April 2010

National Cable & Telecommunications Association president Kyle McSlarrow said Tuesday that theoretically, it could be open season for network management in the wake of the BitTorrent decision, but that as a practical matter he did not expect much, if anything, to change while the Federal Communications Commission is considering its options on responding to the court.

McSlarrow also thinks there is room under Title II to support some form of network neutrality proposal without moving to a Title II regime. Following a panel session at the American Cable Association convention, McSlarrow was asked what operators could do in terms of managing their networks the day after the decision that they couldn't do before. "I don't know that anything has changed," he said. "No one was managing bandwidth in a way to inflict consumer harms, they were managing bandwidth in a way to deal with congestion. "Theoretically, I suppose you could do anything," he added, "but I think, in the real world, we made commitments that we support the FCC's Internet policy statement. We have always abided by it and we stand by the statement. And that is the reality that our operators and, more importantly, the engineers that work with the CEOs are trying to implement."

Fake security software was the No. 1 cybersecurity woe afflicting computer users in 2009, and Apple users lost some of their immunity to cybercrime as they stored more data online instead of on hard drives, according to the cybersecurity firm Symantec.

In a report released on Tuesday, Symantec noted that Brazil had risen to third place in the list of countries with "malicious activity," defined as spam, online scam attempts and other types of cybercrime. The United States remained in first place at 19 percent, with China second at 8 percent, and Brazil third at 6 percent. Conficker -- a malicious software program all over the news last April -- and sophisticated attacks on websites of Google Inc and other large companies in December and reported in January were the most publicized cyber events of the year. But the single most prevalent form of cybercrime was fake security software, which computer users normally see as a flashing notice that their computer is infected with a virus, said Vincent Weafer, a Symantec vice president.

American Cable Association President Matt Polka gave Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski several shout-outs Tuesday for his comments at the National Association of Broadcasters, suggesting there could be problems with the retransmission-consent system.

"Reforming" a system referred to more than once at Tuesday's Washington policy fly-in as "extortion" is one of a couple of key priorities for the group, which represents small and mid-sized operators, whose members maintain they are often required to pay bigger programming license fees for being smaller. He called a "very helpful signal" the chairman's point that "when you start looking at rates the way they are impacted by retransmission consent, how can you keep calling it free TV?"

House Republican leaders are urging House Democrats to allow House members to use video conferencing software applications such as Skype, to communicate with their constituents. They note that current House rules allow House members to use taxpayer funds for "often expensive, video teleconferencing activities with their constituents, but forbid them from using Skype - which is practically free - for such activities." They added that, "We are certain that Skype, an increasingly relevant communication tool for Americans already widely used in the private sector, could be easily implemented in Congress in a manner that would not reduce the security of the House IT infrastructure."