Big Telecom Still Pushing Hard For Broadband Tax On Big Tech

Broadband

from the double-dipping dept

Telecom lobbyists have been working overtime for years in both the US and EU, trying to get policymakers to support the idea of “Big Tech” paying “Big Telecom” billions of additional dollars for no coherent reason.

This taxation effort always involves some variant of the claim that popular tech services are getting a “free ride” on the Internet, so it’s “only fair” that they help pay telecom giants for broadband expansion.

But what’s usually portrayed as a good faith adult effort to bridge the digital divide is, however, a several decade old quest by telecom monopolies to force tech companies to pay them billions of dollars in additional subsidies they haven’t earned and most certainly don’t deserve. Especially since they routinely waste or abuse the billions in taxpayer dollars they’ve already received.

With the recent death by Trumpublicans of a low income COVID broadband discount program, the opportunists at AT&T and other telecoms are ramping up these efforts once again. In several filings spotted by Ars Technica, US Telecom, primarily backed by AT&T, once again trots out the claim that tech giants are somehow freeloaders that should be subsidizing broadband:

“Through focusing on the Big Tech companies who benefit most from broadband connectivity, the Commission will fairly allocate the burden of sustaining USF.”

The FCC’s Universal Service Fund helps fund rural and school broadband expansion, and is primarily funded by a levy on traditional phone lines, which are obviously in decline. To shore up the program, there’s been a push to include a small tax on broadband and wireless lines, which the telecom industry opposes because it would only boost consumer annoyance at already high prices.

Instead, they consistently prefer that the levy be offloaded to tech companies, under the pretense that they’ve been freeloading. Except in U.S. telecom, nobody gets a “free ride.” Decades of consolidation and monopolization ensures that there’s muted competition, in turn ensuring that everybody pays significantly more than the developed nation average for broadband access. Tech companies included.

Here’s the thing: tech companies already pay billions of dollars annually not only for bandwidth, but for their own cloud, CDN, transit, undersea cable, and other infrastructure. Google technically is already a broadband provider when you factor in Google Fi (wireless) and Google Fiber.

Here’s the other thing: there’s nothing about this telecom lobbying effort that’s good faith, even though the news outlets that cover it can’t help but treating it as such.

Telecom is an industry that has waged a relentless, multi-decade war on both regulatory oversight and competition, ensuring that U.S. broadband prices are sky high. If policymakers truly cared about broadband affordability, they’d take aim at corruption and monopolization in telecom.

But that would involve standing up to telecoms patriotically tethered to our domestic intelligence and first responder networks. So instead, we basically throw billions of dollars at telecom giants in exchange for unaffordable fiber networks that are routinely left half completed.

So again, before policymakers expand the contribution base to this lazy subsidy parade, it makes a lot of sense to start implementing significant reforms. Including a survey of numerous school subsidy programs companies like AT&T have been accused of ripping off for decades. Do an honest audit there, then come back to consider expanding any telecom subsidy investment base.

It’s not that having big tech pay some amount of money to genuinely fund broadband expansion is the worst idea ever conceived. It’s that the telecom companies proposing this idea envision a program where they get billions in additional poorly managed dollars managed by feckless bureaucrats who lack the backbone to ensure this money actually goes where it’s supposed to.

In the EU, one big telecom proposal involves directly taxing tech companies that that account for over 5 percent of a telco’s average peak traffic. That plan includes no government involvement or oversight — just a massive wad of cash thrown annually at telecoms with minimal accountability. This is their ideal vision: just billions in unaccountable dollars and euros funneled from tech to telecom under the pretense of progress.

If Trump wins the Presidency, I think there’s an extremely good chance the FCC finally makes the telecom tax on big tech come true. Likely under the guidance of Commissioner Brendan Carr (who has never seen an AT&T idea he didn’t like). That we should reform and audit the billions in regulatory favors and subsidies already thrown at companies like AT&T curiously never enters into frame.

