Verizon, AT&T See the Regulation Writing On The Wall
Originally posted on OpenMarket.org.
AT&T and Verizon are indicating that there is a chance that they will not seek funds from the broadband stimulus portion of the American Recovery Act.
Verizon Executive VP Thomas Tauke has stated that, ?We don?t have any plans to apply; we also have not made a decision not to apply.?
Similarly, AT&T Senior Executive VP told reporters that, ?We do not have our hand out seeking government funds.? But, ?[AT&T is] open to considering things that might help the economy and might help our customers at the same time.?
This reluctance to accept government funding shows that major ISPs realize that acceptance of stimulus funds puts them squarely under the FCC Network Neutrality principles. These principles could bleed into the other networks?such as Verizon?s FiOS TV or AT&T?s U-Verse?that these large Internet players own. Meaning this policy would be the camel?s nose under the tent. I ?ve previously referred to this potential phenomenon as ?Gateway Neutrality.?
Molly Peterson of Bloomberg News confirms that big ISPs realize the danger associated with accepting recovery funds:
AT&T, Verizon and Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable provider, say the rules are unwarranted and would hinder their ability to manage congestion on networks they have spent billions to build.
So, it could be that networks built with stimulus funds would have sub par service when compared to networks built without the funds. This forces one to wonder what the point of the multi-billion-dollar subsidy is in the first place.
Additionally, were ISPs forced to merge networks that ran under different principles?those that are neutral like Internet service and those that are very non-neutral like television or phone service?very costly problems could emerge. Trying to slam together TV, Internet, and phone service into one neutral IP-based service could even prove to be financially impossible.
At OpenMarket we often say that government should never be in the business of picking winners. It appears the winners at broadband build-out will be those who avoid picking government.
-nick
Dungeons & Dragons Murdered My Vegetables
Today, the German president, Horst Koehler backed a ban on violent movies and video games after last weeks school shooting in Germany. This is a trend that continues to push forward.
Ignored is human nature, society, the news media’s often graphic display of violence and any other rational explanation. Any time at this point in history where an older person acts out in violence some type of mental illness is called upon, but when a young person acts out in violence they are impressionable, and video games or movies are the obvious conclusion.
When Columbine occurred, Doom and Basketball Diaries was to blame. The Matrix which had only been on the seen for 2 weeks also took some heat. Counter Strike, a tactical terrorist shooter, was blamed for the Virginia Tech massacre. And in 2005, the board game Dungeons & Dragons was blamed for a murder in New Jersey:
A South Jersey man is being held without bail on charges that he stabbed three people to death. District Attorney Bruce Casto is investigating a possible connection to Dungeons & Dragons: “I mean, you have many, many stab wounds and those Dungeons and Dragons fantasy games involve swords and knives and daggers and things of that nature. There may be a connection but I can’t say for sure.”
Makes you wonder if cooking is ever blamed for murder?
I began thinking about media in general after it was announced a Cleveland school yanked a Nintendo Power out of their library because it had a gun toting female on the cover about other media’s affect on earlier generations.
Here’s what I found (originally posted by Tom Standage in Wired Magazine):
Novels
“The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?”
- Reverend Enos Hitchcock, Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, 1790The Waltz
“The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced … at the English Court on Friday last … It is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous inter twining of the limbs, and close com pressure of the bodies … to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was con fined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is … forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.”
- The Times of London, 1816Movies
“This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood … Depraved adults with candies and pennies beguile children with the inevitable result. The Society has prosecuted many for leading girls astray through these picture shows, but GOD alone knows how many are leading dissolute lives begun at the ‘moving pictures.’”
- The Annual Report of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1909The Telephone
“Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?”
- Survey conducted by the Knights of Columbus Adult Education Committee, San Francisco Bay Area, 1926Comic Books
“Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child’s life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children … All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!”
- Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954Rock and Roll
“The effect of rock and roll on young people, is to turn them into devil worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness; impair nervous stability and destroy the sanctity of marriage. It is an evil influence on the youth of our country.”
- Minister Albert Carter, 1956Videogames
“The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it’s making the difficult job of being a parent even harder … I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for adults is spiraling out of control.”
