German French Battle Over Satellite Technology

Normally Germany and France are close partners at the heart of Europe -- but U.S. diplomatic cables suggest a battle royal between the two allies over satellite technology, with the German space and intelligence agencies accusing the French of bad faith and looking to the United States as a future partner to develop next-generation satellites,  a High Resolution Optical System -- that would potentially be a leap forward in satellite surveillance. A flurry of cables obtained by WikiLeaks and published by the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten shows German officials lobbying for a "strategic US/German partnership" in 2009 to develop the system.
German space agency (DLR) to get it deployed by 2013. The cables also shows the DLR's desperation to end Germany's dependence on "foreign sources of imagery.
In February 2009, U.S. diplomats were told that "to minimize possible political backlash from developing HiRos as an intelligence satellite, the program will be managed by a civil agency." But a later cable -- from September 2009 -- talks about HiRos' "primary customer" as the German intelligence service.
February 2009 reveals efforts by German officials to steer development work on HiRos away from a Franco-German consortium toward a German company "in an effort to minimize French mischief." Subsequently, a senior official at the German space agency said Germany "had been pushed into a corner by the French and left little choice but to go it alone within the EU." The alliance with the United States, explained another official, would help prevent a French monopoly of the lucrative market for electro-optical imagery.
U.S. embassy in Berlin, German officials said HiRos would enable Germany to be "a better partner... by bringing more unique value to the table. German and three U.S. satellites could be deployed, with the imagery being shared. At the same time, access to U.S. imagery of China, North Korea, Iran and the Haqqani Network.
German satellite program "has yielded sophisticated and reliable satellite systems that provide an extraordinary amount of product for their investment." They waxed lyrical about HiRos' "daily revisit capability for any spot on the Earth's surface," and its projected ability to provide detailed 3D images. German officials also promised that HiRos would be able to process "near real-time" or in "milliseconds" data that currently takes several hours to process, despite the intense lobbying by German space agency and intelligence officials -- and optimistic noises in 2009 that they were ready to move beyond the design phase and start "bending metal." CNN has reached out to the German space agency for further comment on the status and funding of HiRos.U.S. State Department nor the French Foreign Ministry would comment on the leaked cables, citing policy not to discuss classified information.

Who Will Pay For Online News?

 At 2.45pm I may not have been sure that I had an opinion, but the nature of the relationship between news journalists and academics is that it would be good for all concerned if you could get an opinion, and give that to us to put on air. With Crikey publisher Eric Beecher and former ACCC head Allan Fels also offering their opinions, In Carney’s view I am one of those who argues that the future of digital media is free content, as we are moving from an environment of information scarcity to one of information abundance, and that is driving down the price of online content of all sorts. The editor of WIRED magazine, Chris Anderson, is another seen to be holding to this view, since commercial businesses ultimately need to set a price for their content or they will go out of business. Carney is also of the view that consumers will ultimately accept the need for this. Just as what were once free sample bags given out at the various Royal Shows around Australia (Easter Show, The Ekka etc.) became show bags with a price attached.
The jury is clearly out on what will happen next, with there being some high profile examples where a subscription model for premium content has worked, such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, and some high-profile failures, most notably The New York Times.
such as boutique political websites and one or two email newsletters, but when it comes to finding actual news he's wrong. So far, the Internet has not ushered in any substantial new news organisations; the vast bulk of Australian online media consumers still rely on Fairfax, News, and no substantial new players have emerged that are Internet only. News, The Age, SMH, ninemsn and the ABC are all sites that are in the Alexa top 25 most accessed Internet sites in Australia, and probably account for about 80% of traffic to Australian news sites, even allowing for a relatively flexible definition of news. While it is difficult to compare the number of users of a site such as Crikey to that of theaustralian.com.au as more people get the former in a “push” format via emails, it would be somewhere in the range of 10-20% of page views for Crikey as compared to that of The Australian, which in turn is well below the site statistics for The Age, ninemsn or the ABC.
 where the majority of an activity tends to cluster around a minority of possibilities, Also known as Pareto’s Law (after the Spanish economist Vilfredo Pareto) or the 80/20 rule, it has been a feature of media industries that the majority cluster towards a minority of options, be they TV programs, Britney Spears CDs, Dan Brown novels or whatever. Put differently, of course the ABC would love to put more arts programs to air, but with a 1 to 2 per cent audience share,is that as digital media distribution costs tend towards zero, the less popular options also can become commercially viable. Social media can intensify this by promoting new ways of gathering a reputation, through ranking systems, word of mouth, shared links via Facebook etc.
When the number of books for sale was determined by the size of the store, that set physical limits to the number of titles that could be held; there is no such capacity constraint on the Internet.
As economist Tyler Cowen puts it, all of the major news providers have found that their revenues are falling below their average costs curves, and they are not prepared to make losses indefinitely. The problems are that no-one knows what the price should be, what is the best approach to charging (subscriptions, pay-per-view, freemiums, or what?).

One is the possibility that new opportunities may emerge for commercially viable free news services that capture the convenience users who opt out of pay models. This may be a new provider who also captures the imaginations of those who are now vocally critical of what they term the mainstream media.
ABC, BBC, SBS, NPR etc. – will charge for news, as it is contrary to their Charter obligations of providing universal access. At any rate, I doubt that Shaun Carney is right that consumers will simply accept paying for what they are currently getting for free simply because they recognise the costs that exist for the established news providers.