Several of the installments in my ongoing "Media DE-consolidation" series have involved Time Warner taking apart the media mega-company it created back in 2000. [See, for example, parts 12, 14 and 21]. The relationship was a bit rocky right from the start, and things have been unraveling slowly ever since. You will recall the amazing front page story in the Wall Street Journal in 2006 in which Time Warner President Jeff Bewkes declared the death of “synergy” and, more poignantly, Bewkes went so far as to call synergy “bull—t”!

Today, another major split occurred when, as many had anticipated for some time now, TW announced the spin-off of its Time Warner Cable unit. Here's the NYT's summary:

Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, continued to trim what has for years been the world’s largest media company by announcing Wednesday that it would completely spin off its cable company. The news — which was not unexpected and follows an earlier transaction in which a portion of the cable unit was spun off into a separate public company — came as Time Warner reported quarterly earnings that were largely in line with Wall Street’s expectations. “We’ve decided that a complete structural separation of Time Warner Cable, under the right circumstances, is in the best interests of both companies’ shareholders,” Mr. Bewkes said Wednesday in a statement. “We’re working hard on an agreement with Time Warner Cable, which we expect to finalize soon.”

One must remember that when the marriage was struck 8 years ago, the AOL-Time Warner deal received wall-to-wall coverage and apocalyptic-minded critics claimed it represented “Big Brother,” “the end of the independent press,” and a harbinger of a “new totalitarianism.” Now that the marriage is gradually falling apart, we hear a few things about it here and there, but no one seems to care all that much. The stories are mostly buried in the pack of the business pages and receive limited coverage online. Regardless, it serves as yet another sign of how dynamic and volatile the media marketplace is today.

Beverly Hills
Oh sure, you say, it's easy for the fat-cat financiers and globaloney experts gathered in Beverly Hills at the Milken Conference to advocate an open global economy. It's all upside for them. The hedge funds of Greenwich and venture funds of Sand Hill Road can suck up the Fed's excess liquidity and then deploy it around the globe into assorted non-dollar denominated assets. Meanwhile, the average guy is stuck spending $85 to fill up his family SUV.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, speaking on an Income Mobility and Inequality panel with The Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot, noted the irony. He said that he had finished his panel homework -- thick studies of income demographics -- the previous day sitting beside he chic pool at the Beverly Hilton. Although income mobility in the U.S. is still pretty good, even according to the more pessimistic studies, Robinson could not help but note the vast inequalities that persist, or even grow. As he sipped a cool drink surrounded by cool people, he read about 70% dropout rates in some inner-cities and real-wage stagnation on the one hand versus hedge fund billions on the other.

So, irony noted. Now, can we get back to explaining why global engagement and trade is good for all Americans, rich and poor?

Susan Crawford points out that the Yale Information Society Project recently posted its "9.5 Theses for Technology Policy in the Next Administration." It's apparently also the theme for the 18th Annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference (CFP).

What I found intriguing about the list is that (a) protecting free speech doesn't make their radar screen, which seems both sad and puzzling since it will continue to be under attack regardless of who is in charge next year; and, (b) perhaps less surprisingly, much of what they are calling for the next administration to do would involve more regulation of the Internet, broadband networks and media markets. Here's their list and how I would score each item [Note: I am using CAPS below not to scream, but just to differentiate my scoring versus their proposal]:

Bruce Owen, America's preeminent media economist--with apologies to Harold Vogel, who at least deserves an honorable mention--has written another splendid piece for Cato's Regulation magazine, this one entitled, "The Temptation of Media Regulation."

This latest essay deals primarily with the many fallacies surrounding so-called "a la carte" regulation of the video marketplace, and I encourage you to read it to see Owen's powerful refutation of the twisted logic behind that regulatory crusade. But I wanted to highlight a different point that Bruce makes right up front in his essay because it is something I am always stressing in my work too.

