Throwing Money At Problems Usually Is Not The Solution

from the time-to-work-smarter dept

Thomas Friedman has stirred up some controversy with his suggestion that the government (instead of giving it to dying automakers) should give $20 billion to top venture capital firms and have them invest in new innovation. The initial thought makes sense, and, in fact, we discussed something quite similar a few months ago -- though, concerning a new venture fund in the UK, rather than giving money to existing funds. Indeed, if we must throw money at the economy, it should be to invest in new innovation, rather than throwing good money after bad. However, Fred Wilson points out that the top VC firms don't want or need the cash, and in fact, adding more money to the venture investing pool at this point might cause a lot more harm than good.

And, that brings up an important point, worth discussing, that the government seems to be missing: throwing money at problems is very rarely the best solution. Often the problems are caused by too much money sloshing around (see: Wall Street). Dumping more money into the system just encourages the same inefficiencies and bad decision making. The real fix to problems is to wipe out the broken parts of the system, not fund them further. Yes, letting some of these businesses fail will have rippling effects into other parts of the economy -- but shouldn't the focus be on helping out those aspects, rather than rewarding companies like GM and Chrysler that have screwed up dreadfully?

While there's something to be said for taking money when it's available, plenty of experienced entrepreneurs know that having too much money on hand is almost as bad as not having enough. Having too little money makes you focus and makes you creative out of necessity. Having too much money makes you lazy and puts you in a position to hide or ignore the real issues for way too long. What we should be working on right now is fixing the systemic problems throughout our economy -- not papering them over with cash.

Filed Under: bailout, congress, stimulus, venture capital

TV Stations Say Thanks, But No Thanks To Analog Switch Delay

from the anarchy-on-the-airwaves! dept

As was widely expected, Congress voted last week to delay the switch-off of analog TV signals, sort of. It did move the hard deadline of February 17 until June 12, but it is also allowing TV stations to switch off their analog broadcasts any time before then, and many stations say they'll do so as soon as they can, beginning next week. Over a third of the nation's TV stations plan to move ahead with the switch, as planned, eager to shed the additional cost of broadcasting both in digital and in analog. So instead of a hard deadline, some stations will drop off of the analog air next week, others not until June, and others somewhere in between -- a situation that hardly seems easier to understand for the confused and lost among us that the delay was supposed to help. Furthermore, how does this sort of staggered transition help sort out the converter box coupon mess?

Filed Under: confusion, congress, delay, digital tv

Wikileaks Hits The Jackpot With Congressional Research Service

from the transparency-is-the-name-of-the-game dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting the rather impressive fact that Wikileaks now has 6,780 reports from the Congressional Research Service free to download. As the post on Wikileaks notes, CRS reports are technically public domain, but have remained in a quasi-secret state, because CRS only releases them to members of Congress. However, the research reports tend to be considered quite credible, non-partisan, timely and useful. That's often why Congress members don't want them anywhere near the public. However, there have been some members of Congress who recognize what a travesty this is, and have been pushing to make the reports open. You have to wonder if a staffer for one of them is responsible for the "leak."

It's great, then, to see these documents get some well-deserved, and much-needed sunlight. However, the really interesting thing will be what the response is from both Congress and the CRS -- both of whom have mostly fought against any attempts to publicly release the documents. It will also be worth watching whether or not these leaks continue as new CRS research comes out, or if there will be something of a crackdown to try (and inevitably fail) to get this information out there.

Filed Under: congress, congressional research service, public domain, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Congress Delays Digital TV Transition: Everyone Loses!

from the good-job,-Congress dept

We were a bit surprised when the House rejected a plan unanimously approved by the Senate to delay the transition from analog to digital over the air TV broadcasting from February to June of this year. However, we knew it couldn't last. A little horse-trading and favor-promising and the new bill has won approval from both parts of Congress with Obama expected to sign it (wonder if he'll wait five days for comments?). The end result is that pretty much everyone loses -- other than some grandstanding politicians and the 12 or so people who haven't upgraded and who will upgrade between now and June. Everyone else -- including the folks who still won't be ready when June rolls around lost out here. It will slow down a variety of other important wireless offerings and increase confusion in a market where the February cut-off date was drilled into the minds of millions.

