intellectual property protected, both domestically and abroad? >> at amazon, we've been working with rights holders since our inception to ensure that their legitimate product is made available to the widest range of consumers, and like wise for our customers that we provide them the legitimate product. so the 120,000 videos that i've referred to available in amazon instant video and on kindle fire, those were all obtained by working with the rights holders. so we're very comfortable continuing to work with them to respect their intellectual property rights. >> good. one last question, if i may, for ms. whiting from nielsen. i know you look at all this data all the time. one of the things that this committee has been working on is trying to get high quality broadband to every american that

wants it. and it's particularly challenging in rule areas. do you think that as more and more content is available online, that that will actually incentivize people to get broadband? especially in the rural areas? >> i think it just seems like a logical conclusion because there's so much of what you could talk about and experience every day, the applications that are useful, the way you can communicate and learn and get your entertainment, being available, particularly on a phone, as i say. i think it will lead to more people asking for broadband and requiring that access, so that usually leads to a dmeshl discussion about making it available. >> and that's going to lead to the issue of affordability for broadband and trying to get it deployed. one of the concerns i think this committee has expressed over and over is we don't want two americas. we don't want urban to have all the latest and greatest and

rural just be left behind. thank you very much. >> senator, i would add that the offering of all this additional video, which is really -- requires that broadband capability, which i mentioned before as far as the four-megathreshold that the fcc has stipulated, my impression in dealing with these various isp, internet service providers, is they are looking for new ways to be able to offer broadband to more households and to be able to sell it. it is, frankly, a good margin business. as people see more and more of this content, the demand goes up. as typically occurs with most businesses, when demand rises, businesses typically see that provide and try to fill it. so i actually think that this increase in video content may well be a catalyst for many to build more. we hope so. >> thank you. >> thank you, senator pryor.

senator nelson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. senator pryor, you've been such a champion for rural america. and as you know, the fruits of your labors in getting broadband, the fruits of the chairman's labors in getting broadband out into the rural areas have helped my state enormously as well, as a lot of people don't think of florida as being rural, but there are vast portions of florida that are rural. and i might say, having done a number of town hall meetings in the rural parts of the state. now that as a result of the stimulus bill, having put money into expanding broadband into the rural areas, which is now just occurring, that is being greeted with exceptional excitement and approval.

so that basically, as you say, we don't have two americas that. the children in rural america have the same access to the information that children in urban america do. i wanted to ask a question of ms. whiting, because i'm just absolutely -- i was fascinated the other day when a senior member of our staff said to me that she does not watch television anymore. that she gets all of her information basically from either her computer or from her ipad. so how in the world is nielsen, which has now refined the technique so well in determining how many eyeballs are watching a tv set, with your boxes, your electronic boxes now that

measure it exactly, how in the world is nielsen adapting to determine how many eyeballs are watching content on the internet? >> thank you for the question, senator nelson. we've obviously had to adapt. as we just talked about, if we want to follow the audience of a program across any screen, the tv, the pc, the phone, the ipad soon, any websites, we have to measure that. and we do that for both the programmers and advertisers. so we use technology to do that. we recruit samples of consumers who let us measure that. there are a growing number of people who do not own -- there are contradictions going on. there's small, younger group of people who do not own a tv set. they tend to have a smart phone, not a land line. and they're getting their

content and their information that way. and you balance that with households that now have four tv sets and their pcs and every other device, and our tasking because of programmers and advertisers really require it, is to measure the programming across that. so technology is our friend here, without giving a long explanation. we use technology to help us measure with permission the behavior on all those screens in samples of people. so it's possible. and we're doing it. and i expect we'll have to continue to innovate. because there will just be more screens. >> well, technology refined your tech noolg with regard to television screens, because you could put a box on a representative sample and then determine who was watching what program. how do you do that with a hand held computer device? >> so very specifically, it's usually a software application

that we basically recruit someone to participate. we download either a soft war application or we're measuring a commercial or a program and there's a code in the commercial and program and we pick it up if you're part -- basically, it's code recognition. it's technology. it's residing on whatever the equipment is, whether it's a phone or a pc or soon your ipad, we use software. so it's not a separate box that's connected. it's a way of understanding behavior with your permission. >> how do advertisers understand that they are being charged appropriately on the internet as compared to the satisfaction and confidence that they have in the number of eyeballs that are

watching a tv program because of you? how are they being satisfied that they're being accurately charmed a fee for their advertising on the internet or any way that it's dribtded through an internet type program. >> so the really simple measures advertisers are looking for, how many people or what exposure did my ad have. they have estimates for television. there are a number of different ways they can get those estimates for online display adds, search advertising. they get feedback. we provide it. other companies do. the number one question we're getting now from major advertisers is to understand across the screens how an ad campaign can be effective. how to balance the money they put in. so that's again done. recruiting panels. using technology to measure.

same kind of way we do in television. exposure to an ad and then there's the effectiveness. there are many ways. we have website information. you have other technology that people can do that. so we have similar methods to television. similar answers for advertisers. and a big question that's happening is trying to understand how they complement each other. >> if i use myself as an example, a tv program goes dark and an ad comes up. now, maybe my mind is watching it or not, but that's what's filling the space. not so with an internet screen. i may be looking at content on the screen on an ipad and there's an adjacent ad, but i'm not paying any attention to that. how do you go about measuring effectiveness of that compared to a tv program?

