Tuesday, October 30, 2018
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FCC Falsely Claims Community Broadband an 'Ominous Threat to The First Amendment'
Brandeis’s Framework for Antitrust and Competition
President Trump renews attacks on media as ‘the true Enemy of the People’
Communications and Democracy
Broadband
Wireless
- Commissioner O'Rielly Statement on 5.9 GHz Phase I Testing Data | Federal Communications Commission
- Commissioner Rosenworcel on 5.9 GHz Test Results | Federal Communications Commission
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Communications and Democracy
President Donald Trump lashed out anew at the news media, calling it “the true Enemy of the People,” and he again blamed what he called “fraudulent” reporting for anger that has led to a spate of recent violence in the country. "There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame...of Anger and Outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony. Fake News Must End!" he tweeted. The day before, on Oct 28, President Trump wrote on Twitter, “The Fake News is doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country.”
US Agency for Global Media vows to investigate broadcast report that called George Soros a ‘multimillionaire Jew’
John Lansing, CEO and director of the US Agency for Global Media (formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors), which oversees Radio and Television Martí’s parent office, said that a probe is underway of a Spanish-language program describing George Soros as a “multimillionaire Jew” and espousing conspiracy theories about the billionaire philanthropist. The 15-minute segment was aired in May by Radio and Television Martí, which broadcasts news and other programs promoting US interests to audiences in Cuba. The program calls Soros a “nonpracticing Jew of flexible morals,” claims that he was involved in “clandestine operations that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union” and describes him as “the architect of the financial collapse of 2008.” It also makes repeated references to Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that has launched an “Expose Soros” fundraising campaign and whose director of investigations and research recently claimed without evidence that the “Soros-occupied State Department” is funding the migrant caravan making its way to the United States.
In some corners of the internet, the tired hypothetical of free speech has been turned on its head: There isn’t one person yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, but a theater full of people yelling “Burn it down.” All of which complicates the situation for the big internet companies. Over the past 10 years, free speech has undergone a radical change in practice. Now nearly all significant speech runs through a corporate platform, be it a large hosting provider, WordPress, Facebook, or Twitter. Speech may be free by law, but attention is part of an economy. Every heinous crime linked to an app or website tests the fragile new understanding that tech companies have of their relationship to speech.
In a speech Oct 24, Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O’Rielly insinuated, without evidence, that community owned and operated broadband networks would naturally result in local governments aggressively limiting American free speech rights. “I would be remiss if my address omitted a discussion of a lesser-known, but particularly ominous, threat to the First Amendment in the age of the Internet: state-owned and operated broadband networks,” claimed O’Rielly. “Municipalities such as Chattanooga (TN) and Wilson (NC) have been notorious for their use of speech codes in the terms of service of state-owned networks, prohibiting users from transmitting content that falls into amorphous categories like 'hateful' or “threatening,” O’Rielly claimed.
“There is no history of municipal networks censoring anyone's speech,” said Christopher Mitchell, a community broadband expert and Director of the Institute for Local Reliance.
A Q&A with Vermont gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist.
Christine Hallquist has a plan for universal broadband, and it’s all about the grid. She’s best known as the first openly transgender gubernatorial nominee, but the former CEO of an electricity cooperative is campaigning on a bold and unprecedented proposal: a mandate requiring electric utilities to hang fiber-optic cable across their service areas. If successful, her plan would bring affordable, modern connections to every home and business in Vermont—an extraordinary outcome anywhere, but especially in an overwhelmingly rural state.
In 2019, over 2,600 rural households in primarily northern Orange County (NC) will have a new option because of a public-private project worked out with Open Broadband LLC. If successful, the fixed wireless service project could expand to areas south and west. Chatham County is talking about a similar solution now that could start in the northeast, just south of Chapel Hill. Open Broadband LLC leases in-ground, high-speed fiber from other companies, connecting its customers via small antennas attached to tall buildings and towers that transmit to a wireless system in their homes. Open Broadband will charge about $40 a month for unlimited service and has over 120 Orange County residents signed up already.