Filed Under: ACP, affordabile access, big tech, big telecom, digital divide, fcc, subsidies, telecom, usf

Tour De France Loses Trademark Opposition To German Gym Chain

Trademark

from the c'est-la-vie dept

There seems to be a direct correlation between the size of a sports league or group and the degree to which that same entity will jealously “protect” anything to do with its intellectual property. The International Olympic Committee is probably the apotheosis of this theory, though both FIFA and the NFL are strong showings as well.

Well, their much smaller cousin, the Société du Tour de France is now making an appearance, having opposed the European trademark registration for a German gym chain’s slogan, “Tour de X.” That phrase stems from the gym’s name: FitX. Unfortunately for the TdF people, EUIPO sided with the gym on the matter and, when it was appealed up to the courts, the courts did as well.

The French company holds the right to the expression TOUR DE FRANCE or LE TOUR DE FRANCE for its goods and services. The Tour de France is a prestigious annual men’s multi-stage bicycle race held primarily in France.

The Luxembourg-based General Court on Wednesday sided with EUIPO and dismissed Societe du Tour de France’s challenge.

“The public will not confuse the marks despite the identity or similarity of the goods and services,” judges said. “The only common element between the marks – ‘tour de’ – has a weak distinctive character and the degree of similarity between the marks is low,” they said.

It’s hard to argue against that. “Tour de France” is certainly a unique enough phrase to be deserving of trademark protection in the sports and apparel markets. But “Tour de” on its own most certainly is not. And since that’s the only commonality between the marks in this case, you can see the court’s point in siding with FitX.

The court went on to point out that “Tour de” itself is not only generic in nature, as well as being commonly used across all kinds of cycling and sports events, but is descriptive in nature. Put together, this opposition is a loser.

The Tour de France folks can appeal this up to the highest court in France if it chooses, but it should, instead, take the lesson that’s been taught by the lower court and move along.

Filed Under: euipo, tour de x, trademark
Companies: fitx, tour de france

Seattle Takes A Pass On ShotSpotter, Will Beef Up Other Surveillance Efforts Instead

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the fewer-mics,-more-cameras dept

Here comes a little more bad news for a company that’s seen quite a lot of it lately.

SoundThinking, which formerly did business as ShotSpotter, is seeing another high-profile, would-be customer walk away from the table after determining the costs would outweigh the benefits.

As Matt Markovich reports for KIRO News, Seattle has decided to move on with other surveillance options after taking a close look at SoundThinking’s tech.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has abandoned plans to install acoustic gunshot locators in Seattle. The decision, which ends over a decade of efforts to implement this technology, was made after receiving more precise cost estimates for the comprehensive “Crime Prevention Technology Pilot.”

Last year the Seattle City Council authorized $1.8 million for a suite of new crime-finding technologies including ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection system using microphones, GPS and cell networks to alert police of gunfire. It faced criticism for its high false alarm rate and potential to increase over-policing in communities of color.

That aligns Seattle with other major cities that have decided ShotSpotter/SoundThinking isn’t worth paying for. The biggest one, of course, is Chicago, which decided to end its contract with ShotSpotter later this year. Or did it? The mayor says the city is done with ShotSpotter, but city council members — perhaps persuaded by SoundThinking’s low-effort “save us” web form — have voted to keep the contract running past its September 2024 expiration date.

Losing Chicago means losing a few million a year in service charges. Losing Seattle doesn’t really cost ShotSpotter anything as it never went live there. And it’s not as though the proposed deployment would have been all that expensive, at least in terms of an annual budget in a city the size of Seattle. But even at (only?) $800,000 a year, the city council and mayor decided this relative drop in the law enforcement budget bucket was too much to spend.

That’s not to say the PD money won’t be spent, however. The city — via a statement from the mayor’s office — will definitely shell out more cash for surveillance options and cop tech. It just won’t be ShotSpotter.