- US senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2005
This isn’t something new. Violence and murder existed at the beginning of human history in scripture. And it wasn’t the vegetables to blame. It’s something deeper and something that cannot be fixed with laws and regulations if you catch my drift. If kids are simply impressionable to anything in media, then we must also consider that the violent imagery in scripture affects kids in the same way. But this is and would be considered a ludicrous thought.
But it’s in the same vain as how the media portrays steroids. When Chris Benoit killed his family and then himself the culprit was steroids. Steroids caused him to “roid rage” and murder his family and take his own life. Then steroids supposedly caused the death of a whole list of wrestlers. Psychological disorders, abuse of other drugs, and abuse of steroids was completely incomprehensible. Yet at the same time, during the height of the steroid era in baseball, no baseball players were murdering their families or falling out dead. I guess steroids only negatively affects a certain type of athlete? Maybe the drugs are biased in how they affect athletes?
Where is the common sense?
-nick
Utah: Rated R for Ridiculous
Originally posted on OpenMarket.org:
Utah is on the verge of using it?s ?Truth in Advertising? bill to pass regulated enforcement of video game ratings. The bill which was in some part drafted by Jack Thompson, the disbarred anti-violent games attorney from Florida, would fine retailers that sold games to underage customers up to $2,000 per incident.
The catch? This only applies if they advertise that they conduct age verification, essentially encouraging retailers to remove all advertising that they check ID?s or age in some manner. Retailers would be better off in this case not advertising in any way that they train employees to verify age before selling age restricted games. This way if a slip up occurs?as it eventually will?the retailer wouldn?t be held accountable.
The legislation takes a giant step back considering that Patricia Vance, President of the not-for-profit ESRB ranking group, stated in an open letter to the Utah Congress that?
?the most recent such study reported in May 2008 found that national retailers refused to sell M-rated games to customers under 17 a remarkable 80% of the time, far surpassing the comparable rates of compliance for movies, DVDs, or music CDs rated for a mature audience?according to a recent audit, Utah video game retailers enforce their store policies regarding the sale of M-rated games an impressive 94% of the time ? without any laws or requirements that they do so. That level of compliance took many years to achieve, and speaks to the strong commitment of video game retailers to do the right thing.
Apparently a 94% success rate isn?t good enough for Utah who will ignore one of the best working models of self-regulation that any entertainment industry has ever seen or successfully implemented, and will instead take the opportunity to enforce government control in a way that will not prove successful and will cause greater problems down the line.
I whole heartedly agree with Matt Peckham of PCWorld when he says that,
Truth in advertising is important. No one wants to buy a ?100% cotton? shirt that turns out to be 50% polyester or an LCD TV with a ?full parts and labor three year warranty? that?s only honored for one. Retailers have basic authenticity obligations and consumers should have the right to take action and/or pursue remuneration when a retailer engages in deceitful advertising.
But voluntary self-regulation that hinges on an aesthetically amorphous value system resides in a legal gray area. No one?s going to disagree that selling a 50% polyester shirt as ?100% cotton? is ethically wrong, deserving of legal consequences. But games ratings aren?t based on scientific analyses of the fiber content of a piece of fabric, and there?s plenty of disagreement over whether it?s the responsibility of stores or parents to enforce them. For some, game and movie ratings are simply advisory, and it?s up to parents to monitor what kids are up to, not some for-profit business, and most certainly not a bunch of at best tenuously culturally clued-in government bureaucrats.
Peckham?s insinuations that this is just the beginning are dead on. And those like Jack Thompson that won?t to see violent or mature content banned from the face of the earth know just that, and are counting on it. You see, when this model fails, politicians won?t return to the stage and admit they were wrong and redact the policy. They will instead seek to legislate the issue even further and with a firmer grip. This is simply the first flake in a snowball rolling down hill.
-nick
A Gamer Win For Parenting
Posted over at OpenMarket.org is really a great story I posted of a parent getting involved in their kids video game experience and using the opportunity to open lines of conversation about real world events, and broden their horizon historically. Great evidence why self-regulation of video game content by the ESRB is working.
-nick
