May 2013

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2013

See the latest headlines online at http://benton.org/headlines

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   House Judiciary panel launches official probe into whether AG Holder lied
   AG Holder to meet news media chiefs in review of subpoena policy
   AP, New York Times will not attend off-the-record DOJ session
   Why a Media Shield Law Isn't Enough to Save Journalists - editorial

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   Why Your City Should Compete With Google’s Super-Speed Internet
   Execs Share Details on New Iowa Gigabit Network
   Average Fixed Broadband Speeds to Soar 350% By 2017
   Cord Cutters Lop Off Internet Service More Than TV
   Mary Meeker Peers Into the Future of Mobile, Wearables and Facebook

WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
   A Deal That Could Benefit Mobile Users - editorial
   Dish Increases Its Bid for Clearwire
    International Trade Commission to review split ruling in Apple, Samsung patent fight [links to web]
   Smartphone Adoption Tips Past 50% in Major Markets Worldwide - press release [links to web]
   Google to challenge iPhone with Moto X [links to web]

HEALTH AND MEDIA
   Study: TV and movie characters are smoking less but still drinking heavily

RADIO/TELEVISION
   Tell the FCC: Talk Radio Is Not 'Bonafide News!' - op-ed
   CBS Asks New York Court to Dismiss Aereo's Lawsuit [links to web]

PRIVACY/SECURITY
   Privacy and data security: why should investors care? - op-ed
   China continues to deny carrying out cyberattacks against US [links to web]
   Carney: US 'will do all it must' to protect computer systems from hackers [links to web]
   How Obama should work with business to combat China cyberspying - op-ed
   Disclosure timeline for vulnerabilities under active attack - press release [links to web]
   Anonymous Payment Schemes Thriving on Web

ACCESSIBILITY
   Treaty for the Blind in Jeopardy, Copyright Zealots to Blame - analysis

CONTENT
   Social networks face free-speech tests

POLICYMAKERS
   CBS' Marty Franks Retiring

STORIES FROM ABROAD
   Europe trails US in next-generation wireless
   Can mobile roaming and network neutrality reform help save Europe? - analysis

MORE ONLINE
   Universities Team With Online Course Provider [links to web]
   Survey: Americans Would Rather Give Up Phone or TV Than PC [links to web]
   Newsweek confirms it is eyeing sale [links to web]

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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