Following a robust public engagement, research review, and cost analysis process, the City will prioritize two new technologies – CCTV and RTCC – as well as an expansion of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR). The combination of CCTV and RTCC [real-time crime center] will help provide near-term improvements to deter crime with public awareness of the cameras, address serious crimes, and collect evidence in the pilot areas to hold offenders accountable. The expansion of ALPR from its current use in 11 vehicles to all police vehicles with dashcams will also help solve active investigations, find missing persons, and recover lost or stolen vehicles. 

So, it’s not really much of a win for Seattle, even if it’s a pretty decisive loss for ShotSpotter/SoundThinking. The questionable tech may have been sidelined, but the city is throwing money at another problematic crime “solution:” a real-time crime center tied to a network of CCTV cameras and roving ALPRs. A real-time crime center may provide fast reactions to unfolding events, but it’s also only a few software installations away from becoming a predictive policing hub, which means the “over-policing in communities of color” the mayor cited as a reason to move away from ShotSpotter will just be replaced with algorithms, garbage data, and enforcement efforts even more questionable than hanging mics off any available piece of public property.

The mayor’s office says it’s heard concerns about “over-policing communities of color,” but the list of areas set to see the first deployment of increased surveillance are these:

The pilot will deploy closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in three targeted neighborhoods that suffer from a disproportionate amount of criminal activity: Aurora Avenue North, the downtown Third Avenue corridor, and the Chinatown-International District (CID).

Huh. Not the way I would have gone with that statement. While the other two areas seem to have some persistent traffic concerns and some spots of increased crime, I’m not sure anyone’s going to be convinced “over-policing communities of color” is the concern the mayor’s office swears it is when Chinatown is on the list of “targeted” neighborhoods.

Whatever the case, the solution — at least for the time being — appears to be ramping up alternative surveillance options that don’t involve listening for loud noises. Instead, cops will be able to look at more people more often. And, with their roaming ALPRs, they’ll be able to create a pretty comprehensive database of people’s movements that will no longer rely on drivers passing strategically placed (but immobile) plate readers scattered around the city.

And there’s an added benefit to running plates while on the run, so to speak. Let’s hope Seattle steers clear of this, but other cities have allowed police officers (and other city employees) to go war-driving for plates to find people with unpaid tickets, uninsured vehicles… even people who are just behind on their property taxes. As long as the city can resist the urge to turn ALPRs to ATMs, the damage should be minimized.

But no matter what Seattle does, ShotSpotter won’t be a part of it. And that’s not really going to help its sales pitches to other law enforcement entities around the nation. When major cities are deciding with alarming frequency this tech just isn’t worth paying for, the future of this particular tech seems a whole lot less rosy than the trade show pamphlets might suggest.

Filed Under: alpr, bruce harrell, cctv, gunshot, gunshot detection, police, privacy, seattle
Companies: shotspotter, soundthinking

As Elon Is Asking For A $56 Billion Bonus, He’s Demanding Fired Twitter Employees Pay Back Severance

Failures

from the forgot-to-carry-the-one dept

A suggestion for Elon: next time you take over a company and decide to immediately fire three-quarters of the staff, maybe hold onto a few of the payroll staff before you do.

It might help you avoid some mistakes.

You may recall that early on Musk laid off well over half of the staff at Twitter and then demanded the remaining folks pledge to be “extremely hardcore.” This led to basically the entire payroll team leaving the company. Since then, there have been all sorts of disputes about how much severance the company owed former employees, with a few ongoing lawsuits.

But, down in Australia, it appears that Team Elon is demanding a bunch of laid off ExTwitter employees pay back the severance they received because Twitter accidentally flubbed the conversion between the US dollar and the Australian dollar. I mean, this is pretty embarrassing for the guy who pretends to be a rocket scientist supergenius:

Elon Musk’s social media platform X is threatening to take some former Australian employees to court, demanding they return entitlements it claims were overpaid to them after it bungled the currency conversion from US to Australian dollars on the payments.

