The New York Times' editorial board seems stuck in a time 1992 time warp in its "Competition in Cable TV" editorial that nonsensically disagrees with the DC Appeals Court for having the good sense to see what everyone can see -- that there is very active competition for video service in the U.S.  

The New York Times acts like it is still 1992, that since then nothing has happened, and that the 1992 Cable Act and the 1996 Telecom Act didn't succeed wildly in promoting competition.

Thank goodness the DC Court of Appeals considers facts and is in touch with the reality of "Competition in Cable TV." 

• 32 million Americans get video service from a cable competitor: DBS providers DirecTV and Echostar, telcos Verizon and AT&T, or overbuilder RCN.
• Cable has earned 38 million new broadband subscribers -- a completely new service since the 1992 or 1996 Acts.
• Cable has earned 18 million new telephony subscribers, an entirely new service for cable, since the 1992 or 1996 acts.
• Cable also has invested in Clearwire to create a fifth national wireless broadband provider.
• And America's cable industry is the only one in the world that has built out a nationwide fiber-coax infrastructure increasingly capable of 50 MBs of broadband speed.

And that's not competition?!   

Why did it take a high-profile FTC letter to Google for Google to finally make public a simple privacy policy for their be-leaguered Book Settlement after privacy has been a major Book Settlement issue for months?

• For that matter, why did it take a high-profile public shaming by Saul Hansel of the New York Times (here & here) for Google to just put a link to its privacy policy on its home page, which is industry standard practice and required by California law?

The increasingly obvious answer is that Privacy International was on target in concluding that Google is actually "hostile to privacy."

However, it is more than that, as this eight-month, fifteen part privacy vs. publicacy series can attest.

FreePress says the "FCC Should Set Bar High for Broadband Definition."

• Am I missing something?
• How would that recommendation promote universal broadband anytime in the foreseeable future?
• Doesn't the FCC need to knock down barriers to achieve universal broadband, not go out of its way to erect new insurmountable barriers to achieving the bipartisan goal of universal broadband soonest?

There is broad consensus behind promoting broadband access to all Americans soonest.

• The FCC's Broadband Coordinator, Blair Levin, just blogged candidly that he was worried that there were not sufficient incentives or funds to achieve Universal Broadband and asked for creative solutions "that will deliver the synergies of broadband to the entire nation."

My creative solution is don't listen to FreePress.

Mr. Ben Scott of FreePress answered many softball questions in a lengthy interview on the Open Video Alliance.

• Let me suggest that the reason that FreePress has not been persuasive to date in making its case for net neutrality is that they won't or can't answer the substantive and important questions required to prompt Government to mandate their extreme vision for the Internet.  

Some "open" questions for Mr. Ben Scott of FreePress:

With the German Government just the latest angry hornet joining the growing swarm of opposition stinging the Google Book Settlement, how did Google's book digitization initiative go so wrong? 

If one listened to Google, their problem is two-fold:

• First, it is just a bunch of Luddite ingrates who are too small-minded to grasp Google's magnanimity to humankind and world knowledge.  
• Second, without competitors spreading misinformation, there would only be a world chorus of gratitude.

As I have asserted many times before in this blog, Google is its own worst enemy.

• Google reflexively looks everywhere but inward when determining the origin of its external problems. 

So how did such an angry swarm of opposition engulf the Book Settlement making it increasingly unlikely to be approved by the Court?  

The latest of four New York Times editorials reiterating its support of net neutrality legislation or FCC rules, "Access and the Internet," raises some simple questions.

First, are the examples in the editorial the best the New York Times can come up with to justify a major legislative overhaul to solve a potential problem that can't even be defined or documented?

"The settlement as it exists now is absolutely silent on user privacy" said Angela Maycock of the American Library Association at a Google Book Settlement panel per the San Francisco Chronicle.

• This should not be surprising because privacy is simply the flip side of the anti-competitive concerns surrounding the Book Settlement.

I posit that privacy protections were not included in the Book Settlement for two big reasons -- the first reason is more privacy related and the second reason is more competition related. 

First, Google is a big adherent of the Web 2.0 movement that believes that transparency is a more important value than privacy.

Analysis of the potential pitfalls of wireless innovation regulation is a necessary complement to the FCC's upcoming Notice of Inquiries into wireless competition/innovation and the DOJ's review of wireless competition, in order to ensure policymakers get a balanced view of the big picture.  

What are the Top 10 Pitfalls of Wireless Innovation Regulation? 

#1 Pitfall: Losing focus on universal broadband access.

"Wireless innovation" appears to be the latest rebranding iteration of "net neutrality" and "open Internet" as the net neutrality movement searches for more mainstream support of their views. 

I love to learn and I learned a lot of new information and insights from George Ou's great new post on understanding how usage caps really affect broadband throughput.

• It is a must read for anyone that considers themselves knowledgeable about broadband.
• Some of it is counter-intuitive, but all of it is illuminating if you are interested in how broadband speeds and their relative usage limits affect international broadband comparisons. 

I certainly hope fellow broadband experts at the FCC, NTIA, RUS, OSTP and on the Hill are reading George, and this post in particular, because George's insightful and illuminating analysis can help take the National Broadband Plan analysis to another more substantive level of understanding.  

Google's latest defense of its Book Settlement in Europe has provided an illuminating window into Google's own cultural-self-awareness of Google's dominant market power over books/content.

In August 23 New York Times:

• “We believe that we are helping the industry tremendously by creating a way for authors and publishers to be found,” said Santiago de la Mora, Google’s head of printing partnerships in London.

• “Search is critical. If you are not found, the rest cannot follow."

The strong implication from Google here is that authors were in proverbial "nowheres-ville" before Google "discovered," copied and indexed them -- proving that Google is the real value creator here... not the author of the content/book.

• Google is candidly acknowledging its unique and dominant market power over books because Google is the only entity in the world with the resources, the business model, the low opinion of the value of content on the Internet (it should be "free"), and the legal strategy to illegally copy literally millions of copyrighted books without permission.

What is more valuable the content or the search?