Verizon, Google meet on Shakedown Street

Since when is a partnership a one-way street? Since the coining of the term “government-business partnership,” that’s when.

The government can innovate (nuclear power, the Internet) and hand it over to the private sector to make all the dimes off our public investment. OK, so companies improve on it. Shouldn’t some of the benefits of those improvements flow back to the public like royalties?

A fine example is the emerging discussion about an open Internet brought to light by this week’s agreement between Verizon and Google. It allows for preferential flow of data through mobile networks, so that those big enough to afford it can buy priority. In this case Google services would bump aside competitors when delivered via the Internet to mobile phones.

Somehow they have spun it to emphasize that the “public Internet” would remain neutral. Well how about untwisting the definitions and saying the Internet is public. Then everyone would have the right to equal access and speed. And it’s the same internet whether someone is sitting in their home or standing on a streetcorner.

Mobile telephones and their benefits should be doubly public in nature, not less public. Telephone services are, or have generally been, “public utilities,” with the government at least regulating them to a degree, supposedly in public interest. And the towers Verizon uses to transmit its mobile signals exist by the good graces of the public, through local approval processes. We let them puncture our neighborhoods and horizons with their towers just like they require our permission to stick their poles along our highways and drape their wires. We don’t need to take the clout — we’ve got it.

Yet Verizon, with the framework announced this week in the absence of government regs, would not limit itself to Google. This is its template for the future — they even have the audacity to call it a pattern for how the government should (not) regulate such deals. The mobile giant would love to sign more, similar deals with anyone who could pay them to get onto mobile phones faster. The more, the merrier.

Soon it becomes a shakedown, a good, old-fashioned Mafia protection racket. Pay the man to walk safely down the street.

It’s like running a commuter railroad and instead of saying people pay more to ride first class, people who don’t pay more go to the same destination pulled by an 1890s steam locomotive. We’re talking separate trains, here.

Sorry, but I ain’t riding in the cattle car, so to speak, and neither should you. I want my media business to come up just as fast as AOL either in your home or standing on a streetcorner. And the same goes for my lawnmower repair guy vs. Sears. Or my favorite news sources vs. Big Media.

There are plenty of rewards being paid from the innovations of Google, Verizon and the like. But the Internet is infrastructure, a common carrier, and should remain so. Infrastructure is public. It is now up to the Federal Communications Commission to show us who it works for on this issue and use its authority to keep the Internet at an even flow.

When the cookies munch you

It started out innocently enough. Or did it?

“Cookies” that initially tracked how you navigate a website were merely research tools, right? Ways web developers could find out how their clients sites were attracting customers or visitors to various pages. Ways most popular offerings could be tracked. That’s what the website privacy policies told us.

But it took only the thinnest reed of cynicism to know that more was in store. And now that we are being shadowed at virtually every keystroke on the Internet for the purposes of targeting advertising, or by those with even worse intentions for us or the health of our computers, once-imaginary creatures from the nightmare lagoons of privacy invasion are beginning to breathe a lot closer to our necks.

Soon after I recently popped up a page for the Lowell Folk Festival, I found a Google ad on my G-mail for a folk act’s concert tour, someone I hadn’t thought about in a long while but whose appearance tempted me for a moment. Some internet marketer was doing their job well, and it was for music, whose cause is just. But the trust we place in Google by utilizing their free services is immense.

The phrase “falling into the wrong hands” comes to mind. And there are plenty of wrong hands out there. Google may be run by Boy Scouts right now but the jingling of doubloons is an inevitably corrupting influence. When nukes fall into the “wrong hands” (as if there are right ones) we worry a lot. When privacy falls into the wrong hands — well, we’re way past 1984 already.

But worthy organizations and businesses have the potential to utilize internet advertising and all its potentially invasive technologies. We don’t ask Google how its high priests work their magic, and Google would not tell us if we did. Advertisers just want to know whether it works, which Google does purport to tell us when we use AdWords.

But now that the cookies are munching us, we are on some level contributing the ruination of the Internet when we purchase such an ad. How much time do people spend either cleaning up their computers from invasive technology or blocking it? I surely don’t spend the time reading every privacy policy I must click to approve, do you?

