September 2012

Official: US won’t surrender Internet control to UN agency

US Ambassador Terry Kramer vowed that the United States will not compromise its principles on human rights, free speech and other issues during negotiations of an international telecommunications treaty in December.

"If there are things that are completely objectionable, that violate our fundamental views about human rights, about free speech, about economic opportunities--if they fundamentally violate it--then we will just say no and absolutely we won't proceed," said Kramer, who is leading the U.S. delegation during the negotiations, at a press conference at law firm Wiley Rein. Kramer has met with various officials, most recently in Dubai and El Salvador, to discuss the U.S. position on the treaty and called these conversations "encouraging," while noting that "we have a long road to travel" before WCIT. He will later travel to Beijing to meet with Chinese officials, then head to Tokyo, Europe and Russia.

How ad agencies are a bottleneck in the video economy

Online video is flourishing. Better technology and more bandwidth means consumers watch more video in more places than ever. But there is also a roadblock that is slowing digital video’s evolution into a fully mature economy like television. And that bottleneck is … advertising. While developers and publishers have evolved to support a digital video eco-system, advertisers are a step behind. The problem is common to all sorts of media transitions: the impulse to replicate old experiences on new platforms.

Who Do You Trust?

[Commentary] In March 2012 we at Headlines were intrigued by an interview Craigslist founder Craig Newmark gave GigaOm in which he said the next big problem the Internet needed to solve was trust. In an election season, in any political season, really, trust plays a huge role. For Newmark, the issue is management of our online relationships and reputations. For our purposes today, we start with the opening of a Marketplace story on how Americans feel about the news media: “Unless you follow political rallies around like the Grateful Dead, this election season a big chunk of your news is bound to be filtered through the news media.” So do people trust the media as they decide on who to elect in November? On September 21, Gallup reported that Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years, when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had been in years prior to 2004. (For sake of comparison, trust in the media was much higher, and more positive than negative, in the years prior to 2004 -- as high as 72% when Gallup asked this question three times in the 1970s.)

Covering the World of Business, Digital Only

After selling his shares in his companies for a reported after-tax gain of $300 million in 1997 and realizing he didn’t have the people’s touch when it came to politics — his first love — David G. Bradley had hoped to buy Newsweek. But that did not work out. So in 1998 he bought The Atlantic Monthly instead, along with National Journal and Government Executive, in part because he wanted to be a Beltway player and in part because he loved the physical aspects of print.

He hoped to turn The Atlantic into a weekly, a glossy artifact that he could proudly display in his office at the Watergate complex, overlooking the Potomac River. But even as a monthly, the economics were baffling. After spending 10 years and $100 million on the Atlantic brand, he realized that making baubles for the coffee table would soon leave him bereft. He hired Justin Smith, the publisher of The Week who had also worked at The Economist, in 2007. Mr. Smith has Mr. Bradley’s polish, but is more ruthless in business matters and less sentimental about print. The pair set about building a ladder out of the hole that the company — and most of print publishing, for that matter — found itself in.

Interactive TV games combine learning with fun for kids

TV watching is no longer a passive experience. Kids can now interact with two of their favorite TV shows, Sesame Street and Nat Geo Wild, when watching them on the Xbox 360 running Kinect. Boxed as Kinect Sesame Street TV and Kinect Nat Geo TV, these two products combine watching TV episodes with interactivity available by playing on Kinect. Kids and families are invited to get up off the couch to move and play while appearing inside these TV shows. Providing a two-way TV experience, these two new titles are revolutionary.

Foxconn closes China plant after riot

Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer by shipments and revenue, suspended production at one of its largest factories in China after a mass riot among workers.

The incident is the latest case of labor unrest at Apple’s main supplier despite the massive efforts Foxconn has made since 2010 to revamp the way it manages its 1 million-strong Chinese workforce. Foxconn said a personal dispute between several employees at its factory in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan escalated into an incident involving some 2,000 workers at around 11pm on Sunday night. “The dispute was brought under control by local police at approximately 3am this morning. According to police, some 40 individuals were taken to the hospital for medical attention and a number of individuals were arrested,” the company said. The Taiyuan plant, which employs 78,000, is part of the iPhone supply chain as it makes some parts but analysts said there would be no impact on the iPhone 5. The plant makes only very small quantities of casings and the company expects to resume production on August 25.

Hearing Recap -- The LightSquared Network: An Investigation of the FCC's Role

House Commerce Committee Republicans criticized the Federal Communications Commission for blocking LightSquared from launching a nationwide high-speed cellular network. Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) questioned whether the FCC was too quick to dismiss the company's plans and urged FCC officials to continue working to find a solution for the now-bankrupt company. However, other congressional Republicans, have accused the Obama administration of being too cozy with LightSquared. At the hearing, Chairman Stearns argued that the interference problem was the fault of the GPS industry — not LightSquared. He compared the situation to a car veering into the wrong lane of a highway and argued that it is the FCC's responsibility to ensure that everyone stay in his or her own lane.

Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology, testified that the FCC's review was "fact-based and transparent." Knapp said he hopes the agency will be able to find a solution for LightSquared, but he declined to weigh in on whether there are any promising proposals.
Knapp and Mindel De La Torre, chief of the FCC’s International Bureau, said they were unaware of any conversations between the FCC and White House over the issue, which was essentially the only political turn to the hearing. After an eight-month investigation by the subcommittee into the issue, that suggested there were no political smoking guns.

Defending the FCC process was Diana DeGette (D-CO), ranking member of the subcommittee, who said the FCC had been put in a no-win situation, but had conducted the process responsibly and taken steps to address the GPS concerns after they were raised late in the process. Rep DeGette said she would be concerned if the FCC had made politically motivated decisions. "But I don't think that anyone thinks that is the case." The FCC weighed the pros and cons and made a difficult decision.

FCC’s September Agenda

The Federal Communications Commission will hold an Open Meeting on the subjects listed below on Friday, September 28, 2012. The FCC will consider:

a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to update, streamline, or eliminate earth and space station licensing requirements, reducing regulatory burdens on licensees and accelerating delivery of new satellite services to consumers.
a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to implement an incentive auction of broadcast television spectrum.
a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that initiates a review of its policies governing mobile spectrum holdings.

No Web Site Is an Island

Late one night last June, Facebook’s Web site ground to a halt. All around the Web, thousands of other sites with a Facebook “Like” button slowed to a crawl. Last week, a technical malfunction at GoDaddy took down its Web site and millions more, many of which did not use a GoDaddy service. The problem was that the Web is now so interconnected that a cyberattack on, unexpected traffic to or even a minor error on one Web site can send a ripple affect across the Internet that can slow down thousands if not millions of other sites.

Facebook Can ID Faces, but Using Them Grows Tricky

Facebook confronted a new obstacle over what to do with one of its most vital assets — pictures. The company promised European regulators that it would forgo using facial recognition software and delete the data used to identify Facebook users by their pictures. The decision could have wide repercussions on how facial recognition technology — a particularly sensitive technological advance — is used globally as surveillance cameras are increasingly installed in public spaces.

“This is a big deal,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in online privacy. “The development of these tools in the private sector directly affects civil liberties,” he explained. “The ultimate application is going to be — can we apply these patterns in video surveillance to automatically identify people for security purposes and maybe for marketing purposes as well?”

Benton

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