>> so we actually use a method that involves both understanding that a panel we've recruited has that ad up and on the screen, and then recall after the fact and certain measures we create for recall and impact for that advertising for major advertisers. so it's a combination of things along with demographic information we have so we can say this ad was viewed by an estimate of men 18 to 49, and then we additionally would look at the impact of the ad in the recall. and we do that for a number of major advertisers, many of them, in fact. >> do you find that the recall for internet ads is much lower than the recall for tv ads? >> it depends on the creative. it depends on the placement. in other words, the actual ad. what we do find is that ads that

are shown on both television and the internet have much higher recall and much higher effectiveness when they're combined. so that's something that many advertisers are studying with interest. though they complement each other. >> senator, i would add also to the point i made in my remarks about innovative business models and new offerings that various content companies, which obviously use advertising, as a part of the way to fund programming, are spermexperimen with ways of lighter load, shorter ads. to my comment, without the old and in some way in with the new. it's not just the means the content is being delivered but the way it's offered up. how the ads are delivered up, pre-roll, where you watch an ad before. there are a number of things

being done that's being utilized. from what we hear, extremely effective. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator nelson. i'm going to ask the final question, there being nobody left. and soville to roll several into it. you were very interesting the way you answered senator pryor's questions because you really he is tatded when you talked about the effecti -- you really hesitated talking about the effective coverage. you had an answer, but it was a while in coming and i thought that was honest and i happened to agree with that. the business of when rural state senators talk about rural people or poor people in far off places and people say well, they're just pandering to their constituency, is really not at

all the case. this is a basic american precept. mr. diller said that a number of times. you've all said it. everything has to go to everybody. and that's such a fundamentally american concept and it's also a concept which is so probable, can be probable with this proliferation of platforms and delivery areas. however, i think this committee has done a very good job in three areas of all of this. and that is we started the e-rate. houston went wireless the second day and was completely -- every classroom was done on the third day. others didn't do that. so it was a much longer process. but now the e-rate has worked. that's the starting point. connectivity is always the starting point. i think we've pushed really hard

on broadband. and through the stimulus package, which some people say i never want to see the likes of that again, and therein lies the problem. because what we have done in broadband as a matter of public policy may have reached its point of no return. then i think we've done also a very good job in wireless. put a lot of money into wireless. on the other hand, we haven't done that by ourselves. obviously others have done it. but with all of these things going on, all i can think of when i hear about rural america, and i'm going to think about the rural part of florida, not the rural part of west virginia just for the moment, so that i appear to be more honest in my questioning. and that is that for the most part, it's been the business of the telecommunications companies up until now. and there's always this wonderful thing, because there's

lots of mergers. so there are a lot of conditions. and the conditions always include precise -- you have to go everywhere, cover everybody. and a lot of the telephone companies that have ruled over west virginia over the years, they've all promised it and none of them have done anything about it. yes, they've incrementally moved things forward, but if you talk about mine disasters, if you talk about driving down any interstate in west virginia, you have to kind of memorize the place where is the interstate rises high enough so that you have cell service, which is actually humiliating and embarrassing in the modern world. that's our world. that's our world. that's rural america's world. and so i am on fire on the business of the we are going to have this explosion of technologies, which i welcome, i totally welcome, and i welcome for several reasons. one is that i think this is

the -- this explosion of technology and capacity to see, learn, listen, watch. may be the salvation of the older generation. because you read so much about people alone and they don't have friends. all of a sudden they have all the friends in the entire world. they can make 25 friends every single hour if they want to. but the problem is they sort of have to have children in their household. but most of them don't. so that whole problem of how is it that they come to the marvels of this new way of watching, learning, going back to 12th century british history and finding out the marvels of how people actually built cathedrals back then. the stone mason process. how could they do it? i mean, it's all interesting stuff. it's exactly the kind of thing

that would keep them company, keep them motivated. and then the whole news factor. i also have the big problem in question, because news outlets are diminishing. i think there's one a.p. person left in charleston, west virginia, which is our largest city and capital. newspapers are getting smaller. the posts are getting easier and faster to read. as is the time. a little bit less quickly. and television increases. and news is now gotcha, and local news is a little bit less than cn and msnbc and fox, etc. but it's still that nature and then local broadcast has some of the same. so i worry about those things greatly. but what i worry most about is access to this, that we're

talking here in exciting, marvelous, technologically proficient, slick but profoundly important and right development. i'm a true believer in net neutrality. i want everything to go out to everybody. i don't want anybody stopping anything. we haven't really dealt with caps here, because at some point you can't create spectrum. you can buy it back or give it back, and then the fcc can sell you some. but you know, the streaming, as bill nelson pointed out, it eats up a lot of megabits really, really fast. so my question to you, having neatly wrapped all my complaints into that, what's going to happen in this new revolution, which is going to forest not just the telecommunications companies, but others who are in the game now. to get it out to people who are not asking for it.

