Tales of the Sausage Factory:
DOJ May Investigate Telco Market Power: The Dawn of a New Paradigm For Antitrust?

, ,

Although the Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ) has not confirmed it, the Wall St. Journal reported that DOJ is internally considering whether or not companies “such as AT&T and Verizon” have abused their market power. Most traditional antitrust lawyers I’ve seen quoted don’t think it likely the telcos have market power — especially given the hostility that courts have recently shown to antitrust. Indeed, in a world where even potential competition is supposed to be part of the market analysis, how can a modest 60% of the wireless market shared by the two companies, with no evidence of price fixing or coordinated behavior, support any sort of antitrust action?

Welcome to the more grown up and sophisticated view of market power in the more complex real world. After more than 25 years, U.S. antitrust authorities may be ready to reexamine the underlying limitations of antitrust in light of a new generation of economic scholarship on the subject of market power and the exercise thereof.

So are we at the dawn of a new age of antitrust, one that recognizes such modern economic phenomena as network effects, the power to constrain choice through non-disclosure agreements that create information asymetry, and the power of vertical integration to eliminate traditional geographic and product market distinctions? Will Christine Varney and John Lebowitz do to the the U of C worshipers of the gods of the marketplace as Copernicus and Galileo did to Ptolmey and his fanatics who preferred to reject the evidence of their eyes in favor of ever more complex theories of deferents and epicycles? Or will the judicial activists of the D.C. Circuit and the political might of the incumbents once again force regulatory agencies to abjure, curse and detest such heresies?

E pur si muove below . . . .

Continue reading

My Thoughts Exactly:
Goldman Sachs punked by inside-man code liberator? Please let it be so!

, ,

According to this article on the Zero Hedge site (which references a fascinating article from Reuters), Vito Corleone and the Mob, er. . . sorry, I mean the Masters of the Universe at Goldman Sachs may have had some very snazzy software purloined by a software engineer who used to work in their “quants” section– presumably coding highly technical stuff where milliseconds count. The FBI has been called in; an arrest has been made. There are mysterious indicators that something fishy has been going on at the New York Stock Exchange. Billions of dollars possibly at risk. Software uploaded to some site in Germany. Oh, it sounds so juicy. I hope the wildest speculations (see the comments at the Zero hedge site) are true! I hope I hope! For starters, the guy the Feds nabbed is a Russian immigrant.

Conspiracy theories! Hardcore software geekery! Regulatory agency malfeasance! This could be a Wetmachine perfect storm!

Hat tip to Dail Kos diarist bobswern for another layer of analysis and for bringing the Zero Hedge site to our attention.

As to my momentary confusion of Goldman Sachs with a vicious nearly omnipotent criminal syndicate with tentacles in every branch of government, I can’t imagine where that came from.

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
It's time for the NOFA Awards!

, , , ,

No, not the actual giving out of money, silly. My snarky commentary on yesterday’s unveiling of Broadband.gov.

I’ll preface by saying I absolutely still love and respect the folks I know on the inside who struggled with this stuff for months. I know how hard it is to actually implement this stuff, especially with this kind of ridiculous schedule and no one appreciating what it takes to coordinate among this many agencies and how utterly devestated the federal workforce was following 8 years of the Bushies refusing to invest in information technology, outsourcing everything to contractor cronies, and elevating political loyalty over actual talent.

Nor do I have much patience with those who are all “they sold us out blah blah blah . . .” Engineers don’t whine about how unfair it is that trees bloom in the spring and screw up line of sight with their leaves. You deal with it. Same in politics. You want good policy? Then you roll up your sleeves and get ready to fight for it rather than whining like little babies about how Obama the Deliverer failed to smite our enemies for us or persuade incumbents to put the public interest over their corporate interests and magically made all the problems of getting human beings to cooperate with each other go away. Because unless you’re willing to make some actual phone calls to members of Congress like Dittoheads do when Rush gives them the word, then I don’t want to hear it.

And the fact that there are some real issues does not negate all the good this NOFA will do. Anyone who claims that getting a less than perfect result means we pissed this away and it’s just as bad as Bush and blah blah does not know what they are talking about. I’d rather have this than more hymn singing from the worshipers of the gods of the marketplace. The fact that this turns out to be incremental rather transformative, a stepping stone rather than the whole edifice, doesn’t make it crap.

