The Seattle Times, in a strongly worded editorial on September 10, 2007, said, “The Federal Communications Commission has failed the people and the democratic system it is supposed to protect.“

The editorial, part of the newspaper’s series called “The Democracy Papers,“ went on to say, “America’s press, and other sectors of the media, will continue to be marginalized unless politicians act on the currents of energy created by the growing media-reform movement. Politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, should push back on the FCC.“

The newspaper identified three areas that need attention by concerned citizens:

Cross-ownership. The bloating of the world’s media conglomerates begs lawmakers to reexamine this rule. Not only does it need to be better enforced, the rule needs to be expanded on a national level. No company should be allowed the reach and power of News Corporation. The FCC has to be alarmed that the conglomerate now owns the New York-based Wall Street Journal, Fox News, two television stations and a daily newspaper in the city. News Corporation is also launching a national financial channel.

Licensing. The FCC should use a licensing program requiring television stations to go through a rigorous renewal every three years. The current system has almost no impact, and renewal is done every eight years. Stations simply send in a postcard.

Network neutrality. This awkwardly named proposal would keep network providers — such as AT&T or Comcast — which supply the pipes through which the Internet moves, from implementing different pay scales for different levels of service. This law would ensure the Internet remains a place for innovation and is not controlled by the companies that own broadband.

The editorial concluded, “It is time the FCC acted in the best interests of the people it was created to serve, instead of large corporations.“

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the industry group for cable TV, launched a $200 million ad campaign to tell consumers that if they have cable TV, they will have no problems when the U.S. switches to digital TV in February 2009. The new TV ads can be seen here.

UPDATE: Consumers Union has a different take on these ads, pointing out that cable customers will probably have to upgrade to more expensive digital service and buy or rent a converter box for their television.

The Belo Foundation of Dallas has given the University of Texas at Austin a $15 million gift to help launch the Belo Center for New Media, which will be built on the site of a current parking lot, across Dean Keeton Street from the College of Communications. Construction for the $35 million complex is expected to begin in January 2009 and take two years. It will expand the facilities of the College of Communication and feature state-of-the-art classrooms, labs, production facilities and auditoriums for performances and film showings. The College’s promotional brochure for the Center (a PDF file) says that the goal is for the Center to become “the premier center for research and teaching on media convergence in the United States.“

In an unusual move, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release on Thursday, September 6, that described the DOJ’s opposition to regulations that would require “net neutrality.“ The document says that the DOJ’s Antitrust Division has determined that “‘net neutrality’ could deter broadband Internet providers from upgrading and expanding their networks to reach more Americans.“ The DOJ press release compares differential pricing on the Internet to differently-priced modes of delivery offered by the U.S. Postal Service. As Om Malik notes, however, the USPS is confronted in its marketplace by FedEx, UPS and DHL, among other mail and package carriers, while U.S. broadband consumers typically have no more than two service providers to choose from, and in many areas only one. Moreover, the Postal Service doesn’t examine what you’re sending and make decisions based on what they see you’re doing, the way some “net neutrality” proponents predict telecom companies will act—e.g., blocking certain kinds of services (competing Voice-over-IP, perhaps peer-to-peer file sharing), or “steering” service requests to specific online partners or even their own online sites.

UN Dispatch, a United Nations publication online, features an article titled “How PDAs are Saving Lives in Africa,“ by Joel Selanikio, MD, co-founder of DataDyne.org. Dr. Selanikio writes:

Zambia is replacing paper-based health surveys with those used on PDAs (personal digital assistants). This means no data entry, no cumbersome clipboards, and most importantly no waiting weeks or months for data entry clerks to enter stacks of paper into a computer for analysis.

Zambia today is helping to lead a public health revolution that has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people in the developing world. By switching from paper-based to mobile-enabled digital health systems, Zambian health workers are empowered with new ‘eyes and ears’ in the field-devices that increase the speed and accuracy with which vital health information can be collected and recorded. These PDAs, sometimes more powerful than laptops of the recent past, quickly are becoming a vital public health management tool.

The Associated Press released an article saying that the Federal Communications Commission’s procedures have routinely left the public in the dark about major policy decisions. The article described FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s recent steps in preparing a plan for the auction of spectrum in the current analog TV band, an auction scheduled for January 16, 2008. The article notes that Martin’s rules in a draft proposal was hidden from public scrutiny and only released 10 days after they had been approved by a Commission vote. Martin said that his plan would provide for a ‘'truly open broadband network—one that would open the door to a lot of innovative services for consumers.‘’ But now it appears that the Commission did not go as far on openness as it could have, and the spectrum auction is likely to reinforce the positions of the current large telecom providers.

Three out of five Americans don’t know that the U.S. is scheduled to turn off the long-familiar, over-the-air analog TV system on February 18, 2009, according to polls. While only about 19% of Americans still get their TV using an antenna, the transition to digital TV is confusing or even unknown among most Americans. We can expect a big public education campaign in 2008; IBM was awarded a contract of $120 million to help educate Americans about the DTV transition. The federal government features a Web site about the change, and there is a comprehensive Web site available from the DTV Transition Coalition, a large, diverse industry and nonprofit coalition.

Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington Telecom and Media Counsel, has posted a blog entry on Google’s Policy Blog that notes that “Americans invented the Internet, but the Japanese are running away with it.“ Whitt notes that Japanese Internet users commonly get much faster speeds for Internet access than Americans, as much as 30 times as fast for cheaper prices. The reason? According to the Web site Save the Internet, the Japanese government mandated open access policies that stimulated competition, lowered prices and raised speeds.

Microsoft failed to get an international standards body to approve its Open Office XML as an international standard, according to this AP article of September 4. Microsoft had hoped that its version of XML, built into Office 2007, would head off the trend of many governments and archivists looking at open standards. The Free Software Foundation of Europe was critical of Microsoft, raising the issue of how open Open Office XML would actually be. Microsoft has promised to license its XML for free. But Microsoft got only 53% of the votes needed from the International Standards Organization, instead of the two-thirds majority it needed.