In the course of my research on broadband access and quality in the United States, I’ve found a great number of competing opinions on the matter of exactly how far behind the U.S. is verses some of our international competitors. If you listen to FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell, America is on the right track in regards to broadband penetration, speed and access and that the U.S. should not veer towards increased government regulation.

This explains the commissioner’s opposition to Google’s open access requirements for the 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction and other regulatory efforts to boost broadband access and speed in the U.S. (IPDI will be holding a discussion with Google on September 25th about the wireless auction and Google’s vision for broadband in America…more details to come).

The Washington Post took a different view on the matter yesterday in a piece by Blaine Harden which outlined the huge advancements the Japanese have made in relation to broadband technology though innovation and government assistance. The article points out that Japan has dramatically higher broadband speeds than the U.S. because of America’s bombing of Japan’s infrastructure during World War II (which prompted them to use better cooper wire with smaller loops that allow for higher DSL speeds) and because the Japanese government ordered phone companies to allow independent internet startups access their phone lines. This resulted in heavy competition which in turn prompted Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company to roll out a new fiber-optic network, spurring even more innovation, driving down prices and boosting speeds. This competition through regulation strategy has catapulted Japan far ahead of America. According to the article, the Bush Administration actually had the opportunity to provide the same incentives for innovation in the U.S. but the FCC and the federal courts blocked the effort.

Link Hoewing of Verizon responded to the post article on Verizon’s policy blog citing that the U.S. is making progress and catching up. I don’t disagree with that but I believe the point of the post’s article was to spark conversation as to whether the U.S. is perusing the right type of (government) strategy to ensure competition and innovation, a question IPDI will be focused on in the coming year.

Update: Check out what Richard Whitt says about it on the Google Public Policy blog:

We hope policymakers take a careful look at exactly what is now happening overseas, why, and then draw the right conclusions about the steps necessary to bring the benefits of real broadband competition and innovation to all Americans.

Last December, the Shenzhen, China Internet Surveillance Division of the Public Security Bureau unveiled its new mascots: a cutesy, cartoonish pair of virtual cops named Jingjing and Chacha that resemble a benign, lovable TV characters. They were placed on all Shenzhen websites to remind people not to look at illegal material online.

Today, People’s Daily Online reported that Jingjing and Chacha are expanding their territory to include major news portals and (eventually) all websites in Beijing. Jingjing and Chacha will be on the look out for sites that contain pornography, gambling, fraud, “superstition,” and commentary that supports secession.

They will appear, either on motorcycles, in a car or on foot, at the bottom of users’ computer screens every 30 minutes to remind them of Internet security.
By clicking on the icons, users will be connected to the website of the bureau’s Internet surveillance center where they can report illegal activities and harmful information to police.

Particularly interesting are the reasons why virtual cops are necessary in the first place:

• Protecting the online audience “from harm.”
• Thwarting illegal sites that threaten the “healthy development” of the Web and “harm youth.”

The message is simply this: the right to be free from offensive material, particularly material that the state finds offensive, is greater than the right to be free to expose yourself to all the content you want — a concept that is (almost) counter-intuitive to the way Westerners and Americans think of the Internet. But then again, this is a entirely different country. And even though many of us consider the concept of virtually spying on websites and reporting illegal content to be mostly evil, the spokespeople, Jingjing and Chacha, couldn’t appear less threatening if they tried. They look like the kinds of characters parents give their children to play with.

Some people might call that silly or even weak. However, Jingjing and Chacha are messages designed to make a topic like censorship seem the slightest bit lovable. They even have their own websites.

Yesterday, MTV and MySpace announced a plan to hold a series of live, interactive townhall-style discussions with the 2008 Presidential candidates. Viewers can submit questions by multiple platforms – instant messaging, text messaging, email, and candidates answer live, while viewers vote on their answers through online polls.

Interesting. Refreshing even.

Less refreshing, however, is the amount of mostly condescending coverage over the course of the past day contending that an audience of young voters will have nothing better to ask the candidates than “boxers of briefs.”

We went to Google News and searched for the term “boxers or briefs.” The search engine gave us 64 stories from publications like the New York Times, Wired, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington, Forbes, Politico, Variety, BusinessWeek and more.

Many of those publications predict that the question “boxers or briefs” is about as deep as they expect the young American voters who will engage in these forums to be.

At what point does a question from the 1990s become irrelevant and insulting?

Perhaps we crossed that point yesterday.

We predict that the young voters who engage in MTV and MySpace’s forums will not be as vapid as the media suggests. Young Voter Strategies (a program hosted, like IPDI, by GW’s Graduate School of Political Management), believes that young voters are engaged, informed, and enormous (over 41 million strong) and will be a tremendous force in elections.

By allowing viewers to use many platforms to post their questions – and by tapping into the millions of young voters engaged in politics – these forums have the ability to be more revealing than anything we’ve seen all summer.

