and that’s pretty smart.

I own a tiny, tiny web design company in a very small town full of blue collar workers outside of a very large metropolis. Many of these plumbers, backhoe operators, beauticians, restaurant owners, & custom home builders want websites but have no idea where to begin. Before they even think of it, I buy their domain name to prevent a big telecom from going through the phone book and purchasing it and then using it for extortion to put up their website. I build their static site for free (or a new granite kitchen countertop but don’t tell my accountant) and I charge them reasonable monthly rates. When I hear that a meat market is paying AT&T or American Express $75 a month for their website that they have to maintain themselves, it sickens me. It’s worth a couple hundred bucks a year to hold their domain names myself until they are ready to become a customer. I told this to the local Chamber of Commerce and they had no idea that they did not own www.mybusinessname.com. They simply don’t understand that while they may own the DBA license in the county, they don’t own the URL.

NAB is really really worried about the Internet. The more egalitarian the medium, the more it worries them.

Remember though: incentive auctions for spectrum will *always* compensate broadcasters for any spectrum sold off. It’s also voluntary.