I'll be the first to concede that large spending bills inevitably entail some level of waste. The current proposed Stimulus Bill is no exception; to point that out would be unworthy of much ink. At some point, however, one would expect that Congress would pause before plowing several billion dollars into a program modeled on one that already is failing badly. Yet this is precisely what is promised by the broadband section of the current bill.

As it is written, the Stimulus Bill creates a system for broadband expansion modeled largely on the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service ("RUS ") program. The RUS, program, however, has utterly failed to increase broadband outreach in areas that lack broadband access - and not for lack of funding. To the contrary, as the USDA Inspector General reported a few years ago, the RUS broadband program has been badly structured and managed from the outset.

The Stimulus Bill passed by the House of Representatives gives every sign that Congress has not learned from the mistakes of the past. The Stimulus Bill, for example, like the RUS program before it, does not define essential terms such as "unserved area" or "underserved area." Nor does it therefore detail how funding prioritization decisions are to be made regarding grant applications within and among eligible areas.

This very same shortcoming caused the RUS program to go astray. As the USDA IG explained, the lack of definitional precision in the RUS program was used "to justify funding loans to affluent suburban communities while other more rural communities remained underserved." Indeed, the IG went on to find that 42% of communities receiving funding under the RUS program already were served by competing providers.

Such funding, the IG, wrote, raised three troubling questions: 1) "[c]an the sparsely populated rural areas for which these loans are intended reasonably support multiple broadband service providers," or are the loans being made to systems that are doomed to fail? 2) "What is the government's responsibility if, due to subsidized competition, a preexisting, unsubsidized broadband provider goes out of business?" And 3) as an equitable matter, "why should the government subsidize some providers in a given market and not others?"

All good questions indeed, and questions that might just as easily be asked of the drafters of the Stimulus Bill if the proposed new grants are used to support infrastructure development in affluent non-urban communities, or even in undeveloped areas nearby urban centers, rather than broadband buildout in the less-affluent, rural areas that the program purportedly is intended to aid.

Whatever we may think of the underlying rationale for rural broadband grants - or Keynesian stimulus as a general economic theory for that matter - can we not all at least agree that Congress should ensure that funds devoted to support rural broadband buildout in fact are spent to benefit actual rural communities?

Google has--as I noted it would last June--finally released (PCWorld, Google's policy blog) its eagerly-awaited suite of tools available for free (of course) at MeasurementLab.net that allow users to monitor how their ISP might be tweaking (degrading, deprioritizing, etc.) their traffic--among other handy features. Huzzah! So, now that we have visibility into traffic management practices on a large scale, remind me again why the FCC would need to mandate "net neutrality" requirements? Why not just leave the matter up to the FTC to enforce each ISP's terms of use under the agency's existing authority to punish unfair and deceptive trade practices? Won't the threat of users switching to another broadband provider discipline ISPs' traffic management? (As long as ISPs have traffic nationwide traffic management policies, even those users in areas lacking meaningful broadband competition will be protected from discriminatory network management practices by pressure in other markets.)

"If you believe that network neutrality government regulation is not needed, if you believe that the market will handle this ... then you should also welcome Measurement Labs," [Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy director Ed] Felten said. "What you are appealing to is a process of public discussion ... in which consumers move to the ISP [Internet service provider] that gives them the best performance. It's a market that's facilitated by better information."

Yes, it's true (as PCWorld article linked to above points out) that a consumer might not be able to discern whether apparent degradation of their traffic was actually caused by the ISP or whether it might be the result of, say, spyware or simple Internet congestion. But they don't need to figure that out for themselves. Although the relatively small percentage of users who install this tool are likely to be highly sophisticated (at least the early adopters), all they need to is "sound the alarm" about what they think might be a serious violation of "net neutrality" principles, and a small cadre of technical experts can do the rest: examining these allegations to determine what ISPs are actually doing. Sure, there will be false alarms and of course many advocates of "net neutrality" regulation will still insist that ISPs shouldn't be allowed to practice certain kinds of network management, no matter how transparently the ISPs might disclose their practices. But the truth will emerge, and in the ongoing tug-of-war between public pressure and ISPs' practical needs to manage their networks smartly, between the desire of some to have practices disclosed very specifically and the ISPs' desire to maintain operational flexibility, I suspect we'll find a relatively stable (if constantly-evolving) equilibrium. It won't be perfect, but do we really think government bureaucrats will do a better job of finding that happy medium?