Acknowledging its “conversion error”, the platform formerly known as Twitter is asking former employees, some sacked more than 18 months ago, to repay amounts of up to $70,000 in some cases.

But, this comes across as even dumber because it’s happening at the exact same time that Musk is asking Tesla shareholders to re-approve his ~$56 billion compensation package, which a judge threw out earlier this year. Dude, suck it up and pay the $70k.

And yes, it does seem clear that Twitter made a mistake here, though it’s entirely on the company and whatever employees were still around for not double-checking how to convert things properly.

Still, the company is threatening legal action if people don’t pay back the money:

The currency conversion errors made by X when employees were paid their entitlements once they were made redundant had led to overpayments of between $1500 and $70,000. According to one account, X paid out the share entitlements at a conversion rate 2.5 times the value of the shares.

Separate correspondence seen by this masthead from representatives for X told former staff members if they failed to comply with the demand set out, Twitter Australia Holdings Pty Ltd reserved the right to commence proceedings for the recovery of the overpayment “together with interest”.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that, so far, no one has agreed to send the money back. I don’t know how the laws in Australia work concerning overpayment and repayment, but, honestly, good for those employees.

Filed Under: australia, conversion, elon musk, layoffs, severance
Companies: twitter, x

Daily Deal: Rosetta Stone

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Embark on the journey of language learning with the Rosetta Stone lifetime subscription for all languages. Rosetta Stone has been the go-to software for language learning for the past 27 years. With its immersive and intuitive training method, you might be reading, writing, and speaking a new language with confidence in no time. It’s on sale for $190.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Meta Won’t Fight Online Kid Safety Regulations Because It Sees Them As A Competitive Moat

Overhype

from the big-tech-loves-these-laws dept

Forget everything you think you know about Mark Zuckerberg and his army of lobbyists blocking any attempt to regulate social media. The truth is more nuanced (but perhaps less complicated). Meta is actually happy with internet regulations: they keep down competitive threats.

I’ve been trying to make this point for a while: while politicians and the media falsely believe that Meta is standing in the way of internet regulations, nothing is further from the truth. Meta knows full well that it has the legal firepower to comply with basically any internet regulations, and as the company has had to deal with growing competition, it loves the idea of using regulations as a moat to keep competitors at bay.

Remember, Meta’s (then Facebook’s) vocal support of FOSTA caused that bill to become law. That was after we were told for months that it was “big tech” that was blocking this horrible law, that has since been shown to have cost many lives (just as many of us critics predicted). Back then, those of us who protested FOSTA were told we were “big tech shills,” only to then have it be made clear that “big tech” was perfectly happy with the law.

There’s a pretty straight through line from FOSTA to the kid safety bills we see today. FOSTA was seen as a way to “attack big tech” over sex trafficking. Politicians have tried to run the same playbook on a number of topics, including terrorism, illegal drugs, and now “child safety.” Child safety is the one that stuck, but it’s the same cynical game: by painting “big tech” as the enemy, politicians can dismiss principled criticism and score easy political points.

So, whenever we hear claims about how Meta and Google are standing in the way of “child safety” laws, or that Meta and Google need to “come to the table” on various regulatory proposals, we have to laugh. Meta and Google have no problem with most of these laws. They know that it’s the government building a moat for them that helps limit the ability of upstart competitors to compete in the marketplace.

For the last couple of years, as various “protect the children online” laws have been passed, one of the most frustrating bits has been lots of people falsely insisting that any criticism of these laws is “big tech talking points.” That was the line trotted out by New York politicians in response to any criticism of their “SAFE for Kids Act.” And we’ve heard similar criticism from politicians (and, frankly, media folks) in other states from Florida to California to Texas to Utah to Ohio and more.