Julie is right; it’s not a day at IPDI without talking about Google. I just finished watching Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; give a speech at the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit. One of the final questions he was asked during the Q&A portion of his keynote was very interesting to me. In short, Ed Black from Computer & Communications Industry Association asked if Schmidt believes the Internet is important enough to match the political clout of the entrenched telecommunications and cable industries in Washington. It’s a question we ask at IPDI very often, especially in the content of a new project we are launching around the issue of broadband access and politics. Google (and other Internet companies) have built impressive lobbying operations in DC and in state capitals and have taken up issues like Net Neutrality and of course the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction in January. While Google’s lobbying successes has been hit and miss thus far, Schmidt contends that within 5 years Google and others like it will be able to match rivals like Comcast and Verizon. This conclusion is based on the principle that the Internet has become so connected to ever facet of life that it is impossible to stop or rollback and that Internet technology is becoming critical to campaigning, politics, and public communications. Whether Mr. Schmidt is correct or not is something the Institute will be looking at in the very near future….

You can’t go a day without mentioning Google.

At least, that’s certainly the joke inside the IPDI offices.

That’s why we’ve been passing around blog posts about and YouTube footage of CEO Eric Schmidt recent speech at the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s (PFF) annual Aspen Summit.

We’re particularly interested in the list of Schmidt’s policy priorities (as originally relayed by Tech Policy Summit blog), most of which is what we’d call “user-friendly”:

• Defending free speech
• Promoting universal broadband access
• Backing network neutrality principles
• Calling for government information transparency

YouTube footage on GigaOm.

If we were playing a game of buzzword bingo, having the phrase “Long Tail” on our bingo card would most likely win us the jackpot.

In an article for Advertising Age titled “Three Strategies for Thriving on the Decentralized Web,” Steve Rubel looks at three things that marketers need to create a “perfect storm” of “bite-size” online content.

We’ve given his strategies a politic spin.

Rubel Strategy #1 - Think web services, not websites.

The goal, according to Rubel, is to “create similar mini-experiences via web services that plug into these sites yet are consistent with the brand.”

Some of the most popular sites on the web today function as platforms on which interesting and – most importantly – useful applications run. Think about how easy it is, for example, to start an event or raise money on Facebook, which has become something of a trend amongst politically active Facebook members.

We add that these types of applications are successful because they are essentially useful. They do something for us. They give us something – even if that something is getting book or movie reviews. They aren’t merely the online equivalent of direct mail pieces.

Local government, offices on the Hill, federal departments have very little to lose when it comes using their web presences to develop online tools that serve the public, rather that merely functioning as brochures. And, for their part, many federal organizations appear to be moving carefully, slowly in this direction.

Some of them.

And if, by “services” we mean online games and multi-media presentations often directed toward an audience of students, promising enough in themselves  – if they lead to a more enabling, service-oriented approach to the web and aren’t merely the online equivalent of museum brochures.

Rubel Strategy #2 - Connect people.

The new, service-driven platforms aren’t increase in value if they connect people.

“Connect”: another bingo buzzword. According to Rubel, “the greatest value is created when people connect via platforms of participation around a common goal.”

What better common goals to participate in than creating better policy, making government more transparent, volunteering on a political campaign, and helping government goods and services run more efficiently.

Rubel points to microcontent as a new consumer-engagement platform. Specifically, Rubel looks at the Los Angeles Fire Department, which opened a channel on Twitter to inform the public during times of disaster.

Rubel Strategy #3 - Make everything portable.

Rubel writes, “Traffic is becoming something that happens elsewhere, not just on your site.”

In other words, find ways to embed everything. Instead of hoping that our web content will drive people out of their way and onto your website over and over again, think about ways that your visitors can take pieces of your website with you, embed them on their desktops, and share them with their friends.

For political candidates, associations, and advocacy groups, this may mean developing a widget that shares breaking news about a candidate or an issue with your supporters.

For the Los Angeles Fire Department, this may also mean using widgets to send that disaster-related micro-content off a web page and onto mobile devices and desktops.

For a Congressional office, this may mean developing a platform that allows constituents to chart the progress of their requests.

Rubel trumpets these strategies as way to market products better, and we certainly agree. But they aren’t entirely new in the corporate space.

Where they are unique, however, and where thy pose the greatest potential to shape the way we live is in the political space, not merely to market future leaders, but to make the way we lead more efficient and effective at meeting the needs and queries of their constituents.

What’s the greater evil in a global environment: spam or online censorship?

Let’s say you’re a freedom-embracing, open source-loving Westerner with a few hours on your fingertips. How do you share your values with Internet users who happen to reside in countries that heavily censor Web content?

Do you buy search terms and try to point people to proxy sites that will enable them to maneuver around censorship?

Or, perhaps you spam them with information that points them to proxy servers.

At Slashdot Cmdr Taco posts the question (originally posted by Bennet Haselton)

Is it OK to send unsolicited e-mail to users in China, Iran, and other censored countries, telling them about new proxy sites for getting around Internet censorship?

The answer, according to the Haselton, boils down to the following argument:

1. Spam is bad because the costs to society are greater than the benefits. This would not be the case if you were spamming to advertise something whose benefits were greater than the costs of the spam.