This ongoing series has focused on the growing substitutability of Internet-delivered video for traditional video distribution channels like cable and satellite. YouTube has recently begun exploring adding traditional television programming to its staggering catalogue of mostly amateur-generated content. But now YouTube is going one step farther by exploring the possibility of signing Hollywood professionals to produce "straight-to-YouTube" content:

The deal would underscore the ways that distribution models are evolving on the Internet. Already, some actors and other celebrities are creating their own content for the Web, bypassing the often arduous process of developing a program for a television network. The YouTube deal would give William Morris clients an ownership stake in the videos they create for the Web site.

This kind of deal would make Internet video even more of a substitute for traditional subscription channels--thus further eroding the existing rationale for regulating those channels. But what's even most interesting about this development is that YouTube's interest seems to be driven primarily by the possibility of reaping greater advertising revenues on such professional content than on its currently reaps from its vast, but relatively unprofitable, catalogue of user-generated content: 

Just wanted draw everyone's attention to a couple of great podcasts about online safety issues that include comments from members of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF). As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the ISTTF project and final report represent a major milestone in the discussion about online safety in America, and I was honored to serve as a member of this task force.

This in-depth "Radio Berkman" podcast featuring ISTTF director John Palfrey and co-director Dena Sacco is a really excellent (but lengthy!) overview of the ISTTF's word. Here's a shorter podcast that Prof. Palfrey did with Larry Magid of CNet. And I also recommend this excellent NPR "On the Media" podcast featuring my friend Stephen Balkam of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI).

For those interested, down below you will find a running list I have been keeping of coverage of the ISTTF. (I will try to keep updating this list here).

On January 20, 2009, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued Patent No. 7,479,949 to Apple, entitled "Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics."  Steve Jobs is one of the co-inventors.

Although the patent itself is complex (it includes more diagrams than I've ever seen in a patent, and has a maze of related patent applications), the claims purport to cover a broad swath of tools available in a touch-screen user interface.

Just days after getting the nod, Acting FCC Chairman Michael J. Copps has liberated the FCC staff!  In the spirit of openness and transparency championed by the Obama Administration, they are now free to communicate with one another and free to respond to information requests from all of the Commissioners.

The Isle of Man may soon implement a "blanket license" whereby Manx broadband users could download as much music as they like in exchange for paying a "fee" (also known as a "tax," since this would be non-optional) to their ISP that would supposedly be as low as $1.38/month. The Manx proposal sounds a lot like how SoundExchange administers a blanket license in the U.S. for web-casting of copyrighted music:

the money collected by the Internet providers would be sent to a special agency that would distribute the proceeds to the copyright owners, including the record labels and music publishers. They would receive payments based on how often their music was downloaded or streamed over the Internet, as they now do in many countries when it is performed live or on the radio.

As Adam Thierer has noted, Larry Lessig has endorsed at least a voluntary version of this idea, but Adam has raised a number of tough questions:

I can't believe we're actually asking whether Obama--the candidate who promised to bring the Federal government (and perhaps everyone else) into the Web 2.0 era whether they like it or not--will have a "personal computer."

The "webiness" of Obama's predecessors is just embarrassing:

Clinton famously sent only two e-mails while he was president, one to test whether he could push the "send" button and one to John Glenn, sent while the former Ohio senator was aboard the space shuttle...