Filed Under: congress, delay, digital tv

More Details On Proposed DTV Delay: This Just Gets Better And Better

from the idea:-bad,-details:-worse dept

As mentioned, the House has rejected the attempt to push through the delay to the digital TV transition that the Senate approved earlier in the week. The measure needed a two-thirds majority to pass in this attempt, which it did not get. However, it did garner a simple majority, which means it will probably be brought to the floor and passed in the next few days. But it's worth looking more closely at some of the details to understand that this proposal seems likely to make things worse. While the general gist of the measure is that it would delay the transition until June 12th, it actually says that broadcasters can switch off their analog signals any time between February 17 and June 12. So it removes the hard deadline date, instead letting broadcasters make the transition whenever they like in a four-month period. If there's already so much confusion over the transition that a delay is needed, how will the switch from a hard deadline to a whenever-you-feel-like-it plan help? It would seem that one way to ensure people find out about the transition would be to let it happen: if people lose their TV signal (and really care that much), they'll take some action to rectify it. Of course, that still wouldn't solve one of the big issues of the transition: the bungled converter coupon program.

Filed Under: congress, delay, digital tv

Surprise: House Says No To Digital TV Transition Delay

from the wow dept

When the Senate unanamously agreed to delay the digital TV transition to June, it seemed like a formality that the House would agree as well. Apparently not. Plenty of people have spoken up about how silly it is to delay the transition, and it appears that our Congressional Representatives actually have voted down their version of the bill, meaning that the transition date is still on for February... for now. It wouldn't be at all surprising to see some horse trading, where some Reps get some sort of payoff in order to change their vote.

Filed Under: congress, delay, digital tv

Senate Delays Digital TV Transition; Will The Situation Be Any Different In June?

from the doubtful dept

It still makes little sense to us to delay the digital TV switchover beyond February 17th. The switch has already been delayed for nearly a decade, and anyone who doesn't know about it yet isn't likely to know about it when June roles around either. Yet, for political expediency, it looks like the Senate has approved plans to move the transition back to June (the House still needs to vote on this, but it seems likely to pass), which will end up slowing the rollout of various wireless services, thereby harming most consumers a lot more than this helps them. Hopefully, in June, politicians don't roll over again and push back the date again.

Filed Under: congress, delay, digital tv

State Of The Net: More Of The Same On Digital Copyright

from the pulling-the-trigger dept

At the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net 2009 conference on Wednesday, there was also a panel discussion on the future of digital copyright that was anything but reassuring in terms of what to expect on the copyright front. Basically, it was a lot more of the same. The Congressional representative on the panel, Aaron Cooper, counsel to Sen. Patrick Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, basically said that Leahy (who pushed through the highly problematic ProIP bill last year) is planning to introduce new laws concerning performance rights this year. This issue was seconded by Daryl Friedman, from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (and who's also on the board of SoundExchange). Friedman also later talked up the importance of unifying the various collections agencies into a "super agency." Funny that the guy from SoundExchange (who likely would be that agency, and which has a problem historically with actually paying money out) would suggest that...

The real problem, though, is that the entire framework for the whole debate remains the same. It's set up as this big adversarial situation, where content creators go on and on about the need to "protect" their "assets" and the importance of making sure that content creators are compensated. Of course, the problem is that content creators think those two things go together: i.e., you have to "protect" the content to get compensated. As we've seen over and over again, nothing is further from the truth. But it's this adversarial view that leads to troubling policy implications. It got so ridiculous that Alec French, from NBC Universal (and occasional Techdirt commenter), started comparing copyright issues to questions of who pulls the trigger in a murder. Specifically, he was talking about Cablevision remote DVR case, using the analogy that Cablevision set up the gun with a string attached to the trigger and a door -- and if someone opens the door (pushes a button on a remote) and the gun goes off and kills someone, Cablevision should be liable (just as the person who set up the gun would be liable). Of course, there's a huge glaring hole in this analogy. Recording a video for personal time shifting purposes is perfectly legal -- unlike murder.

