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Intellectual Property Breakfast Club Tackles The Costs Of Global Piracy

WASHINGTON April 13, 2011- Broadband Breakfast gathered key industry experts to discuss the costs of global piracy at its monthly Intellectual Property Breakfast Tuesday morning.

“It’s quite difficult to accurately measure the true level of global piracy, and it’s even harder to determine what the costs to the overall economy are,” explained Director of International Affairs and Trade for the U.S. Government Accountability Office Loren Yager.

The Costs of Global Intellectual Property Piracy: How Can The Phenomenon Be Empirically Quantified? from Broadband Breakfast on Vimeo.

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WASHINGTON April 13, 2011- Broadband Breakfast gathered key industry experts to discuss the costs of global piracy at its monthly Intellectual Property Breakfast Tuesday morning.

“It’s quite difficult to accurately measure the true level of global piracy, and it’s even harder to determine what the costs to the overall economy are,” explained Director of International Affairs and Trade for the U.S. Government Accountability Office Loren Yager.

Previously, industry would calculate the cost lost to the economy from pirated goods by pricing the pirated goods at their legal prices. This, however, is not an accurate method according to Yager. Due to the low cost of the counterfeit good, it is unlikely a person would be willing to spend the full price for the same item.

The Costs of Global Intellectual Property Piracy: How Can The Phenomenon Be Empirically Quantified? from Broadband Breakfast on Vimeo.

“Finding the cost in developing countries is even harder than in the developed world,” said Sean Flynn, Associate Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the Washington College of Law at America University. “In the developing world many people cannot afford the legal good so they choose to pirate.”

Flynn went onto describe how the standardization of global pricing of goods often makes them too expensive for the average customer in the developing world. Companies will charge the same amount for a music CD in the US, India, and China. While the pricing is reasonable for the US market, a $20 CD is too expensive for most Indians and Chinese since it represents a much larger portion of their wages.

To combat price-based piracy Flynn recommended that companies price their goods in relation to the market they are selling them in rather than trying to set a single international price.

Morgan Reed, Executive Director at the Association for Competitive Technology, disagreed with Flynn’s comment.

“Sure only 8 percent of the market in the developing world can afford a $20 CD but that is still over 200 million customers,” said Morgan. “There are enough high-end consumers in these markets for companies.”

Even though there is large number of potential customers in the developing world, Reed said that his group still found a very high level of piracy.

Stephen E. Siwek, Principal at Economists Incorporated, said that while figuring out how people would act without the option of pirated goods is difficult it is not impossible.

“We’ve been able to successfully conduct studies wherein we ask individuals how many movies they would see if they did not have the option of getting pirated copies and they actually gave us reasonable responses,” Siewek said. “This allows us to figure out if there is a 1:1 relationship between a pirated good and its legal counterpart and we’ve found that this is not always the case.”

According to Siewek a study conducted in 2005 showed that only one out of every ten people who pirated an item would pay for the item if they could not obtain a pirated copy. However, Siewek contends that with the increased availability and ease of access to low cost digital goods, this number would probably increase.

Matt Robinson President of Atributor, an anti-piracy software firm, echoed earlier findings about the rise of cyber lockers as the new haven for digital pirates. Cyber lockers allow users to anonymously host and share files on someone else’s computer server.

“These sites allow users to download files in a single click and connect a single user with thousands of others anonymously,” Robinson said.

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Rahul Gaitonde has been writing for BroadbandBreakfast.com since the fall of 2009, and in May of 2010 he became Deputy Editor. He was a fellow at George Mason University’s Long Term Governance Project, a researcher at the International Center for Applied Studies in Information Technology and worked at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. He holds a Masters of Public Policy from George Mason University, where his research focused on the economic and social benefits of broadband expansion. He has written extensively about Universal Service Fund reform, the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and the Broadband Data Improvement Act

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State Broadband Heads Address BEAD Implementation Focuses

Broadband leaders touched on letter of credit requirements, subgrant timelines, and speed test data.

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September 20, 2023

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Screenshot of the Broadband Breakfast Live Online Event

WASHINGTON, September 20, 2023 – Three state broadband leaders highlighted at a Broadband Breakfast Live Online event Wednesday key points of focus ahead of their implementation of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. 

The BEAD program allocates $42.5 billion to states for expanding broadband infrastructure. States are in the process of releasing their initial proposals for administering the program – due to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration by December 27 – and hearing public comments.

The conversation was a preview of some topics up for discussion with state broadband heads, BEAD and other federal grant program officials, and service providers at the Broadband Breakfast BEAD Implementation Summit Thursday. Registration is open for in-person and virtual attendance.

Subgrantee selection timeline

States will have one year from the approval of their initial proposals to award subgrants under the program and submit their final proposals to the NTIA. Those awards have to be allocated via a bidding process.

Getting that done will be difficult, said Jim Stritzinger, the head of South Carolina’s broadband office.

“It’s really, really hard to deploy $551 million in 12 months,” he said. “And other states have much larger allocations than ours, I don’t know how they’re going to do it.”

