Innovation Policy Post

The constant refrain out of the “Future of Video” hearing was that whatever the future of video may be, it probably is not cable. The hearing opened with, and generally focused on, a single statistic: in 1992, when Congress passed the cable act, cable controlled 98% of the  pay for television market. When the FCC last released similar data in 2006, that number had dropped to 65%.

Geneva -- All around the world, a debate rages over the protection of users’ actions and information online. In the developed world, this is seen primarily through the lens of personal privacy protections: how and when users’ data on popular services like Google and Facebook may be used commercially. Elsewhere in the world, the issues are often more stark, as what users say and do online can literally be a matter of life and death for them.

The House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance held hearings this week on granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to Russia.

CCIA sent letter to both House and Senate committee members urging them to consider the issue of Internet freedom in Russia as part of their discussion of the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, and Glenn Hutchins, Co-Founder of Silver Lake, spoke at the Brookings Institute last week on how to further the mobile technology revolution.  

Brussels -- Last week the European Commission initiated a public consultation titled: “A clean and open Internet: Public consultation on procedures for notifying and acting on illegal content hosted by online intermediaries”. As the name suggests, the consultation addresses rules and procedures for notifying and acting (N&A) on illegal content hosted by online intermediaries.

Washington -- The International Telecom Union (ITU), founded in the 19^th century, last updated its regulations or ITRs in 1988 and clearly has a lot of catching up to do.  It has traditionally focused on standards for telegraph and analog voice communications, allocating global electromagnetic radio spectrum and satellite orbits by multilateral treaty.   The ITU also defines basic principles for the provision and operation of cross-border international telecommunications networks.  Now that the dynamic global Internet has been layered on top of those underlying transport networks, things get exponentially more complicated for a regulator.  IP addresses, for example, are far less associated with specific geography or hardware than telephone numbers.   And online apps and content are quite unlike a simple phone conversation or data transmission.  But so far, the global open Internet actually works well for its end users as long as governments stay out of the way, and don’t try to regulate in favor of their own telecom providers or preferred content and services.

Washington -- The past few weeks have seen welcome action on skilled immigration reform with the introduction of bills such as the Startup Act 2.0, the STAR Act and the SMART Jobs Act.  These bills call for increased access to green cards for foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.  The bipartisan support for these bills is a hopeful sign that skilled immigration reform may yet emerge from the cold storage it has been kept in by insistence for comprehensive immigration reform.  

Napa -- Start ups and Silicon Valley companies from Personal to Spokeo discussed issues from innovation and competitiveness to cybersecurity and privacy at the Tech Policy Summit in Napa Wednesday.

[Author’s Note:  This post was adapted from the author’s post on the DisCo (Disruptive Competition) blog — If you haven’t checked out http://project-disco.org, please do!]

The PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) was introduced in the Senate on May 12, 2011.  It is remarkable that that was now more than a year ago, and to think about how much has changed.