June 2011

Privacy advocates as well as some companies have long expressed support for "baseline" privacy legislation modeled on fair information practices principles. While details of exact proposals vary, many proponents say that at a minimum, companies should make clear what information is gathered and why, and allow consumers to decide whether they're willing to agree to the data collection. Online ad companies have tended to oppose new laws, arguing that they already voluntarily notify consumers about privacy issues and allow them to opt out of the use of their data (though not its collection).
Now that smartphone apps have become more popular, and drawn more scrutiny, however, it's clear that many -- perhaps most -- of the companies collecting data about mobile users don't inform them about information-gathering techniques or about how that data is shared. A study by the Future of Privacy Forum found that 22 of the top 30 apps lack privacy policies; other studies have shown that many apps transmit data about users, including their devices' unique identifiers.

In comments filed at the Federal Communications Commission on retransmission consent, the National Football League told the FCC not to tinker with the sports blackout rules, which prevent cable or satellite providers from carrying an NFL game when the over-the-air broadcast is blacked out due to lack of attendance at the game.

The Sports Fan Coalition wants the FCC to waive the rule so that viewers would have alternative outlets for league games if broadcasters pull their signals during retransmission stalemates. "[T]he Commission would allow sports fans to watch a local game they otherwise would be unable to view, while spurring the broadcast and pay-TV companies to reach a negotiated solution," the coalition argued in its initial comments in the proceeding. In reply comments filed June 27, the NFL countered that waiving the rule would "undermine the retransmission-consent regime and give cable and satellite operators excessive leverage in retransmission-consent negotiations."

News media this week reported next year’s London Olympics will allow athletes to tweet from the Summer Games.

In fact, that consent was contained in general guidelines applying to all social media, which were issued to athletes back in May and which themselves are a variant of guidelines issued for Vancouver 2010 and, later, the Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne. They are permissive yet notably try to protect broadcasters and sponsors. Video and audio from within venues is banned and other material must be “in a first-person, diary type format and should not be in the role of a journalist”. Athletes are forbidden from promoting their sponsors in social media. In parts, the guidelines are loose enough to potentially be contradictory. Athletes are allowed to “post still photographs” from inside venues but not to “distribute these photographs.”

Ralph Jennings was packing up his things after 26 years at WFUV-FM, where he had transformed a chaotic college radio station at Fordham University with a tiny audience into one of the leading public radio outlets in the country and a rare cultural force.

More than half a century ago, he discovered the force of broadcasting could bend the steel of the world into a better, fairer place — for anyone willing to crawl under a desk, stretch a roll of electrician’s tape or hang a length of cable. Or, as in the case of Dr. Jennings, to do all that, and also travel to corners of the country where radio and television stations practiced open bigotry in their programs and hiring, but could be pressed to change.