Behind the scenes, I’ve been hearing all this time that companies like Meta, Google, and even Apple are actually fine with all these laws and don’t even want them challenged. NetChoice, the trade organization that has been at the forefront of challenging many of these laws, has a unique setup in that their members don’t control the organization’s actions and don’t control which lawsuits it takes or doesn’t take.

So while everyone has assumed that NetChoice lawsuits are really proxies for “big tech” member companies like Meta and Google, I keep hearing whispered rumors that the companies are actually upset about the lawsuits and would be quite happy with just letting these laws go into practice. They know they can handle the compliance costs and (more to the point) that upstart competitors can’t.

Still, I’ve never had anything more than rumors and whispers, which was not enough to report on it all… until now. The Washington Post got its hands on a letter from lawyers representing Meta to a Maryland legislator saying that it would not stand in the way of any “protect the children” laws:

The social media giant would not back an attempt to block the measure in court, a lawyer for the firm Rifkin Weiner Livingston wrote in a previously unreported email to Maryland Del. Jared Solomon (D-Montgomery), according to a screenshot obtained by the Tech Brief.

Solomon was worried that NetChoice and others would sue over Maryland’s newly passed “Maryland Kids Code” law. That law has most of the problems of California’s Age Appropriate Design Code, which has already been (correctly) declared unconstitutional. Apparently, believing the false hype that Meta controls NetChoice, Solomon sent a letter threatening the companies not to sue to block the law. And Meta responded saying “sure, no problem, we’re not going to get in the way.”

Amid concern that NetChoice would also challenge the similar Maryland law, Solomon and other state lawmakers urged the group’s member companies in letters last month to “comply” and “not attempt to undermine this bipartisan, lifesaving effort by suing to block its enactment.”

“Meta is not aware of a legal challenge to [the] Maryland Kids Code and does not plan to support one,” Meta’s outside law firm wrote in response to the letter.

Solomon said that while he is “pleased they will not support a lawsuit,” he hopes Meta “will urge their partners at NetChoice, which they help fund, to do the same and help us implement these common sense protections for kids instead of trying to needlessly drag this through the courts.”

So, there’s a lot to comment on here, but let’s start with this: in an age where we’re supposedly concerned with government “jawboning” to suppress speech, it’s pretty ridiculous for a legislator to demand companies “not attempt to undermine this bipartisan, lifesaving effort by suing to block its enactment.”

First off, it’s not “lifesaving.” It’s actively harmful. We’ve gone over this dozens of times, but legislation of this nature is based on a moral panic that misunderstands the actual concerns and challenges facing kids these days. It substitutes the moral panic-induced ignorance of lawmakers as expertise, while ignoring what actual experts say.

Second, telling companies not to challenge laws that are unconstitutional is fucking crazy. If the law is unconstitutional (and it is), then let that play out in the courts, rather than effectively threatening companies not to challenge it.

But, most importantly, this revelation should make it clear that, despite the narrative making the rounds that Meta, Google, and Apple are somehow pulling the strings on all these lawsuits, that’s not the case at all.

Sometimes it really is true that the people challenging these laws actually recognize that these laws are unconstitutional attacks on the rights of users of these platforms and are challenging the laws accordingly.

Of course, I assume that this basic fact made clear here will be forgotten the next time it’s convenient for supporters of these laws to insist that any criticism is just “big tech talking points.” The fact is that “big tech” is pretty happy with most of these laws.

The laws are often written in a way that the “big tech” companies already comply with them, so there’s little additional cost. But they make it so that it’s prohibitively expensive for anyone else to comply. And that means these laws help Meta and Google and hamstring any upstarts and competitors.

Filed Under: aadc, age appropriate design, competition, maryland, maryland kids code, protect the kids, regulation
Companies: google, meta, netchoice

Canada Imposes 5% Tax On Streaming To Fund Local News, Diverse Content

Culture

from the get-ready-to-pay-more dept

Canadian Regulators are leaning on new authority built into the 2023 Online Streaming Act to impose a new 5 percent tax on streaming TV and music services like Netflix and Spotify; funding that the regulator says will then be used to help fund Canadian broadcasting.

