September 2012

140 Characters of Risk: Some CEOs Fear Twitter

Chief executives have generally steered clear of social media even as their companies have embraced it to commune with customers and pursue new business.

Chief executives are under pressure these days to appear accessible and "authentic," but social media -- with its demands for quick, unscripted updates that can quickly go viral -- poses risks for top managers and the companies they represent, in the form of lawsuits, leaked trade secrets or angered customers. Many corporate leaders say they are too busy running a company to spend time posting 140-character messages to Twitter, or retweeting posts from followers. What's more, for some companies, the business case for using the site can seem unclear, with no direct correlation between Twitter followers and sales.

Premature play against phone regulators

[Commentary] Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) has until September 30 to veto a bill that would eliminate all regulatory oversight of Internet phone service in California - and could eliminate nearly all telephone regulation in the state, according to consumer groups. The sooner he says no, the better.

Last month, the state legislature approved SB1161, authored by state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima. The bill is purportedly about ensuring that the California Public Utilities Commission doesn't regulate innovative new Internet calling services like Skype or Google Voice. The fact that the commission hasn't regulated these products seems to have gone unnoticed by the Legislature. It hasn't gone unnoticed by consumer groups, who note that there's little need to pre-emptively prohibit the commission from regulating the new service - particularly when the new service might be making its way to a landline near you.

Do-not-track settings are less than meets the eye

Microsoft has enjoyed months of great press for its promise to make Do Not Track the default setting on its forthcoming iteration of Internet Explorer, but it has left out one important detail: Users will still be tracked.

That also goes for users of Chrome, whose parent Google announced last week to fanfare — and praise from Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz — that it will provide a prominent DNT privacy setting option as well. Users of Mozilla’s Firefox, too, aren’t getting what they think when they click on the existing option not to be tracked. The reason: There’s nothing to force ad networks to honor it, as the browser companies well know. “It’s an option that doesn’t do anything,” said former FTC Chief Privacy Officer Marc Groman, now executive director of the Network Advertising Initiative, a trade group. “That totally provides users with a false sense of security.”

BBC Causes Uproar by Reporting Queen’s Opinion

Succumbing to what appears to have been a disastrous urge to brag about his super-important connections, a BBC correspondent unexpectedly declared in a radio interview that Queen Elizabeth II had once told him she was “pretty upset” about the presence of a radical Islamist cleric in North London. It is considered a shocking breach of etiquette to reveal what, if anything, the queen tells you, especially when it comes to political views, which she is technically not supposed to have. The BBC immediately issued an abject apology, saying that the correspondent, Frank Gardner, was completely out of line. “The conversation should have remained private, and the BBC and Frank deeply regret this breach of confidence,” the broadcaster said in a statement. “It was wholly inappropriate. Frank is extremely sorry for the embarrassment caused and has apologized to the palace.”

Rev. Jesse Jackson Pays Tribute to Parker Legacy, Calls Others to Pursue Media Justice

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, asserted that “communications issues are the civil rights issues of today” as he delivered the 30th Annual Everett C. Parker Ethics in Telecommunications Lecture in Washington. Paying tribute to Rev. Everett Parker's "tenacious" pursuit of justice, Jackson described the media system as critical, because the media are the means "our society uses to tell our stories--the stories we use to communicate our values and morals--the media is our window to the world."

He detailed several areas where lack of media access remains a concern:

The growing digital divide into first class citizens, the digital "haves" and the second-class digital "have nots" Jackson noted that even though use of mobile devices is growing among young African-Americans, the devices can be used for playing "angry birds" but can’t be used “for research papers or filling out college applications,” and that many low income people do not have access to the Internet.
The "exploitive" system of predatory telephone rates that prisoners often must pay to stay in touch with their families. These rates, he said, "harm the least" among us. He exhorted the Federal Communications Commission to address the 10-year-old petition to address the issue;
Broadcast ownership rates for women and minorities that still lag well behind the share of the population those persons represent, and consolidation of radio broadcasting that removes studios and their employees from the markets that they serve. He suggested resurrecting policies that helped underserved communities acquire media licenses.
The failure of several mainstream media networks to cover the plight of two Gambian-Americans who were among those threatened with death by the president of that African country. Jackson recently succeeded in winning the prisoners’ release.

The gathering also honored two other media justice advocates:

Charles Benton, chairman of the board of Benton Foundation, received the Everett C. Parker Award in recognition of his many years of leadership and support for promoting the public interest in digital and traditional media.
S. Jenell Trigg, chair of the Intellectual Property and New Media and technology Practice Group of Lerman Senter PLLC, received the Donald H. McGannon Award for her work to promote opportunities in telecommunications media for women and people of color.