But just the fact that the conversation is at that level shows what a huge hill there is to climb to have this policy debate actually get somewhere useful. The real problem (which the entertainment industry and, sadly, most of our elected officials refuse to entertain) is that copyright is fundamentally broken. It's a system that was designed for an entirely different purpose, and as each new technology innovation has come around, we've applied a weak duct-tape patch to copyright law to try to deal with that unique scenario. And, we keep patching the law here and there, and with each new innovation, copyright law doesn't quite work right. This was a point raised by Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge on the panel -- and she's exactly right. But, folks like Alec French dismissed the whole concept with a wave of the hand to talk about stuff that "actually might happen" in Congress. I have no doubt that French is correct that Congress won't take up the real issues, but that's a big problem.

So, in the end, there's probably not much to look forward to when it comes to copyright reform. There are very few Congressional reps who actually understand the issues, and there's little likelihood of them gaining much more interest. Instead, they're going to continue with their superficial understanding of the issue, and rely on representatives of the entertainment industry to tell them what they need. And, so we get more unnecessary compulsory licenses, stricter (more damaging) copyright controls and a bigger mess to deal with.

Filed Under: congress, copyright, policy

Congress Slams Kevin Martin For Abuse Of Power

from the good-thing-they-waited-until-he-was-done dept

FCC boss Kevin Martin is nearing the end of his tenure at the FCC, looking ready to jump into a lucrative industry job or (some have speculated) explore the possibility of running for elected office. We've been among his many critics over the year -- specifically for his rather blatant efforts to side with the telcos, even when his views are exactly the opposite for telcos when compared to cable companies. The worst, however, may have been his awkward attempt to not just bury an analysis that showed that a la carte cable would be more expensive -- but to come out with a totally different report claiming the opposite.

Congress has now released a report slamming Martin for widespread abuses of power during his chairmanship, noting his efforts to force the FCC to bury the original report and publish the new report. He ordered the group to rewrite the report with the opposite findings and demoted the guy who wrote the original report. The Congressional report also noted that Martin had failed to properly oversee various telco slushfunds. You know all those extra "fees" the telcos charge? Basically it all goes into a big fund controlled by the telcos (not the gov't) with almost no oversight. The Congressional report specifically dings Martin for his oversight (or lack thereof) of the Telecommunications Relay Service Fund. Apparently, Martin ignored plenty of evidence that the telcos were overcharging, and let them just keep collecting. And, on top of that the FCC did little to actually audit the program.

It's also worth noting that Congress decided to release the report without holding hearings, noting: "due to the climate of fear that pervades the FCC...we found that key witnesses were unwilling to testify or even to have their names become known." Good thing they got that figured out just about a month before he's leaving office...

Filed Under: a la carte, abuse of power, congress, kevin martin
Companies: congress, fcc

Congress Critters Invest In Big Companies; News At Eleven

from the not-much-to-glean dept

Red Herring is reporting on the question of where our elected officials invest their own money, noting that an awful lot of it has gone into tech companies. For example, the second, third and fourth most invested in company among Congressional members are Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel, following on GE, which had the largest number of lawmaker investors (88). Of course, the number of investors doesn't necessarily say how much is invested, as Apple leads on that list, with Congressional members having put somewhere between $6.4 million and $31 million into Apple. Elected officials only need to give a range for their investments, hence the large spread. Of course, all of the info in the article isn't really all that enlightening, as the companies that these folks are invested in are basically the same as you would find on a list of the biggest companies in the US. So, basically, our Congress critters invest in big companies, many of which are in the tech industry. That's not particularly surprising.

Filed Under: congress, investments, stocks