To varying degrees, advertising has always been an invasion of consciousness. “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco” on the side of a barn took the bliss out of the countryside 80 years ago, but today we’ll tolerate quite a bit more noise than that. The problem is that the technology is starting to stalk us into every corner.

That leaves the possibility that the voice behind it — yours, perhaps — becomes the enemy, and your innocent enough approaches will become unwelcome. It happened with TV, and the clicker became the antidote.

Congress is considering some curbs that, however enforceable, would seek to protect the innocence that remains. For those of us who are not advertising jackals, let’s enjoy that innocence while it lasts.

On the ground, it's tilling season

It’s been nine years now since “on the ground” burst over the cliché horizon with blinding effect. In that time people have swallowed the white noise and the impression it gives: That the person who writes or says it is in the know, or has spoken directly to someone who is (and supposedly is presenting an unbiased perspective).

It has the same intellectual force once ascribed to the concluding phrase, “Think about it.” (Most effectively conveyed by removal of eyeglasses as it’s about to be uttered.)

Both are hogwash for different reasons, but “on the ground” is a province of the news media and its handlers, most often connected with the uniformed services. It also speaks volumes about how they work these days, together and separately. Oh, the phrase got a workout during Hurricane Katrina at a point when Bourbon Street was beyond reach. But “on the ground” really gained the veneer of legitimacy in the aftermath of 9-11 when the U.S. responded with invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

It’s a given that the phrase can be removed from almost any news report (other than football game coverage) with no loss of substance. The situation on the ground in Kandahar is the same as the situation in Kandahar, especially if the teller actually knows what that situation is. But that’s the key.

News media are supposed to know or tell you why they don’t, in the pursuit of truth on your behalf. But with news bureaus closing worldwide and domestic staff slashed to ribbons by corporate ownership, journalists were more at the mercy of news handlers (PR staffs) than ever before in 2001, and have become more so.

Much of the “on the ground” reporting in these wars came from embedded reporters who were necessarily compromised by covering the event from one side. Yeah, yeah, a truer picture could emerge if you read their stuff and the non-embeds’ reporting, but when you put a reporter in boots you’ve got “boots on the ground,” and when you hype your coverage you make the most of that.

More often “on the ground” refers to places reporters do not have access to — Palestinian refugee camps, battle scenes where embeds are for some reason not invited, places where no one speaks English or likes Westerners, or it’s just too dangerous for them. So it becomes a reference for second-hand information coming from someone with an agenda, someone who speaks clear English and has a friendly, thriving PR operation. If the U.S. military knew the situation “on the ground” in Northern Pakistan, Osama bin Laden could only wish he was cranking out license plates in Joliet, Ill.

Now let’s say you hear “on the ground” from someone who was actually there. What exactly are they conveying? Why, that they’re not getting a handout, that they’re doing their job. That’s a grand thing, and everybody likes to be stroked. But self-stroking in public is, well, just a little embarrassing, isn’t it?



Think about it.

Life by 1,000 slices: Navigating media convergence

If you were too busy letting newspapers die to pick up the New York Times last Friday, or you didn’t see it online, you aren’t alone. But behind the scenes, it underscores the need for the Davids with a message to work their way through — and around — the Goliaths.

You certainly couldn’t depend on broadcasters to inform you about a federal action that will subvert them, too, as media convergence morphs around the Internet and leaves the makers and users of the old hardware in an “adapt-or-die” frame of mind. Why should TV news cover the Federal Communications Commission’s intention to treat their owners as second-class while expanding the availability of bandwidth to the Internet?

The Times article in question, lays this out for us: The internet is taking over, so why not let it? By 75-year-old law, the FCC stands as guardian of the “airwaves” that are supposedly the property of the public, even though recent administrations have done their best to give our property away to the large corporations who control both the means and the messages.

Of course, it’s not only “airwaves” we talk about today. Communications is on an energy spectrum that may travel by air, but it now arrives by pipe in the form of broadband and cable television, as well as from your dish or – if you are hearty – a rooftop antenna. The spectrum of frequencies is increasingly crowded by all the outlets for television, specialized radio communications and internet bandwidth.