According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announcement, the plan should drive $200 million in new funding annually to local news and a variety of other public interest content:

“The funding will be directed to areas of immediate need in the Canadian broadcasting system, such as local news on radio and television, French-language content, Indigenous content, and content created by and for equity-deserving communities, official language minority communities, and Canadians of diverse backgrounds.”

The fee systems effectively mirrors the fees already imposed on local broadcasters. Past efforts on this front (in the U.S. and Canada) haven’t been received particularly well by streaming giants, and the same applied here. The Digital Media Association, which represents Amazon Music, Apple Music and Spotify, insisted in a statement that the new tax will only expand what they’re calling an “affordability crisis”:

“As Canada’s affordability crisis remains a significant challenge, the government needs to avoid adding to this burden. This is especially true for younger Canadians who are the predominant users of audio streaming services.”

Huge contracts for the likes of Joe Rogan and Wall Street’s insatiable demand for relentless quarterly growth have more to do with streaming affordability than anything else, though in this case the services are correct in that they’ll simply pass the cost of the new taxes directly on to users. Facing slowing subscriber growth, streaming giants have already been pretty relentlessly raising rates.

That said, real journalism (especially independent and minority owned) is consistently facing a funding crisis, and much of the conversation (both in the U.S. and Canada) tends to be centered around what isn’t possible, shouldn’t be done (usually framed around the interests of giant corporations), as opposed to actually fixing the problem.

At the same time, similar efforts are often derailed by corruption, and there’s no guarantee the money guaranteed for useful things actually finds the way it its original destination.

Efforts to tax streaming companies to help fund broadband deployment in the States, for example, risk being hijacked by telecom giants looking to exploit corrupt policymakers simply to pad their wallets. Municipalities in Texas have also tried to tax Netflix with a fairly broad disdain for existing law and no particular public interest initiative in mind.

Filed Under: canada, crtc, journalism, streaming, tax, video

Nike Loses In EU Over ‘Footware’ Trademark After Losing In US Earlier This Year

Trademark

from the 0-for-2 dept

It will come as no shock to regular readers here when I remind you all that Nike is a notoriously aggressive actor when it comes to policing its intellectual property, including for trademarks it holds. The reason that reminder is important as a matter of throat-clearing in this case is that one of the worst outcomes when it comes to trademark law is when you pair an aggressive holder of a mark with a mark that is also far too broad or generic, such that it never should have been granted in the first place.

Which brings us to Nike’s attempts to register and hold onto a trademark for “Footware.” The mark was supposed to be used in conjunction with a line of “smart sneakers”, where the shoes would be embedded with hardware running software that would ostensibly provide the wearer with workout metrics and statistics and whatnot. Nike applied for the mark in both the EU and United States. The United States application was halted and ultimately denied after an opposition was filed by San Antonio Shoes earlier this year.

San Antonio Shoes also argued that that the words “footware” and “footwear” are often used interchangeably, which renders the term merely descriptive, because phonetically identical words or simple misspellings do not remove the merely descriptive aspect of the word.

The Board agreed with San Antonio Shoes’ argument in a decision issued on Monday, stating, “as a whole, this combination of ‘Foot’ + ‘Ware’ does not result in a separate distinctive meaning. Even if applicant is the first to use this particular combination of merely descriptive terms, that does not justify registration if the only significance conveyed by the term is merely descriptive.”

Now, I would have also argued before the TTAB that the term is in and of itself generic. A portmanteau of two generic words, footwear and software in this case, doesn’t suddenly become non-generic as a result. Between that and the afore-mentioned phonetic similarities, there is zero reason this mark should have been approved even without the opposition. That detail aside, at least the Trademark Office managed to get to the right place and not grant the mark.