In some of my past work on free speech and media marketplace regulation, I have argued that there is very little difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to these issues. They are birds of feather who often work closely together to regulate speech and media. Whether it is broadcast 'indecency' controls; proposals to extend those controls to cable & satellite TV; campaign finance laws; efforts to limit or rollback ownership regulations; or even must carry and a la carte, the story is always the same: It's one big bipartisan regulatory love fest. [And the same goes for regulation of the Internet, social networking sites, and video games.]

Owen explains why that is the case:

Beverly Hills
Here at the annual Milken Institute Global Conference, what do I wake up to this morning? A big, page-one story in The Wall Street Journal entitled "Rising Nationalism Frays Global Ties."

The global economy appears to be entering an epoch in which governments are reasserting their role in the lives of individuals and businesses. Once again, barriers are rising. Call it the new nationalism.

From barriers to the free movement of financial capital (investment) and human capital (immigration) to new restrictions on the Internet, reporter Bob Davis recounts the troubling protectionist trends and finds numerous analysts who say we may be in for a long retrenchment of the global economy.

"The era of easy globalization is certainly over," says Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin, whose 1998 book, "The Commanding Heights," detailed the triumph of markets over nations, starting with British deregulation under Margaret Thatcher. "The power of the state is reasserting itself."

Just a decade ago, Asia, Latin America and Russia were on financial life support from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The U.S. was planning yet another round of global trade negotiations. The European Union was writing a constitution to shift power to Brussels from member nations.

Now borrowers shun the IMF and World Bank. Trade talks are shelved. Barriers to foreign investment are rising around the world. State-owned companies are expanding, particularly in oil and gas. Public support of immigration restrictions is growing in countries from the U.S. to India.

This is why PFF launched our new Center for Global Innovation. To combat these trends by highlighting the abundance of the world economy and the deep, dark consequences of protectionism. See our self-description which presages many of the themes in Davis's article.

As we here from Nobel economists, entrepreneurs, financiers, and policymakers at the Milken Conference, we'll have more to say. Although we agree with Davis's article that nationalism is rising and ties are fraying, we are not so convinced a new balkanized world is our inevitable fate.

New nationalism could play out over a lengthy span, says Michael Klein, chief economist at the World Bank's private-sector arm, the International Finance Corp. "Disparate national interests may pull [countries] in different directions and render global actions more difficult," Mr. Klein says. "We're in for several decades of these centrifugal forces."

It will take herculean efforts, but with enough like-minded leaders, we hope CGI will help block this illiberal tide and point the path toward more, not less, global freedom and innovation.

Several days ago we mentioned IBM's strong sales and earnings in the context of our focus on "global services" and the Dallas Fed's new report on the topic. Today, BusinessWeek illustrates the point:

Quick quiz: Which company is more "American"—Mumbai-­based Tata Consultancy Services, or Armonk (N.Y.)-based IBM (IBM)? Evaluate the two based on where they make their sales, and the answer is surprising. TCS, India's largest tech-services company, collected 51% of its revenues in North America last quarter, while 65% of IBM's were overseas.

Do we begin to see why the international trade statistics are misleading, if not utterly irrelevant? Do we understand that the "trade gap" is therefore not an argument for protectionist policies?

I don't agree with a lot of Larry Summers' economics, but he is often quite an insightful thinker on globalization. Here the former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president is talking to David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal about American universities. But his insight can be applied to the U.S. economy as a whole.

"American universities right now are pre-eminent," says Lawrence Summers, who was deposed as Harvard's president in 2006. "They have enormous advantages in wealth, in the attractiveness of the U.S. as a place to study and teach, in their demonstrated excellence. The threat to the top universities is not imminent. But Oxford and Cambridge didn't perceive the threat as imminent. The combination of Britain's losing relative economic ground and deep complacency, lack of major investment in science and technology and governance modes that favored internal equity over external competitiveness caused them to lose their position over two generations." (my emphasis)

As we know from experience, external competitiveness is usually the key to higher levels of wealth all-around and over time mostly transcends the "internal" distributional concerns. As Summers nicely points out, "equity" is a euphemism for stagnation and decline.

