Andy Carvin offered the following on 01/06/2006 10:38 AM:
Hi Stephen,
It would be hypocritical of me to criticize any nonprofit simply for
receiving corporate funding, as corporate funding has been key to DDN's
survival. At various points in time, DDN has received funds from AOL,
AT&T, Verizon and SBC, among others. (Our last funders before shutting
down at EDC were AOL, the Casey Foundation and Benton Foundation, for
those who didn't know that. Our other funders, both for-profit and
nonprofit, had whittled away in recent years.) DDN would never have been
born, nor would it have survived, without corporate support. Having said
that, we always felt it was important to be transparent and independent;
our funders were always clearly identified on our website, and we also
made sure that we could take positions on issues that were in opposition
to some of our funders. Also, when DDN was founded, we accepted funds
from donors in equal amounts so that none would have undue influence.
Nothing we accomplished over the last six years would have been possible
without private sector support.
Did LULAC receive this money specifically to advocate for these
companies? Did they have one policy position before receiving funding
and shift that position afterward? Do they try to obscure the sources of
their funding or are they transparent about it? I'm not asking these
questions to challenge your facts or anything - I just don't know the
answers and would be interested in your perspective.
All of this raises broader questions about the role of money in digital
divide policy advocacy, of course. Is one organization's funding
"better" than another's because it came from philanthropic sources
rather than corporate sources? How do organizations sincerely committed
to bridging the digital divide survive in lean times without accepting
corporate money? Should this even be a goal? Or do these partnerships
lead to better engagement with the private sector?
andy
Stephen Ronan wrote:
Andy,
Do you think it would have beeen helpful for LULAC or the Miami Herald
to have acknowledged that in 2004, LULAC received a $1 million dollar
grant from SBC, and that LULAC's "Corporate Alliance Members" include:
AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon and Sprint:
http://www.sbc.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=21220
http://www.lulac.org/links.html#anchor551841:
Should we celebrate the active engagement in telecommunications policy
of nonprofits being intensively funded by a set of phone companies
that have tended to mix philanthropy and politics, at times to the
apparent detriment of consumers? Might it not be better for such
nonprofits to stay on the sidelines, while members of the nonprofit
sector free of such conflicts of interest lead efforts to promote
telecommunications policy in the public interest?
Principal LULAC arguments in the op/ed you cite include:
1) "We need to streamline or otherwise eliminate unnecessary red-tape
imposed by state and local governments in deciding whether an
otherwise qualified company should be permitted to get into the phone
or cable business. 'Mother, may I' is truly bad policy in this
technologically dynamic era."
What is LULAC getting at here? The phone companies urgently want to
provide one-way transmission of video services to the public without
needing to first agree to franchise terms with municipalities like the
cable companies have had to do.
And if I interpret correctly, LULAC would like both phone and cable
companies to be exempt from negotiating franchises with cities. My
sense is that in many cities, such as Cleveland, Seattle and San
Francisco, those franchise agreements have given a major boost to
efforts to provide equitable access to technology.
At the same time there's a lot to be said for the efficiencies of a
single statewide procedure, if the benefits of those efficiencies flow
not just to corporations but also to disadvantaged citizens. It seems
odd strategically that LULAC would at this stage of the game lead an
attempt to cede the phone companies their desired goal, without making
the case that cities and their citizens must get, as a result of any
more efficient, streamlined process, a much better deal on average
than they get through the current franchising system. It would be
naive to assume that benefits accruing to phone and cable companies
will naturally flow to consumers without explicit, enforceable
provisions to ensure that.
2) According to LULAC, "any company that wants to compete in the
voice-telephone business should be required to contribute to the
Universal Service Fund (to ensure affordable phone service in remote
and low-income areas), to offer emergency 9-1-1 services and to offer
services for the hearing impaired such as Telephone Relay Service.
There is reason for concern, as many companies that offer Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) services are trying to evade these obligations."
The phone companies are having their profits eroded by VOIP providers
and would love to slow them down with burdensome regulations. But
presumably LULAC should want them to survive and thrive. I would guess
that LULAC's constituents are in small but increasing numbers taking
advantage of services such as Skype, Gizmo, Google Talk, and Free
World Dialup that enable them to make VOIP calls within the U.S. and
overseas without being charged for the service.
In the quoted paragraph above, we see a LULAC position very much in
sync with that of the phone companies. But just as LULAC thinks it
efficient to skip municipal franchising, shouldn't it recognize that
there are huge efficiencies to offering services at no cost, with no
need to track and bill very minor payments. Does it really help
achieve the goals of universal service to require services like Gizmo
and Skype to bill each and every one of their users in order to send
money to the universal service fund?
And as far as the situations where those or other VOIP providers do
charge some customers, shouldn't any call by LULAC for such companies
to contribute to the universal service program be accompanied by a
call for reforms to the universal service program itself, reforms that
may be unappealing to the phone companies? According to David Hughes,
the program has historically piled monies into the coffers of the
wireline telcos while operating to the severe disadvantage of wireless
broadband providers.
http://www.comtechreview.org/summer-fall-1999/looking_at_erate.htm
And Robert Atkinson argues, I think persuasively, that "any universal
service payments made by VoIP services should go to supporting the
build-out of broadband telecommunications, not to the PSTN" [The phone
companies' public switched telephone network]. Atkinson writes that,
"Using these revenues to support the 20th century circuit-switched
network will only delay that transition to a robust, packet-switched
broadband network for the 21st century. As former FCC Commissioner
Reed Hundt stated, this would be as if government responded to Henry
Ford's new invention of the automobile by discouraging the
construction of roads and, instead, tax[ed] cars in order to subsidize
canals and railroads.
http://www.comtechreview.org/spring-summer-2005/000316.html
I wonder whether LULAC agrees with Atkinson's position and would
promote it vigorously?
3) Finally, LULAC calls for, "nondiscriminatory deployment of video
services to every neighborhood to ensure that the process is
competitive and fair. In short, any reform must ensure that Hispanic
neighborhoods get access to these new services as quickly as
non-Hispanic neighborhoods."
Cheers to LULAC for staking out that position, which may clash with
that of its major phone company sponsors.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2E412C6C
- Stephen Ronan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Andy Carvin wrote:
Hi everyone,
Yesterday's Miami Herald featured an op/ed by Hector Flores of the
League of United Latin America Citizens (LULAC) offering a Latino
policy perspective on the digital divide. "In 2006, Congress will set
out to rewrite the nation's telecommunications laws," Flores notes.
"And if federal lawmakers get it right, Hispanic Americans, and
consumers generally, could have much to celebrate. But if lawmakers
misfire, the digital divide could explode into a digital abyss."
Among his recommendations is to have more telecom companies
contributing to the Universal Service Fund, source of the E-Rate
funding used to subsidize school and library Internet access around
the US.
I've written about the op/ed on my blog:
http://www.andycarvin.com
The full text of Flores' op/ed can be found here:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13553457.htm
--
-----------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://katrina05.blogspot.com
Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com
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Andy: Why not avoid any appearance of sounding hypocritical by
notifying readers when you contribute your criticism? How did you "made
sure that we could take positions on issues that were in opposition to
some of our funders. . ."?
On the topic you raised about whether one organization's funding is
"better" than another's because it came from philanthropic sources, the
answer should be obvious, I think. Corporate money is by definition
given to any nonprofit project with but one goal in mind, that is, to
further the image and thus enhance the corporation's profits. For
example, any list that has Verizon as a contributor is fighting against
itself, if it doesn't spell out the why's and wherefore's of the money
contributed, so readers can understand the purpose of the partnership.
Tom
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