In Europe, though, it was Puma that opposed the trademark application, and for similar reasons. The EU General Court upheld the appeals panel’s decision to void the application, given the generic nature of the applied for mark.

The spat follows a complaint by Puma, which, among other arguments, claimed that Nike’s use of the word could lead to an interpretation of it as a type of software or technology for the feet. 

Puma said it’s “delighted” with the ruling. The Bavaria, Germany-based firm said it “has been arguing for years that at least some consumers will read the term ‘footware’ as ‘footwear’ and therefore will only see the sign ‘footware’ as descriptive information regarding the intended purpose of the goods and services.”

Sorry, Nike, but you’ll have to come up with something a bit more unique for your smart sneakers than “footware.” Just, you know… do it.

Filed Under: footware, generic, trademark
Companies: nike, puma

Newspaper Drops Paywall, Moves To Reader Patronage, Generates 37% More Revenue

Business Models

from the it's-freeing-in-more-ways-than-one dept

The problems and unfairness of the copyright system are so manifest that many would like to adopt alternative approaches. But that’s a big step, and one that undoubtedly requires a certain courage. Every example that shows how the move worked for others is important, since it not only demonstrates that alternatives exist, but that they work. Here’s another data point, reported by the News Revenue Hub:

The Forward has a storied history. Founded in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily, it soon became a national publication — and the most widely read Jewish newspaper in the world. In 1990, the English version of the Forward launched as a weekly publication. In 2019, the Forward went fully digital.

And on December 5, 2023, the Forward marked its latest milestone: The publication removed the paywall for all of its coverage.

The results have been amazing:

In the first three months since dropping the paywall, the newsroom welcomed 1,254 new donors who hadn’t previously paid to access their coverage. From December 5, 2023 to March 15, 2024, the Forward received nearly $583,000 in donations under $5,000 — a 37% increase over paid subscription revenue during the same time frame the previous year.

In December, the month the Forward removed the paywall, the nonprofit saw a 103% increase in reader revenue under $5,000, compared to the same time last year. That includes 176 new monthly recurring donors, averaging $16/month. Previously, an annual digital subscription brought in $51.21, just over $4/month.

It’s great to have those figures showing how trusting your readers to support you can work. Too often sceptics claim that people are only too happy to get something for nothing, and to access online material without ever giving back. The experience of The Forward is an excellent counterexample to that. Another crucial point to emerge from the News Revenue Hub post is the importance of preparing thoroughly for the paywall removal, not least by carrying out research among current readers and supporters:

“A lot of important research needs to happen before a news organization can be ready to take down its paywall,” [Mary Walter-Brown, the News Revenue Hub’s founder and chief executive officer] explained. In particular, the Hub helped the Forward with deep audience analysis, surveying each audience and donor segment to gauge their feelings about removing the paywall and moving to a volunteer donor model.

We learned a lot from those surveys,” Walter-Brown said. “For example, we found that the Forward’s older demographic was motivated by making content available for future generations.” Survey results also showed that most Forward readers were willing to convert their paid subscriptions to donations and consider increasing their gift amount to fund more reporting.”

The report about The Forward moving away from paywalls to donations makes clear how important the support of the News Revenue Hub was in this case. The latter describes itself as “a nonprofit B2B that helps news organizations build membership and crowdfunding programs.” The News Revenue Hub is itself funded by “individual donations, member fees, and foundation grants.” The latter include support from Democracy Fund, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, The Granada Fund, Google News Initiative, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and The John and Florence Newman Foundation. In other words, an organization that helps news publishers move to what is effectively a patronage model, is itself funded in the same way. That’s interesting to see, since Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) also suggested that a shift back to this tried and tested funding approach could offer a viable alternative to today’s dysfunctional copyright system.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally posted to Walled Culture.

Filed Under: business models, journalism, patronage, paywalls
Companies: the forward