UPDATE: By complete coincidence, I came across this brief Forbes article on the influence of college professors on the "equity" versus "efficiency" debate.

Dr. Kourosh Dini is a Chicago-based adolescent and adult psychiatrist who has just published a new book entitled, Video Game Play and Addiction: A Guide for Parents. [You can learn more about him and his many talents and interests at his blog, "Mind, Music and Technology."] Dini's book arrives fresh on the heels of the fine book, "Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do," by Drs. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson. [See my review of that book here.]

Like Kutner & Olson's book, Dini's provides a refreshingly balanced and open-minded look at the impact of video games on our kids. One of the things I liked about it is how Dr. Dini tells us right up front that he has been a gamer his entire life and explains how that has helped him frame the issues he discusses in his book. "I have played games both online and off since I was about six years of age, and I have also been involved in child psychiatry, so I felt that I would be in a good position to discuss some inherent positives and negatives associated with playing games," he says. Dini goes into greater detail about his gaming habits later in the book and it makes it clear that he still enjoys games very much.

Some may find Dini's gaming background less relevant than his academic credentials, but I think it is important if for no other reason than it shows how we are seeing more and more life-long gamers attain positions of prominence in various professions and writing about these issues using a sensible frame of reference that begins with their own personal experiences. For far too long now, nearly every book and article I have read about video games and their impact on society at some point includes a line like, "I've never really played many games" or even "I don't much care for video games," but then--without missing a breath--the author or analyst goes on to tell us how imminently qualified they are to be discussing the impact of video games on kids or culture. Whenever I read or hear things like that, I'm reminded of the famous line from an old TV commercial: "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV." Seriously, why is it that we should continue to listen to those critics who denounce video games but who have never picked up a controller in their lives? It's really quite insulting. Would you take automotive advice from someone who's never tinkered with cars in their lives but instead based their opinions merely upon watching them pass by on the road? I think not.

Yesterday, I was a guest on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, which airs on WAMU 88.5 radio (Washington, DC's NPR affiliate), and had the chance to take part in an excellent discussion about the ins-and-outs of student online speech. Specifically, we discussed the sticky issues surrounding online privacy, anonymity, defamation, cyber-bullying, and so on.

The entire show can be heard on Kojo's site. The other guests were John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology, Parry Aftab, the Executive Director of WiredSafety.org, and Reg Weaver, the President of the National Education Association. We attempted to provide parents and educators with some helpful advice about how to deal with these issues when they pop up. We also got into the controversies raised by the anonymous comments left on sites like JuicyCampus.com and RateMyTeachers.com.

[Incidentally, this show was part of Kojo's excellent ongoing "Tech Tuesday" series. Each Tuesday he dedicates his show to "putting technology in context and assessing its relevance in your life." It's a great program. In encourage you to listen.]

Bruce Everiss, a UK-based video game industry veteran, and author of the blog Bruce on Games, has penned a comprehensive essay on video game piracy through the years. I recommend you read the entire piece, but here's the take away:

And the game industry continues to grow and prosper, despite the piracy. This is because the proliferation of platforms allows publishers to more easily abandon platforms that are pirated to the point of being uneconomic. Instead they concentrate on platforms where there are windows of opportunity to run a viable business. Either because the anti piracy technology is on top or because there is a sufficient number of honest customers to get a return, even sometimes with a heavily pirated platform. Games with an online element can often be made very pirate proof which has been a major incentive for developers to go down this route.

So for 25 years or so game players have been stealing games in truly massive numbers with zero chance of being caught and punished for their crime. Very often far more copies of a game title have been pirated than have been bought. This self evidently causes harm to the games industry, ultimately leading to less money being invested in games for the pirated platform. So, the game player suffers for his theft by having less games and lower quality games. All pretty obvious to anyone but the pirates who make all sorts of feeble excuses to justify their stealing.

[My own views on video game piracy can be found here and here.]