Rep Lofgren unveils privacy and Internet freedom bills

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) unveiled a pair of bills aimed at protecting innovation, digital privacy and freedom of expression online. She hopes to get feedback on the two bills in the coming weeks and plans on introducing them during the next session of Congress. With several tech companies headquartered in her district, Rep Lofgren has long advocated for policies that would bolster the tech industry. She hopes her most recent legislation will prevent a sequel to the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The first bill would update measures in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act to adapt to the current landscape of new social networking and email services. Lofgren's bill, called ECPA 2.0, would establish standards that law enforcement would have to follow before collecting information about a person's location or gaining access to their emails and other online communications. The standards included in the bill would be consistent with Fourth Amendment principles. For instance, the measure states that law enforcement would have to obtain a warrant before tracking the location of a person's wireless device or procuring their emails, Facebook messages and other online communications from a service provider.

Lofgren's second bill, the Global Free Internet Act, would prevent measures like SOPA and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), from resurfacing. It proposes to create a task force composed of public and private sector representatives that would identify and respond to policies by the U.S. and foreign government that threaten "to deny fair market access to Internet-related goods and services, or that threaten the technical operation, security, and the free flow of global Internet communications,"

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Selects Crawford Media Services to Digitize American Archive Content

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced it has selected Atlanta-based Crawford Media Services, a proven leader in the electronic media services industry since 1981, to conduct the digitization of audio and video content that will be part of the American Archive, a CBP initiative to inventory, digitize and preserve local and national public media content produced over the last six decades.

During the last two years of the project, more than 100 public television and radio stations across the country have identified 2.5 million records – approximately one million hours of content – including completed local and national programs, raw footage, unedited interviews, recorded speeches, scripts and photos. From this inventory, stations will submit roughly 40,000 hours of content – mostly in obsolete analog formats – to be preserved as part of the American Archive project. CPB selected Crawford based on its experience and expertise in handling archival and other media projects of similar size and scope for CNN, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the United States Marine Corps and The Coca-Cola Company. Crawford will handle inspecting, cleaning and digitizing the American Archive’s selected video and audio content to ensure its long-term preservation. In addition, the company, working with AudioVisual Preservation Solutions, a New York firm developing the Archive’s central database and metadata management system, will ensure that the digitized content is searchable once the Archive is transferred to a permanent repository, which CPB is currently in the process of selecting. Once complete, the American Archive will ensure that the public investment in non-commercial media, totaling billions of dollars over the years, is fully protected for, and accessible to, generations to come.

Privacy Advocates Blast Proposed Change to Child Privacy Law

Privacy advocates are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to reject a proposal first offered by the Walt Disney Company that would change how companies comply with a 1998 law requiring websites directed at children to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from child users.

A coalition of privacy and public interest groups voiced concern with a proposal made by Disney during the first round of comments on proposed revisions to the rule implementing the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. Last year, the FTC proposed updating the rule to reflect changes in technology and the different ways children access online information. The law bars online sites or services "directed at children" from collecting personal information from children under 13 without first obtaining their parents' consent. The Center for Digital Democracy, which filed comments on behalf of several privacy and public interest groups such as Consumers Union and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, argued that children would have less protection online if this change is implemented. Jeff Chester, the Center for Digital Democracy's executive director, said if the FTC makes the change to COPPA, "all of sudden a clearly targeted-to-children site ... would no longer have to implement COPPA throughout the site." Given this, the group argued in its comments that "the proposed language would permit child-directed websites or services to avoid COPPA by 'age gating,' and children's privacy would receive much less protections as a result."

Five Reasons Why Live Video News Will Never Be the Same

With the advent of streaming, live video news is cheap and ubiquitous but no one is sure what to do with it. Established TV companies like ABC must decide how the era of Internet streams meshes with their traditional broadcasting model. Meanwhile, upstarts like the Huffington Post are cranking out reams of video streams without an obvious way to pay for it. Video news experts explored how to go forward at an event held at the British Consulate in New York.

Here are five takeaways:

Live news is a commodity, media firms are responding
Streaming is a lifeline to young viewers
We need a better marriage between video and text-based media
Metrics are a problem
Unique video experience requires a unique ad experience

GSA May have to Start Over on Governmentwide Cellphone Plan

A decision posted by the Office of the Comptroller General could complicate the government’s goal of saving billions of dollars by consolidating contracts for mobile phone services.

The General Services Administration failed to prove that several vendor requirements it included in its Wireless Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative were standard fare in commercial contracts, the Government Accountability Office said. Those included requirements to allow agencies to pool cellphone minutes to avoid overage charges and to turn off international roaming charges for federal customers working near the Mexican and Canadian borders. The decision is not binding for GSA, which could choose to move forward with its solicitation as written. The decision followed a protest from wireless provider Verizon. In addition to its pooling and roaming complaints, Verizon said GSA went outside common commercial practices with two other provisions. One of those provisions required vendors that offer one government customer a discount price of 10 percent or more below the blanket purchase agreement to match that price for other government customers. The other provision required vendors to match the blanket purchase agreement price for any customer that is eligible to purchase wireless services under the agreement but had purchased those services in some other way.

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