2. However, in a mostly-free country where your product is legal to sell, #1 should never be used to justify spamming, because if the benefits of your product are really greater than the costs of the advertising, you can pay for the advertising, add the costs on to the cost of the product, and still have benefits left over to split between the seller and the customer.

3. #2 is not true in non-free countries like China, in which case if a product conferred more benefits than the costs of the spam but was not legal to sell, it might be OK to spam it.

We think so.

So does Washington Post writer and blogger Joel Achenbach.

In this Sunday’s Washington Post, Achenbach grapples with question, “What is happening to media?”

According to Achenbach, the Web could, in fact, be leading us to an increasing number of headlines along the lines of “Britney Spears! Paris Hilton! Lindsay Lohan!”:

Our future is on the Web. This is the mantra in newsrooms. And the Web lets us discover how many readers each article attracts. The data can be scrutinized in real time, moment to moment. Inevitably, this is going to change the way we do business – excuse me, I mean the way we do journalism.

Before the Internet, Achenbach appears to write, journalists were too busy trying to be journalists to figure out which stories (“Britney! Paris! Lindsay!”) sold the most papers. But now, some journalists feel that those days are over.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Achenbach writes,

Here’s the metric I think we ought to keep in the mix: Gut instinct. A reporter’s own sense of a good story.

Readers, it turns out, are pretty smart. We know what we like, and we don’t like being talked down to – or, for that matter, being force-fed. We like to participate in the process.

In October 2004 we held an event that looked at Independently-Produced Web Videos in the 2004 Campaign. As part of the event, we asked our graduate research assistants to watch as many political web videos as possible.

We watched a lot of snarky videos and animations. But some of the most interesting tings we interacted with weren’t videos: they were the politically-themed games, like The Howard Dean for Iowa Game.

We didn’t know what to do with them.

They didn’t quite fall into the category we were researching. Watching a video, however humorous or inflammatory, simply is not as engaging as playing a game, such as pretending to be Tom Delay chasing after bags of money, to use a more recent example. (Delay’s Dollars, designed by Blackrock Associates won a 2007 Golden Dot Award for best Animation or Mashup.)

They were, in a word, irresistible: hard to put down and hard to forget. The image of Tom Delay bobbing across a screen, saying “Money, my money,” every time he grabs a bag of money was a joke around our offices for a week.

Politically-themed games aren’t a pleasant way to obtain a few giggles. Because they ask users to engage in a scenario – whether that scenario is running a grassroots campaign or grabbing bags of cash – games have the ability to establish and reinforce political themes and teach political strategy.

Ian Bogost, founding partner of Persuasive Games (which designed the Dean for Iowa Game, amongst dozens of others over the past several years) and author of a new book called Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames believes that video games immerse players in a virtual world of political rhetoric and expression:

Videogames are particularly useful tools for visualizing the logics that make up a worldview . . . The politics of [Hurricane] Katrina and counter-terrorism only become apparent thought the unusual conditions that expose their underlying logics; such situations are rare in everyday practice – and perhaps ideally avoided. . . . Political videogames use procedural rhetorics to expose how political structures operate, or how they fail to operate, or how they could or should operate. Videogames that engage political topics codify the logic of a political system through procedural representation. . . .

If policy issues are complex systems that recombine and interrelate with one an other according to smaller rules of interaction, then videogames afford a new perspective on political issues, since they are especially effective at representing complex systems.

In other words, games have the ability to immerse players in the political process – from running grassroots get-out-the-vote activities to addressing policy issues to confronting political issues, such as gerrymandering (See our post on The Redistricting Game). They are interactive parables that have the potential to engage users in a way that today’s Sunday morning political programs simply or grainy, awful, 20-minute YouTube footage of a candidate’s stump speech in Iowa do not.

Games, when created in the right way, have the potential to do what even they most well-designed political ad cannot: engage, immerse, and guide people through a policy decisions, political action (donating, grassroots organizing, persuading neighbors), and possibly even a candidate’ life story.

(And we’re not just talk about kids. Some of the most avid players of casual games happen to be middle-aged women.)

We’d like to predict that by the beginning of the primaries, at least one of the candidates will develop a game that looks at one of his or her policy issues. It would, at the very least, give us something to talk about at our 2008 Politics Online Conference on March 4^th and 5^th.

But politics can be a slow-moving animal. So we might see a fantastic game emerge from the 2008 campaigns. Or we might have to wait.

The New York Times doesn’t think that the Democratic YouTube Debate was particularly revolutionary.

That’s why they asked a panel of new media experts to opine on the topic “What would a real new-media debate look like?”

Here are (some of) their answers:

David All – Encourage the American “community” to participate by having the audience share part of the stage with the moderator.

Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej – The public votes on the YouTube questions, and the candidates reply through web video.

Zephyr Teachout – Hold a day-long, tournament-style debate series in which the candidates are pitted one against the other.

Matt Bai – Equip the candidates with an instant messaging platform that allows them to respond to each other’s comments on a big screen  above the stage.

Kevin Kelly – Always on debates in which the candidates don microcameras to provoke them to answer difficult questions as they arise during their daily activities.

Tom Brokaw – Make the candidates answer the questions through text messaging and equip them with martinis.