August 2010

For Students in the Internet Age, No Shame in Copy and Paste

Professors used to deal with plagiarism by admonishing students to give credit to others and to follow the style guide for citations, and pretty much left it at that. But recent cases suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed. It is a disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism. Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students -- who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking -- understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.

Emirates to Cut Data Services of BlackBerry

The United Arab Emirates, citing security concerns, said Sunday that it would suspend BlackBerry mobile services like e-mail and text messaging beginning in October, the latest high-stakes clash between governments and communications providers over the flow of digital information.

The Emirates have been in a long dispute with Research In Motion, the smartphone's producer, over the BlackBerry's highly encrypted data system, which offers security to users but makes it more difficult for governments to monitor communications. The decision could have significant implications for BlackBerry use in the Persian Gulf region, where Saudi Arabia has been closely studying the issue and may follow suit. Other countries, including Kuwait and Bahrain, have also raised concerns.

Microsoft Quashed Effort to Boost Online Privacy

The online habits of most people who use the world's dominant Web browser are an open book to advertisers. As the leading maker of Web browsers, the gateway software to the Internet, Microsoft must balance conflicting interests: helping people surf the Web with its browser to keep their mouse clicks private, and helping advertisers who want to see those clicks. In the end, the product planners lost a key part of the debate. The winners: executives who argued that giving automatic privacy to consumers would make it tougher for Microsoft to profit from selling online ads. Microsoft built its browser so that users must deliberately turn on privacy settings every time they start up the software. Microsoft's original privacy plans for the new

Explorer were "industry-leading" and technically superior to privacy features in earlier browsers, says Simon Davies, a privacy-rights advocate in the U.K. whom Microsoft consulted while forming its browser privacy plans. Most users of the final product aren't even aware its privacy settings are available, he says. "That's where the disappointment lies."

Customers Will Pay for Online Content

[Commentary] Major media companies have finally learned something about whether consumers will pay for content on the Internet, and it's this: The answer won't be found through endless debate.

At long last -- due in part to economic stress -- significant strides are being made to take "pay models" out of the conference room and to the public. Virtually all trend lines in recent communications history have moved, with success, from free distribution to some form of pay model. The viewing and listening public has demonstrated repeatedly its willingness to spend for content, so long as there is some degree of perceived value. For newspaper companies to jump into this digital pay arena, the main hurdle is convincing readers to spend money for material that to date has been so readily dumped online for free. But if free TV could become pay TV, and if free radio could become pay radio, then it would seem to be easier for pay printed newspapers to become pay online newspapers.

Many additional challenges face publishers in this belated effort -- among them the proliferation of free sites that summarize, categorize and even plagiarize material. And there is legitimate concern about how much advertisers will spend online versus in print. But the central question on which industry observers seem to dwell -- will consumers pay? -- has already been answered many times in media history. Yes.

FBI's push to clarify electronic authority raises privacy concerns

The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued 192,499 national security letter requests from 2003 to 2006. Since then, the bureau has continued its reliance on the letters to gather information from telephone companies, banks, credit bureaus and Internet service providers. That last source is the focus of the Justice Department as it presses Congress to clarify the Electronic Communications Privacy Act so that the FBI can continue to gather some electronic records without a warrant from a judge.

The law already requires Internet service providers to produce the records, said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department's national security division. But, he said, it currently causes confusion and the potential for unnecessary litigation, as some Internet companies have argued that they are not always obligated to comply with the FBI requests. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) wants a timeout. The administration's proposal to change the law "raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns," Sen Leahy said. "While the government should have the tools that it needs to keep us safe, American citizens should also have protections against improper intrusions into their private electronic communications and online transactions," said Leahy, who plans to hold hearings in the fall on issues involving the law. Critics are lined up in opposition to what the Obama administration wants to do.

Verizon top Capitol Hill lobbyer on Internet laws

According to the latest data provided to the U.S. House of Representatives' Office of the Clerk, during the second quarter of this year, Verizon forked over $4,440,000 to its team of crack buttonholers, who talked up every issue from network neutrality to the proposed Distracted Driving Prevention Act.