Brian Newby of the North Dakota Broadband Program, echoed the concern.

“I am concerned that there will be locations that just won’t be bid on,” he said, and a second round of bidding to hit those areas would be difficult to fit in before the deadline.

Stritzinger noted that state offices are permitted under NTIA rules to negotiate directly with providers to BEAD-supported infrastructure in areas missed by the bidding process, rather than open a second round, which could save time, he said.

Letters of credit

BEAD requires grant recipients to get letters of credit from banks for 25 percent of the funds they receive to undertake projects. The requirement has been flagged by the industry as potentially blocking smaller providers from being able to accept grants.

The requirement still applies to publicly owned entities, Vermont broadband director Christine Hallquist noted. That will be a problem in Vermont, she said, where some communications infrastructure is owned by coalitions of towns.

“Municipalities just do not have that kind of money,” she said.

Speed test data

The broadband heads also noted the importance of reliable locations in speed test data. When speed tests are run in computer browsers, as opposed to direct measurements from equipment or from GPS-enabled devices like smartphones, they have less precise locations attached to them.

“You could very easily see a bunch of speed tests stacking up on a single dot in the center of a zip code,” Stritzinger said. “You have to be careful about that.”

Hallquist emphasized collecting speed data from different points along a network’s infrastructure to pinpoint where speed loss is happening.

“We want to help people address all of the issues that are a part of that stream of data,” she said.

Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, September 20, 2023 – Preview of BEAD Implementation Summit

Ahead of the Broadband Breakfast BEAD’s Implementation Summit on September 21, this free live online event will offer a sneak peek into what the summit has in store. It will set the stage for the upcoming panels, including a roundtable with state broadband officers, a discussion of past broadband efforts, the role of public-private partnerships and a town hall session on problems still to tackle. Tune in to see what’s in store at the BEAD Implementation Summit in Washington on Thursday, September 21, 2023.

Panelists

  • Brian Newby, Director, North Dakota Broadband Program Director
  • Jim Stritzinger, Director, South Carolina Broadband Office
  • Christine Hallquist, Executive Director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board
  • Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

Register for the BEAD Implementation Summit on September 21, 2023.

Brian Newby leads the North Dakota State Broadband Office, targeting broadband for all in North Dakota by administering more than $175 million in federal grants. Formerly served as the State Election Director at the North Dakota Secretary of State; previously was the Executive Director for U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal government agency, and Election Commissioner for Johnson County, the largest jurisdiction in Kansas and in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Before elections, worked as director of strategy for Sprint’s $10 billion Global Markets Group.

As part of the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff, Jim Stritzingerserves as Director of the Broadband Office which was formed in July 2021. He manages a full-time team of five and is directly responsible for ensuring the rapid deployment of broadband infrastructure statewide and overseeing $1 billion in state and federal grant investments.

Christine Hallquist is the Executive Director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board. Their mission is to connect every Vermont address to fiber, make it affordable and maximize positive social impact. Christine was the former CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative.

Breakfast Media LLC CEO Drew Clark has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing campaign for broadband data. As Editor and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media company advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.

Register for the BEAD Implementation Summit on September 21, 2023.

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Broadband Breakfast on Wednesday, October 25, 2023 – Broadband Deployment from India, Australia, South Africa

What can the United States learn from fascinating broadband deployments in the Global South?

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2 weeks ago

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September 11, 2023

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Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, October 25 – International Examples of Broadband Deployment – India, Australia, South Africa

As the United States channels unprecedented investments into broadband expansion, the nation’s counterparts worldwide are also ramping up their deployment efforts. In India, nearly 900 million out of its 1.4 billion population have adopted broadband services as of December 2022. Meanwhile, Australia said it’s on track to deliver broadband download speeds of at least 500 megabits per second to 90 percent of its homes and businesses by 2025. Across the ocean, South Africa is also making great strides in broadband buildouts. What lies behind such rapid expansion in those countries? How do they compare to the U.S.’s initiative under the bipartisan infrastructure law?

Panelists

  • Panelists have been invited
  • Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

WATCH HERE, or on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTube channel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.

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Broadband Breakfast on October 11, 2023 – Spectrum Sharing: How Promising and How Real Is It?

Some see potential in advancing 5G technology while others worry about connectivity performance

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September 11, 2023

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Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, October 11 – Spectrum Sharing: How Promising and How Real Is It?

The practice of spectrum sharing, where multiple operators coexist within the same bandwidth, is often lauded as a solution to the limited availability of spectrum. Some view it as a promising avenue for advancing 5G technology and beyond, potentially with the aid of artificial intelligence. However, critics contend that crowding may hinder and degrade connectivity performance. In light of the FCC’s recent plans to open up more spectrum for commercial use, what lies ahead for spectrum management and licensing? How can regulators strike a balance between expanding sharing opportunities and ensuring optimal connectivity?

Panelists

  • Panelists have been invited
  • Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

WATCH HERE, or on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTube channel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.

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