Between work, travel, the holidays, the caucuses and primaries, and another project I’ve been trying to launch, I just haven’t had a lot of time to write, but I wanted to share a new endeavor I’ve undertaken. NCTA (the day job) has launched a new telecom policy blog at CableTechTalk.com.
CableTechTalk will give the industry a voice in the ongoing discussion and debate over telecom policy discussions. Debate over the direction of our nation’s telecom laws increasingly takes place online. This blog seeks to be an active player in that conversation, but it won’t be one-sided. Far from a typical press release and talking points blog, CableTechTalk will invite people with whom we disagree to engage in cross posted debates on the issues – sharing both sides of the argument and letting readers draw their own conclusion.
The blog also gives us the opportunity to share developments in the gadgets that attach to and leverage our voice, video and data platform. This week we’re in Las Vegas looking at the new tech toys on display at CES. We’re looking at the new TVs and set-top boxes, personal entertainment devices, gaming and broadband applications, and all the other things that make life fun.
If you get a chance, I hope you’ll take a look.
Our government strikes me as a complex morass of contradictions that – if viewed together – would lead any logical person to the conclusion that the left hand is totally unaware that the right hand exists, let alone what it’s doing.
Take this piece from the Hotline’s Blogometer reporting on a Reason Online piece.
By all accounts, the CleanFlicks-type outfits weren’t ripping off Hollywood in any way, shape, or form-they were paying full fees for content-and they weren’t fooling anyone into thinking their versions were the originals; the whole selling point of CleanFlicks’ Titanic is that it spared audiences the original movie’s brief moment of full-frontal Winslet. CleanFlicks was simply part of a great and liberatory trend in which audiences are empowered to consume culture on their own terms-not the producers’.
I’m actually going to ignore the specific question of shifts in media consumption and ask broader philosophical questions. So here they are.
What was CleanFlicks doing that the FCC doesn’t order the nation’s broadcasters to do anytime they broadcast a movie over the open airwaves? Why does a court hold a private company trying to sanitize movies to a completely different standard than the federal government trying to sanitize movies?
This ruling makes no sense if examined for hypocrisy.
The government mandates that broadcasters must do exactly what the courts have told a private company that it cannot – under any circumstances – do. The court upheld the intellectual property rights of the movie producers, but refuses to tackle the abridgement of the first amendment that is perpetrated every day by the Federal Communications Commission. What friggin’ sense does that make?
At a time when Administration officials are being convicted for their relationship with lobbyists, and members of Congress are keeping bribe money in their freezer and printing up “bribery menus” on congressional note cards, you’d think the last thing you want to do is appear to be a little too cozy with lobbyists.
That thought, however, didn’t stop the Bush-appointed Chairman of the FCC, a man known for championing the fight against media indecency, from posing for a photo in Details magazine in a posh DC Hotel room on a rumpled bed, with two prominent lobbyists, one of whom represents the telephone companies.
It’s clear that nobody form the FCC press shop was with him that day. Otherwise they never would let him do that. Would they?
(Disclaimer: While I work for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, this post should in no way be construed as an official position of the Association. Thoughts in this space are mine and mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.)