T-Mobile is known for breaking the rules in wireless, but now it wants Federal Communications Commission permission to bend the rules, so to speak, as part of a 600 MHz experiment in North Carolina. More specifically, T-Mobile wants to conduct tests in parts of NC to investigate the possibility of transmitting on portions of the 600 MHz B Block that’s spectrally closer to TV stations than permitted by the FCC’s rules. The operator says it will do so “in a manner that will not cause harmful interference to television viewers.”
Brandeis’s view of progressive governance meant that the government could improve itself and the lot of its people. The Brandeisian approach to competition has five parts; together they comprise the framework for progressive governance in the field of competition. 1. Antitrust and Social Issues. 2. Translating Social Issues Statutory Commands. 3. The Institutional Approach. 4. The Role of Competition. 5. The Spirit of Experimentation. Louis Brandeis viewed America itself as an experiment. This was not a unique metaphor, but it captured Brandeis’s philosophy of government—that America was built on a unique set of principles, that its tools of democratic governance formed the fulcrum on which those principles could be vindicated and extended, and that the work of seeking democratic and economic progress would never be done. We cannot know what Brandeis would have instructed us to do today except, perhaps, to know that he would have urged us to do better.
[Jonathan Sallet is a Benton Senior Fellow]
In apps marketed for children 5 and under in the Google Play store, there were pop-up ads with disturbing imagery. There were ads that no child could reasonably be expected to close out of, and which, when triggered, would send a player into more ads. Dancing treasure chests would give young players points for watching video ads, potentially endlessly. The vast majority of ads were not marked at all. Characters in children’s games gently pressured the kids to make purchases, a practice known as host-selling, banned in children’s TV programs in 1974 by the Federal Trade Commission. At other times an onscreen character would cry if the child did not buy something. Published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, a new study’s findings are stark: 95 percent of commonly downloaded apps marketed to be played by children ages 5 and under contain at least one type of advertising. The researchers concluded many of these examples seemed to violate FTC rules around unfair and deceptive advertising. More than a dozen media and children’s health advocacy organizations sent the FTC a letter asking for an investigation.
While there is now a growing consensus among the tech industry, regulatory advocates, and policymakers on the need for comprehensive privacy legislation, a blueprint proposed in President Barack Obama’s 2012 Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights proved unsuccessful. Had Congress taken up legislation in 2012, it may have forestalled the egregious regulations the European Union and California adopted. In any case, the principles agreed on today generally align with those proposed in 2012. They’re hardly controversial: individual control, transparency, security, accountability, and strengthened enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Importantly, the Obama administration was adamant about the need for preemption of state laws that would contradict the national standard. It expected states to participate in multi-stakeholder processes and believed that states proposing more stringent requirements would diminish incentives for firms to adopt the codes of conduct. This blog briefly reviews the areas of policy agreement and unresolved issues.
Brian Hart, director of the Federal Communications Commission’s office of media relations, said that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai “plans to lead the FCC for the foreseeable future.” Pai — a Republican appointed to the commission by President Barack Obama in 2012, then named chair by President Donald Trump in Jan 2017 — was asked after the FCC’s Oct 23 public meeting whether he planned to remain in that post if the Democrats took over the House in the 2018 midterm elections. Chairman Pai responded he “[couldn’t] speculate about hypothetical future election results that haven’t even come in yet, so, we’re staying the course." Plans can change, of course, but according to Hart, the chairman will remain for that foreseeable future (in which arguably a Democratic-controlled House is certainly visible), in part because there are still a lot of things on his plate. “Chairman Pai remains focused on his key priorities, including bridging the digital divide, fostering American leadership in 5G and empowering telehealth advancements,” Hart said. A House changeover could mean ramped-up oversight from legislators who have been tough on Chairman Pai over network neutrality and media ownership deregulation.
The United Kingdom is targeting the likes of Alphabet and Facebook by introducing a digital services tax that aims to raise about $500 million a year for the government. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond unveiled the measure in his Autumn Budget. He said it was designed to hit the largest internet businesses, not start-ups. It would affect profitable companies with annual revenues that exceed about $640 million, he said. “We will consult on the detail to make sure we get it right, and to ensure that the UK continues to be the best place to start and scale up a tech business,” he said. “It will come into effect in April 2020.”
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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