“According to F.C.C. officials briefed on the plan, ,” the Times reports, “the commission’s recommendations will include a subsidy for Internet providers to wire rural parts of the country now without access, a controversial auction of some broadcast spectrum to free up space for wireless devices, and the development of a new universal set-top box that connects to the Internet and cable service.”

The article goes on to discuss direct Internet delivery of health records and classroom educational materials that could bypass current handlers, including companies heavily invested in more traditional technology. More and more of the broadcast spectrum would be allocated to other means of communication, including mobile applications.

Couple this with the notion that entire cities are wiring (with help from Google grants, among other sources) to ensure universal coverage for rich and poor, urban and rural, and you have the government accelerating the reality of convergence around the Internet for message delivery for everyone.

Already local-access cable stations are embracing the use of the Web to provide on-demand content for even the likes of “Wayne’s World” and more serious hyperlocal programming.

What do these moves signal for smaller voices trying to communicate?

Quite probably, the death of advertising as we know it. Ditto for public relations, which has already become a guerilla war as outlets publish less and use bland or cost-based formulas to determine what airs or prints. From TV clickers to general media overload, it is more vital than ever to mobilize direct, trustworthy contact via word of mouth and familiar sources.

I refer to it as guerrilla war because it is, as Malcolm X said, “by any means necessary.” It varies from infiltrating the garden club newsletter to a viral campaign on Twitter, depending on the demographic you are seeking – and sometimes it is both.

So as the media “converge” around the internet, your chosen means of getting your messages out may actually have to splinter, taking many smaller paths.

Flexibility is the key, measurability of results remains the challenge. Effectiveness is always the goal, and perseverance the only way to get there.

Talking people to death

My metro daily, the Worcester, MA Telegram & Gazette is editorially aghast.

Its Feb. 4 suggestion is that political maneuvering was afoot as Scott Brown wasn't sworn into the U.S. Senate within 10 days of his election due to Democrats on Boston’s Beacon Hill.

"Something tells us," the newspaper states,"that if Mr. Brown had represented the critical 60th vote in favor of the majority party’s health care reform agenda, he would already be sitting in the Senate."

While the T&G's "something" is not attributed, its motives are clear. What's the hurry? To get Brown down to assure that a Senate filibuster could block what's left of the health care legislation. LeibermanCare long ago ceased being reform.

But this exemplifies why it is laughable when the T&G sets itself up as a principled voice. A 41-59 vote is not majority rule. In fact, it's so undemocratic that I turn to no less than The Telegram & Gazette editorial page to describe those who utilize this stalling tactic to thwart the elected majority.

The word "filibuster" has appeared in 25 T&G editorials since the online presence reflected in the Mass Library System's database, and in not one instance was the Senate's special rule called a good thing.

On Oct. 6, 1994, after bemoaning the gridlock of the 103rd Congress through, among other things, use of the filibuster, the paper complained: "Despite the reform fervor that swept the 103rd Congress into office two years ago - and despite the efforts of many reform-minded newcomers - the session was marked by polarization, gridlock, extreme partisanship and self-serving business as usual."

The T&G would turn up the heat on the tactic calling it "an unworthy intrusion of personal and partisan politics into the confirmation proceedings," and a "petty political maneuver."
A Democratic attempt to filibuster against a term-limits bill got the goat of a paper, which thundered: “this partisan filibuster is another illustration of why the concept of congressional term limits, modeled on the two-term limit already in effect for presidents, has won such broad support."

T&G anti-filibuster fever broke ever wider over the use of the “obstructionist” tactic to block bipartisan campaign finance reform, finally concluding on Sept. 9, 1998: "Using a filibuster to block legislation is precisely the sort of cynical cloakroom tactic that has alienated so many Americans from government."

We can do nothing on health care. We can do nothing on climate change. Leave both to the market, or to our emperiled grandkids. And it's OK, as long as a "cynical cloakroom tactic that has alienated so many Americans from government" is put in the proper hands.