they are not asking for it. i don't believe they are. i think when they knew they could have it and then overcame their fear of doing it. and had access to getting it, might start with connectivity with that, they can't go down to their local public library to do all this stuff. there's a connection down there, connectivity. but i think it's going to be a really tough slug. but it is the classic american requirement of this new explosion of possibilities. i have absolutely no idea who i asked that question to, so i'll just ask it to barry diller. >> thank you so much. i think just like long ago, phone companies were forced that in return for their monopoly, that they had to connect to every place that existed. >> but they didn't do it. none of them. >> well, i don't know -- they

didn't -- >> no, the interstates and went to the cities and they got all of that. happy but out where people mine coal in the rural parts where i live, where our farm is, you can't get anything. >> well, i had thought phone coverage was pretty much everywhere. however, if it wasn't and it isn't, then its replacement to a large degree, which is wireless -- >> right. >> -- and broadband. it should be the policy i think of this country that every place must have the ability to receive both wireless and broadband connectivity. and that ought to be -- that ought to be our law. we cannot compete in the world with the 16th or 18th best

communications infrastructure. >> now, you're talking more broadband than you are wireless. >> no, wireless as well. but by the way, you speak about if you go too low in parts of west virginia, i promise you if you drive around los angeles or new york city or seattle you're going to find lots of dropped calls. you're going to find lots of places where there's spotty coverage. but -- and i think that, again, we haven't had enough competition. we haven't had enough national policy that is -- >> how does national policy do this? i mean, i'm meant to be in love with national policy, and i've seen these national policies, but it's always the people who have to make the money who decide -- decline to get it out there because it's at the margins. >> we built a highway system in this country, which we did in the '50s, i believe.

>> right. >> that got done. why is this so impossible for us to organize a system where it does get done? >> because that was an executive decision approved by the congress in a much simpler time and this is an explosion of technologies which so many people are just barely holding on by fingertips, and particularly the more rural you get. and inner city's the same thing. if it's not going to the inner city, that's the same complaint i would have. >> sure. >> so who's going to push this? >> i'm sitting here pushing it. my colleagues will push it. most of the people in this room i think would push it. i think you ask anybody they'll say yes, we want competition in communication infrastructure, we want it to be universal, we want it to be the best in the world, and we'll support it. >> but mr. diller, do you understand what it feels like when you go to a place called

upper big branch somewhere in raleigh county and they've just had a big explosion at a massive -- massey mine and 29 miners have been killed, but nobody's really quite sure of that yet. so everybody's gathered around the portals, as close as they're allowed to get, and everybody is trying to dial their mother, their son, their grandmothers, et cetera, in detroit and around west virginia and they cannot do it. and up come charging up the road comes boatload after boatload of wireless poles from verizon -- i mean, land line poles from verizon because they're going to set them up. but you see what i mean? in other words, any kind of a rural mishap. now, i.t. and health care is helping a lot on this, on that particular aspect. but the general availability and accessibility remains very much on my mind, and i worry about it. >> i sympathize.

>> any concluding aristotelian comments? >> mr. chairman, i guess what i'd weigh in with is a balance is required because it is a combination of factors like anything. we certainly, most of these companies sitting at the table, are benefited from the very notion of having wide distribution of broadband on many levels, everything from the very basic for us of pushing out updates to our operating systems to the delivery of entertainment. so they're all essential. and the reason we supported the fcc position on net neutrality was because it was a balanced approach, and i think as you evaluate it, since we're down to the last, i don't know that i'll have the last word, but the last one of the closing thoughts, is to balance those interests because they're -- the companies that actually build, implement this are in a better position than certainly i am or we are to address what all is involved but

it is really looking at that. it is a balancing act. and i think as we evaluated that we realized just that, that you have to take into account the innovation opportunities, the delivery of content, as i said before. i believe that as more high-speed content is delivered i'd like to believe that there will be an incentive for the investment made to deliver that broadband. and it is essential for this country, and i certainly agree with mr. diller and the rest of you that, whether we're 18th, i know we're way down the list. and that is certainly something that, whether it's delivery of education, which is fundamental, all the way to the more mundane in education entertainment, it's essential because this is where we are headed. >> right, right. >> mr. chairman, may i make a corroborating comment? >> well, is there a possibility that you won't make a corroborating comment? >> but you will be very happy if i do. >> of course i will.

>> i just want to say, if it's any consolation, the highest point in florida is 350 feet. so not a lot of hills and valleys. and very spotty coverage. but as mr. diller says, in any urban area how many -- it has crossed every one of our thoughts, you're in the middle of a very important cell phone conversation and you lose it and you wonder why don't they have this problem in third world countries on this planet? and i would just like to throw out a final thought, that we need to consult with folks like this on getting what should congress do in the updating of our video and communications laws given the fact of the

subject of this panel today. thank you. >> you have been a superb panel. and we have -- many ideas have been thrown out. frustrations have been thrown out. and the opportunities are endless. and so it really is the most exciting period in telecommunications and all of this since i came here, by definition. and so i congratulate you all for being a part of it and for being warriors in the war of the roses. this hearing is adjourned. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> oh, my gosh, great to meet you.

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