During his presidency, George W. Bush didn't have a personal log-in to the White House Internet server, nor did he have a personal whitehouse.gov e-mail address. (He gave up his private e-mail account, G94B@aol.com, just before his first inauguration.) When he did go online, there were some things he couldn't access. During Bush's tenure, the White House's IT department blocked sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and most of MySpace. The ability to comment on blogs was blocked, as was certain content that was deemed offensive. According to David Almacy, who served as Bush's director for Internet and e-communications from 2005-07, only two people had access to the iTunes store during that period: Almacy, who had to upload speeches to the site, and the president's personal aide, so that he could download songs for Bush's iPod.

Pipes and tubes, pipes and tubes, my friends...

If Obama decides not to implement whatever legal or technical changes would be required for him to do something so simple as having a computer on his desk, I suppose we'll know that he's not really all that interested--at least on a personal level--in all his rhetoric about the power of the Internet to make government more transparent and accountable. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

Those who criticize Google as a "monopoly" usually focus on the search and advertising markets. Google may indeed have a huge lead in those markets, but it is by no means a "monopoly" in the strict sense of the word as the only ("mono-") seller in that market.

If the critics are concerned about about true "monopoly" or at least something close to it, perhaps they ought to focus on Feedburner, the free service Google acquired back in 2007. If one takes a very narrow definition of the service Feedburner offers, one could argue that there is no real alternative to Feedburner. But on the other hand:

I have a very simple solution. I use my own RSS feed I don't need some other company providing a enhanced solution. I have never understood why people used feedburner at all.

Getting statistics from a feed is elementary. There are several services out their that provide podcast statistics.

Stupidity in giving someone else control over ones feed is something I will never get. I have no sympathy for those having feedburner issues.

Regardless, some leading bloggers have expressed outrage over Feedburner's less-than-perfect reliability--see this recent rant by Michael Arrington. But we call in the federales to "fix" the "problem"--if one properly apply that term to a free service beloved by (nearly all) bloggers everywhere just because it's not absolutely, positively 100% reliable or instantaneous or simply because some people don't like the idea of using yet another Google product, no matter how good it is--let's see what Feedsqueezer, a soon-to-be-launched service, will offer.

Note: The word "monopoly" is now commonly used to mean "control that makes possible the manipulation of prices." It's not obvious what that would mean in the case of those Google services, that are both free to the user and not directly related to any price paid by, say an advertiser--as distinct from, say, Adwords or Adsense, where there are at least prices that might, in theory, be controlled.

Digital video recorders (DVRs) may turn out to be the "last gasp" of cable, satellite and other traditional multichannel subscription video providers. If users can get the same basic functionality (on demand viewing of the shows they want) over the Internet for free or paying for each show rather than a hefty monthly subscription, Who Needs a DVR?, as Nick Wingfield at the WSJ asks:

Among a more narrow band of viewers -- 18- to 34-year-olds -- SRG found that 70% have watched TV online in the past. In contrast, only 36% of that group had watched a show on a TiVo or some other DVR at any time in the past.

That last figure is a fairly remarkable statistic. Remember that DVRs have the advantage of playing video back on a device where the vast majority of television consumption has traditionally occurred -- that is, the TV set. Although it's also possible to watch shows over the Internet on a TV set through a device like Apple TV and Microsoft's Xbox 360, most people watch online TV shows through their computers -- which have inherent disadvantages, like smaller screens and, in most cases, no remote controls.

Indeed, if users are going to buy a piece of hardware, why buy a DVR when they can buy a Roku box or a game console like the XBox 360 that will put Internet-delivered TV on their programming on their "television" (a term that increasingly simply means the biggest LCD in the house, or the one that faces a couch instead of an office chair)--and save money?

This is precisely the point Adam Thierer and I have been hammering away at in this ongoing series. The availability of TV through the Internet and the ease with which consumers can display that content on a device, and at a time, of their choosing are quickly breaking down the old "gatekeeper" or "bottleneck" power of cable. Let's see how long it takes Congress and the FCC to realize that the system of cable regulation created in the analog 1990s no longer makes sense in this truly digital age.