And finally, I promise to do real deep policy analysis soon.

But my selfish indulgence in unfair snarkiness below . . . .

Continue reading

My Thoughts Exactly:
Looking for my inner Billy Mays

, , , ,

Last week I was down in Manhattan pimping my books at a software developer’s conference. (Man, was that a dead conference. 15 people at a “Keynote”. Evidently there’s a recession going on, people.) A nice man named Noah Sussman approached the table where I was selling stuff & explained that he was a blogger with a site called Nerdabout New York. So of course I asked him to blog about me & my sublime geeky books, whereupon he whipped out his camera, about this size of a quarter, and said, “Why don’t you make your own pitch, and I’ll put it on the site.” Well that was very nice of him, don’t you think? So I looked into his little camera and commenced bullshitting away.

Today he kept his word with a very generous blog posting and including this video (below). I think the vid came out well enough for an impromptu thing, although I don’t know what’s with my weird Tourettes-like shaking in the first bit, and I wonder why I slouch so. And must I mumble so much, and how did I get so fat and bald and when did my teeth become so Austin Powerish? And why am I clutching my wallet as if it contains the Nukular Launch Code??? Oh well. I do think I’m a pretty good pitchman in person–Fred knows I’ve done it long enough–but working for the camera is not my metier, as we say around Place D’Italie. I need to work on that. Billy Mays, the infomercial king who recently departed this mortal coil, was good at what he did. I respect him for that. I wish I had had him pitch my books for me while he was still available for the job. But I guess I’ll just have to work on my own game. Meanwhile, here’s a shout-out and thank you to Nerdabout New York.

Untitled from Noah Sussman on Vimeo.

P.S. I think it goes without saying that, Billy being unavailable, I would happily settle for Ellie from the Rocketboom site in Howard Stearns’ “Inventing the Future” post just before this one.

Inventing the Future:
When worlds collide

, , ,

Interesting juxtaposition between these two from overnight:

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
An Appreciation For Commissioner Adelstein

, , , , , , ,

Like everyone else in the telecom world, I’m pleased and relieved the Senate finally confirmed Julius Genachowski and reconfirmed Robert McDowell. But I need to echo Commissioner Copps’ sentiments that seeing Commissioner Adelstein go makes this particular bit of good news hard to take.

Long time readers know I’ve been a huge fan of Adelstein. I should add that I have equally been a huge fan of his staff, particularly Rudy Brioche and Renee Crittendon, with whom I’ve done a lot of work over the years.

What I have always admired about Adelstein is that he has been a Populist in the best sense of the word, and in the finest tradition of rural America. i.e., someone who actually cares about people and takes the time to listen to them and fight for their issues. Over the years, Adelstein has always tried to make the time to come to events where he can hear directly from people — whether at industry trade shows or a modest gathering of community wireless activists. He has always tried to make sure that everyone has the opportunity for meaningful access to both new media and old. He has spoken passionately about the need to make sure that the benefits of broadband are accessible to everyone. He has been a friend to PEG and leased access as means for independent programmers to bring independent viewpoints to cable and because of his appreciation for the importance of local programming. Side by side with Commissioner Copps, he toured the country and rallied opposition against any relaxation of media ownership rules. He pushed harder than anyone for the Commission to take on the problem of Payolla, and repeatedly called for more ways to get independent musicians and local talent on the air.

I will miss Adelstein’s energy and friendly spirit at the Commission. On the positive side, he is certainly the right man to run the broadband program at RUS. Adelstein has always been at his most enthusiastic when looking to see how new technologies can improve people’s lives, particularly in rural America. I look forward to seeing what he can do with $2.5 Bn to revolutionize broadband access in rural communities. Hopefully, the Senate Agriculture Committee will move quickly to hold a hearing and speed him through the confirmation process.

Stay tuned . . . .

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Fragmentation Games: Playstation Gets “Boxeed,” TV Anywhere Gets More Content.

, , , , , , , , , ,

In the latest twist in the broadband fragmentation games driven the overlap of MVPDs and broadband access providers, users of PlayStation 3 can no longer access Hulu. As some may recall, Hulu tried a similar trick with Boxee.tv, resulting in a good old fashioned tech arms race wherein Boxee camouflaged itself as browser and Hulu responded by encrypting html.

