, 2007
DRM Debate Continues
An afternoon panel on digital rights management at the Tech Policy Summit featured a familiar face-off -- a representative from the content industry (Dean Garfield of the Motion Picture Association of America) versus a "fair use" advocate (Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge). The San Jose showdown was similar to ones I've reported on back in Washington.
Garfield argued that DRM keeps Hollywood afloat by fighting high-tech pirates, which encourages investment in movies and music. Sohn claimed that DRM holds legitimate consumers hostage, blocking them from experiencing audio and video in new and innovative ways. DRM "doesn’t do a darned thing" to fight those who want to unlawfully copy and distribute content, she said. "If someone wants to steal, they're going to steal."
Sohn criticized the online video rental services that MPAA has endorsed for barring users from burning movies to digital videodisc or transferring the content to a platform other than the computer on which it was downloaded. Sites like Movielink are "destined to fail," she said.
But Garfield said it is "too early to judge" how successful MPAA-approved distribution services will be in the marketplace. Studio bosses are "smart people" and they are "not in the business of chasing away consumers." The industry is committed to giving consumers what they want but it has to be careful "not to end up in the same position as record companies where the expectation is that content wants to be free and all content should be free."
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Q&A: Mossberg & Schwartz
Fellow Tech Policy Summit blogger Sean Garrett of 463 Communications has written up a "drastically paraphrased" version of this morning's interview between the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz.
Q: What is Sun's policy agenda?
A: Getting as many people online as possible.
Q: From a policy perspective, how do you go about this?
A: Washington needs to be educated in the role of tech as a social utility. First and foremost, government needs to develop standards for making sure that as many users can access the network as possible.
Read more here.
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Convergence Policies: 'A Mess Everywhere'
From a global perspective, how well are countries dealing with convergence? A pair of Tech Policy Summit panelists agreed the environment is complex and the climate varies nation-to-nation.
"Things are a mess everywhere," said Simon Wilkie, who runs the Center for Communication Law and Policy at the University of Southern California. "The regulatory structure is falling apart for the same reasons in every country," he said.
But the U.K. independent telecom regulator Ofcom is a good model, he said. Columbia Business School economist Eli Noam agreed, saying Ofcom has the requisite "intellectual leadership" to get things done and is "less driven by the political process."
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Ispen on Content Regulation
Content regulation should be approached by policymakers from the perspective of what is good for competition, investment and innovation, Cisco's Laura Ipsen said this afternoon at the Tech Policy Summit. "The problem is one that's political," she said, citing "entrenchment with different industries and incumbents." Ispen, who is the high-tech company's vice president for global policy and government affairs, said she thinks "it's an unnatural fit to apply broadcast rules on networking and Internet technologies."
With respect to the ongoing "network neutrality" debate in Washington, Ipsen said the market is the best barometer for broadband policy rather than "having government measures or indicators of what's working or not working." A successful strategy involves the government enforcing existing laws while ensuring that "they're watching the issue as the industry moves and as we innovate."
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In Today's Tech Daily
For more coverage of the Tech Policy Summit, be sure to read today's Technology Daily PM edition. There, you'll find Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., discussing his strategy for passing patent reform legislation and a key White House technology adviser talking about innovative ways to decrease America's dependency on foreign oil.
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Fazzino: Tech Has Too Many Trade Groups
Gary Fazzino, Hewlett-Packard's top lobbyist, complained this morning that the high-tech industry has made great strides in its Washington presence in recent years but "we still have a lot of challenges." "We're not as politically engaged as we could be… and we have far too many associations and far too many spokespeople" when compared to the pharmaceutical lobby or movie studios, which speak with a unified voice on Capitol Hill.
Fazzino pointed out that tech players, despite their involvement in numerous trade groups, have ralled together to push for policies that support American innovation and competitiveness. That issue is an easy one because it garners "a significant amount of agreement between Democrats and Republicans," he said.
A more complex matter that deserves high-tech's input is the national healthcare debate, Fazzino said. "We have to be sitting at the table," he said, noting that Silicon Valley cannot "hide behind" the fact that it consists of large companies that provide solid health benefits to employees.
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Tech Policy Summit Begins
Winter weather didn’t stop this intrepid Technology Daily reporter from making it from Washington, D.C. to San Jose, Calif. for the much-anticipated Tech Policy Summit today. Although it took 23 hours and a number of rescheduled flights, I'm here (minus my luggage) anticipating two days of top-notch sessions covering a host of hot-button high-tech issues. The agenda for the conference can be found here. So far, the breakfast chatter has consisted more of swapping nightmare travel stories than pontificating about policy... but I'm sure that will change once the conference gets going.
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