In Case You Were Wondering
Without the footnotes showing source links and
most of the formatting, this is what the speaking notes looked like
for the essay in LISTen 98:
INTEGRATE THIS
Late news this week should strike librarians with fear. In a
complicated financial transaction, the whole question of net
neutrality in the United States may well have been mooted. Comcast,
known for not only being a cable broadband provider but also the
owner of an entertainment group containing networks like G4
Television, has now bought a controlling stake in NBC Universal
from GE. According to statistics released by MSNBC, a joint venture
between NBC and Microsoft that Comcast now gains control over,
properties like Universal movie studios, NBC News, MSNBC,
Spanish-language network Telemundo, ten owned and operated
broadcast television stations, Focus Features, iVillage, and the
broadcasting rights in the United States for the Olympic games
until 2012. A report by Greg Sandoval posted at CNET questions what
may lay in the future for the Hulu joint venture that NBC is
participating in. Reuters reports that the new company will be
valued in the area of thirty billion dollars. Reuters reports that
while GE retains a minority stake in NBC Universal, it can sell off
that stake on or after 2016.
The original plan for this episode involved there being a chat
between myself and Blake Carver over recent rumblings by News
Corporation head Rupert Murdoch, incorrectly reported by at least
one outlet to still be an Australian citizen as he has held US
citizenship since 1985, and his drive to move the web away from
being free as beer. Google responded to this with a new program to
ensure their search tools could not be used to circumvent pay walls
and/or registration requirements. The addition to the mix of the
Comcast-NBC situation changes the stakes.
The net neutrality debate is now effectively over. When vertical
integration is achieved at the level Comcast will gain if
regulators approve, no law or mere regulation will prevent tiered
access. Net neutrality was only possible if content producers and
access providers were separate entities. With the intermingling of
content production and access provision that Comcast would be able
to undertake, it would seem that the current regulatory structures
in place would be so insufficient to where outright legislation by
the US Congress may be necessary. As an editorial aside, it should
be noted that it is quite far from clear at this time that the
Federal Communications Commission actually possesses sufficient
statutory authority to impose net neutrality now.
Where do we go from here? In the long-term, this may present
structural concerns for LISNews and allied portions of the media
empire. If Walt Crawford could be talked into it, a hybrid print
publication could be created to carry on the mission of Cites &
Insights and LISNews. We've been trying over the past year to sell
to NPR and foreign radio outlets material produced by the LISNews
Netcast Network. If we could ever secure enough capital, LISTen
could easily make its way on to the broadcast airwaves via
shortwave as to do so market by market on the local level is beyond
the amount of resources we could even dream of securing. With some
changes to the post-production editing, Hyperlinked History could
be picked up by PBS stations by way of the Independent Television
Service ITVS. Old media techniques are most certainly not dead and
with some creative work in creating fulfillment structures these
sources could soldier on with the same material in different
formats.
The LISNews world and allied forms of online expression have it
easy compared to larger outlets. The various stars in this
specialized constellation can benefit from somebody who has been
considering this question for a little over twelve months. It would
be interesting to see how production outlets like Revision3 and the
TWiT network could survive in a world without net neutrality being
in existence let alone enforceable.
Far more could be said. Indeed, an entire segment could exist
talking about the flowchart posted by The Effing Librarian that
seems to have rustled so many feathers and is getting linked
heavily. The key thing to remember is that nothing is inevitable in
the course of human events. To think that there is is to assume
perfection in all human beings.
Until further word arises, this matter is in the air.