AT&T spent $3,086,786.27 on lobbying in Q2, about $30,000 more than it did in the second quarter of 2009. Of late, Comcast dispersed $3,820,000 in green love to various causes dear to the cable giants' heart. And Time Warner Cable spent $1,440,000. Google budgeted $1,340,000 for lobbying in Q2, Amazon set aside $500,000, slightly less than Yahoo!'s $550,000, and Microsoft had $1,850,000 on hand for the task. Looks like Facebook is just getting started in DC-land, allocating a comparatively modest $60,000.

NABJ laments lack of diversity in TV news management ranks

The National Association of Black Journalists is calling on television group owners to do a better job of reflecting the ethnic makeup of the communities they serve when it comes to naming executives in their local newsrooms.

The 3rd annual Television Newsroom Management Diversity Census is out, and it found that only 12.6% of news staffers at 151 surveyed stations are persons of color, despite the fact that persons of color make up about a third of the general population. NABJ reported, "Out of 815 executive producers, assignment managers, managing editors, assistant news directors, news directors and general managers at the ABC, CBS, Cox, FOX, Gannett, Hearst Argyle, Media General, Meredith, NBC and Tribune stations 713 (87.9%) are White, 64 (7.8%) are African American, 24 (3%) are Hispanic/Latino, 13 (1.6%) are Asian and only 1 is Native American. The management teams at 82 of the stations are all White."

Greene, Upton Want Congress To Weigh In Before FCC Reclassifies Broadband

Reps. Gene Green (D-TX) and Fred Upton (R-MI) have introduced a concurrent resolution asking the Federal Communications Commission to hold off on reclassifying broadband or clarifying and expanding network neutrality regulations and let the Congress weigh in first.

The resolution "directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to wait for Congress to enact a law prior to issuing rules, regulations, or orders concerning additional regulation of broadband Internet service." They have 46 co-sponsors. A majority of House Members have already expressed at least concerns about FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's "third way" plan to reclassify the transmission portion of broadband access as a Title II common carrier service, while not applying most of the regulations that apply under that regime to telecommunications services.

Saturday Broadband Reclassification Bill Meeting Held

What's been termed the "Big Six" negotiating team of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, AT&T, Verizon, Google, Skype and the Open Internet Coalition continued to meet with Federal Communications Commission officials on July 30 about a possible targeted bill to clarify the FCC's broadband regulatory authority.

A bill the FCC, cable and telco operators, Google and Skype and advocacy groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge could all live with is a tall order, but it would take the heat off the FCC, which has gotten plenty of pushback from Congress on FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's "third way" proposal to reclassify broadband transmission as under Title II common carrier regulations, though apply only a handful. Talks seem to be focused on prohibitions on blocking legal content, a nondiscrimination principle -- which the FCC is proposing as part of its network neutrality rulemaking separate from the Title II reclassification -- how specialized services would be treated, informing customers about network management practices, and whether network neutrality principles would apply to wireless broadband.

Students finally wake up to Facebook privacy issues

Students care about Facebook privacy more than the world thinks, and their use of privacy controls has skyrocketed recently, according to two researchers.

Eszter Hargittai, Associate Professor of Northwestern University, and Danah Boyd, Research Associate at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society published their findings in the online peer-reviewed journal First Monday, noting that young people are very engaged with the privacy settings on Facebook, contrary to the popular belief that their age group is reckless with what they post publicly. The researchers surveyed first-year writing students at the University of Illinois-Chicago during the 2008-2009 academic year, and then followed up with them again in 2010. The large majority -- 87 percent -- said they used Facebook in 2009, which went up to 90 percent in 2010. Among frequent and occasional users, more than half posted their own status updates in addition to checking up (and leaving comments) on those of friends. Among those who took the survey in both years, nine percent said they never touched Facebook's privacy settings in 2009, a figure that fell to a paltry two percent the next year. Similarly, nine percent said they had adjusted the settings just once in 2010, down from 28 percent in 2009. In contrast, the percentage of students who changed their privacy settings four or more times more than doubled from 24 to 51 percent over that period of time. The researchers noted that those who regularly contribute to activities on Facebook may be more conscious of their audience than those who use it less frequently, hence their motivation to modify their settings.

Benton

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