Now Hulu has shut off the spigot to Playstation 3. Why? As I noted when Hulu pulled this on Boxee in the spring, the people who make money off the existing video subscription model (both the cable operators like Comcast and the content holders like NBC Universal) really dislike the thought of streaming media actually competing with them. As long as video stayed on the laptop and occasionally stopped to buffer, it didn’t really threaten the established business models. But make it possible to watch streaming media on your regular TV, with a quality practically equal to what you get on cable, and it becomes a very disruptive technology.

Playstation 3 and other game consoles are obvious candidates to disrupt the existing business model. They already plug into your television set, you are very familiar with the controls, and the manufacturers are always expanding the capabilities of the units to make them more “media centers” and less “game centers.” Like Boxee, they represent a real threat by making it possible for me to stream online content effortlessly on my TV and watch in exactly the same way I watch anything else.

Meanwhile, Time Warner and Comcast have found lots of other content networks eager to join the “Entitlement Program.” This initiative appears to be gathering critical mass very rapidly, which is not too surprising. While some of the bigger folks like Disney may hold out to see how they can maximize their return, the midsized players anxious about possible changes to the business model are likely to want to get in while the getting is good.

To conclude, what we have here is not anything obvious or dramatic. It is a few more ripples in the pond, indicating where the big fish swim. Any one of the “fragmentation games” incidents I’ve discussed, for example the ESPN360.com business which has been slowly ratcheting up to include more ISPs, is not necessarily significant on its own. Taken together, however, I see a pattern emerging that tells me where the fun and games will happen over the next few years. Heck, at this point, I’m not even sure what policy prescription I would offer. I just know that I’m seeing a bunch of ripples that might be nothing. Or it might be bunch of salmon and a great place to cast a line. Or it might be a school of piranha and I need to be very careful before wading in.

Stay tuned . . . .

Inventing the Future:
What's New?

, , , ,

People are often pretty good at walking into a room they are familiar with, and instantly knowing what has changed. That’s pretty useful for 3D operations team rooms. But what if things have been “redecorated” — moved around for better functionality without changes to the important content? What if the user has been away for a long time? If the user isn’t visually oriented? What if the “user” is an external computer system? <%image(20090629-rss-forums.jpg|363|472|Firefox RSS feed of some of my forums.)%>

Continue reading

Inventing the Future:
NOW they get it. NOW they don't.

, ,

I find two of Microsoft’s current ad campaigns interesting. One asserts that computer technology is all about connecting people, particularly synchronously (as opposed to asynchronous stuff like email, file sharing, and wikis). If you replaced the Microsoft logo at the end with Qwaq’s, I think it would fit my company perfectly. They get it.

But now they’re running another series of adds that dismisses search engines in favor of what they call a decision engine. I don’t want Microsoft to make decisions for me, but I sure do want information much closer to real time. On Friday we saw first one green Chinook helicopter go by our office windows, and then another, and then I think a Huey. What’s going on, I asked of the office in general, as they shouldn’t be training on such a windy day over a populated area. So Keith searched. He figured Google was too old-news, so he immediately went to Twitter. Someone had posted that there were helicopters going past their office windows to the nearby San Carlos field for tomorrow’s helicopter air show. This week a fellow on Colbert interviewed the editor of the New York Times. “Here’s today’s paper,” he said to the editor. “Show me one thing that happened today.”

I figure Wide-Area-Networked computer systems have only been around for a little more than ten years. Most of the realtime applications have been dedicated, structured, proprietary systems. But for people to truly connect, to truly work together, they need to be able to pull arbitrary things together in real time — things that the designer of the system did not specifically envision and provide for. Real time arbitrary search(*) is one example, but the general theme is realtime, unstructured, multi-person, multi-media, multi-application collaboration. It’s going to be huge.

(*) When Web search started, realtime search referred to getting answers to a query in realtime. It wasn’t about the age of the underlying information. Now realtime results are the expected norm, and we can safely use the phrase “realtime search” to mean that the information is live.

I don’t know what to call this general application collaboration: multidimensional, multi-facetted, unlimited, live, organic, unconstrained, …