jamesdelong


Latest from jamesdelong

Understanding Verizon v. FCC

The DC Circuit yesterday dismissed the appeals of the FCC Net Neutrality order filed by Verizon and MetroPCS on the grounds that they were filed prematurely – no appeal can be taken until the order is published in the Federal Register, an event that has not yet occurred. It would be a mistake to regard ...

The Future History of Net Neutrality

While working on a non-DigSoc project, I ran across this statement from the Association of American Railroads: • In fact, from 1980 through 2009, U.S. freight railroads reinvested more than $460 billion — more than 40 cents out of every revenue dollar — back into their networks. • The main alternative to the vertical integration ...

Netflix and Original Content

My post on Jason Kilar and Hulu touched on the possibility that Kilar sees Hulu as a potential prime distributor, dealing directly with content creators instead of getting only content originally distributed by others. It turns out that Netflix is thinking along the same lines — see Netflix’s Risky Bet on Original Programming, at GigaOm: “Netflix ...

And the Truth Will Make You Free

Perhaps even free of your employment. When Hulu CEO Jason Kilar blogged his “thoughts about the future of TV” on the Hulu website, the reaction was strong:  “Is Jason Kilar Trying to Get Fired?” headlined a piece the next day on the WSJ’s All Things Digital site, noting that “some . . . believe Kilar ...

Drilling into the FCC Open Internet Order

An old adage of marketing is that people do not buy drills – they buy holes. Cliché it may be, but the statement embodies real wisdom, in that businesses that focus on value as the customer sees it are more likely to prosper than those that do not. The cliché leads to other thoughts, such ...

Future of ‘Net Investment Looks Bleak

At Investor’s Business Daily, Robert Higgs takes a gloomy look at the current state of net investment in the U.S., and concludes: Unless private investment recovers more rapidly, the economy’s recovery is sure to remain slow, too slow to significantly lower unemployment. Firms are reluctant to undertake risky long-term investments because they continue to view ...

Will Firefly Glow Again?

A serious source of current woe over production of content is the difference between pay-to-experience and advertising-supported business models. In ad-supported, the product is the viewers’ eyeballs, which are sold to the marketer. Thus the amount of money available for content production is limited to the value the eyeballs have to advertiser, which may be ...

State of the Recorded Music Industry

Michael DeGusta does a nice job analyzing “The REAL Death of the Music Industry” at Business Insider. In terms of revenue per capita, the recorded music business has gone down from $71 in 2000 to $26 in 2009 (2011 dollars).  In terms of raw revenue, the take fell from about $19 billion in 1999 to ...

“An Estimate of Infringing Use of the Internet”

Envisional, a Brit research firm specializing in protection against piracy, counterfeiting, and other intellectual property appropriation, was commissioned by NBC Universal to make An Estimate of Infringing Use of the Internet (Jan. 2011). The report was released this week by ITIF, with a commentary by Daniel Castro on the Innovation Policy Blog titled Online Piracy ...

Update: Appeals of the FCC Net Neutrality Rule

The appeals of the FCC’s Net Neutrality rule continued to run their courses this week. [For background, see Which Court Gets to Hear the Net Neutrality Appeal? (Jan. 21) &  More on the Verizon Appeal of the Net Neutrality Regulation (Jan. 24).] On Jan. 10, even before the rule was published (which still has not ...