HOLDER INVESTIGATION
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jonathan Easley]
The top two Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have initiated an investigation into whether Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath during his May 15 testimony on the Justice Department’s (DOJ) surveillance of reporters. Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI), the chairman of the subcommittee on investigations, sent a letter to AG Holder detailing specific aspects of his testimony that they say conflicts with subsequent media reports about Holder’s involvement in the surveillance of James Rosen, a reporter for Fox News. “The media reports and statements issued by the Department regarding the search warrants for Mr. Rosen’s emails appear to be at odds with your sworn testimony before the Committee,” the letter reads in part. “We believe — and we hope you will agree — it is imperative that the Committee, the Congress, and the American people be provided a full and accurate account of your involvement in and approval of these search warrants.”
benton.org/node/152778 | Hill, The | The Hill
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HOLDER TO MEET PRESS CHIEFS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jordy Yager]
Attorney General Eric Holder is planning to meet with the Washington (DC) bureau chiefs of major news outlets this week as he reviews the Justice Department’s (DOJ) policies for issuing media subpoenas. The meetings over the next two days will initiate more lengthy discussions in the coming weeks with representatives from print, radio, television, wire, and online news groups and trade associations, according to a DOJ official. President Barack Obama directed AG Holder to review the department’s media subpoena policies last week after a firestorm of criticism erupted from news organizations and lawmakers over the DOJ’s handling of two separate leaks investigations. A DOJ official, speaking on background, said that Holder’s review is an attempt to ensure First Amendment rights are respected by the department and that it would include conversations with news media executives and general counsels in addition to government intelligence and investigative experts.
benton.org/node/152777 | Hill, The
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DOJ SESSIONS
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Dylan Byers]
The Associated Press and New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson have indicated they will not attend a session with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss the Justice Department's monitoring of reporters, due to the fact that the meeting is to be conducted "off the record." "We believe the meeting should be on the record and we have said that to the Attorney General’s office. If it is on the record, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll will attend. If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter," AP spokesperson Erin Madigan said. "We would expect AP attorneys to be included in any planned meetings between the Attorney General’s office and media lawyers on the legal specifics."
“We will not be attending the session at DOJ. It isn’t appropriate for us to attend an off the record meeting with the attorney general. Our Washington bureau is aggressively covering the department’s handling of leak investigations at this time," Abramson said. "Evidently, there will be a future session with department officials on the substance of how the law should be applied in leak cases and I am hopeful that our counsel, David McCraw will be able to participate in that meeting."
benton.org/node/152811 | Politico | Politico – NYTimes
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MEDIA SHIELD LAW
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Matthew Cooper]
[Commentary] I’m all for a shield law to protect journalists and their sources from government prosecutors. I hope Congress passes one. But I don’t have lots of faith that the ideas under consideration in Congress or any law can protect journalists adequately. This is one of those areas where custom carries more weight than statute, the custom being the general good sense of prosecutors not to go after reporters for their information. For the most part prosecutors—and by that I mean everyone from county attorneys on up—have refrained from going after reporters, including the notable and obvious exception of the Obama Justice Department. Yes, there are cases where prosecutors have gone subpoena-happy, from the BALCO steroids case to the Aurora shooting to the CIA leak case, where I was caught up in the maelstrom. But, generally, prosecutors don't pursue reporters even when they can. This unspoken compact began to become undone during the Bush administration, and, of course, it has unraveled during the Obama years as the national-security state has expanded. Inevitably, prosecutors have to seek a balance. In the case of James Rosen, even if you grant that the leak of North Korean nuclear-testing information was a huge deal, and you imagine that it may have been dependent on human intelligence in Pyongyang and you fear its revelation led to us having to roll up networks or even harm coming to sources, you can see the fervor with which DOJ, along with the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community, would want to go after such a leak. But from what we’ve heard about the case, it’s hard to see why you’d need to subpoena the reporters e-mails and phone records. The government already has extensive rights to look over the documents of employees with high security clearances. If you have their records, do you really need the Fox ones? Even if you do, is it worth it? For a long time, prosecutors answered the question “no”—not because they were saintly but because it was in their self-interest, and ours.
benton.org/node/152774 | National Journal | Washington post
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

MUNICIPAL FIBER
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Klint Finley]
When it comes to broadband internet access, the U.S. still lags behind other developed nations. We don’t have the broadband connections that other countries have, and fewer people are using them. Google Fiber — the gigabit internet service the company offers in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri — has sparked hope that the U.S. could one day catch up to countries such as South Korea and Japan. But although Google is expanding its fiber services to more cities — and private companies like AT&T and CenturyLink have promised to step up fiber offerings in some areas — we’re a long way from nationwide high-speed internet. Rural communities, in particular, are underserved by broadband providers. One solution may be municipal broadband services — services owned and operated by local governments, as opposed to independent ISPs. The Media Consortium hosted a conference call with Christopher Mitchell of Institute for Local Self Reliance; Kansas City, Missouri assistant city manager Rick Usher; and Matt Wood, policy director of Free Press, to compare community broadband initiatives with Google Fiber. While Usher praised Google’s efforts in Kansas City on both sides of the state line, Mitchell and Wood highlighted some of the reasons that a community might want both a commercial offering and a municipal broadband network.
benton.org/node/152782 | Wired
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NEW IOWA GIGABIT NETWORK
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
The latest entity to offer gigabit service is a community owned network in Cedar Falls, Iowa that is managed by Cedar Falls Utilities. That organization also manages municipally-owned electricity, water and natural gas utilities. The Cedar Falls network is different from gigabit networks in some other communities in that service in most cases can be turned up immediately, said Betty Zeman, marketing manager for Cedar Falls Utilities. “We’re in almost every property in town with an ONT [optical network terminal] already,” she explained. The new Cedar Falls gigabit network traces back to a hybrid-fiber coax network originally constructed in the 1990s with funding raised through a referendum.
benton.org/node/152780 | telecompetitor
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BROADBAND SPEEDS
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Jeff Baumgartner]
Here’s some good news if you happen to be a vendor that sells broadband gear to network operators and gets a nice shot in the arm with every upgrade cycle: Internet consumption is exploding and is showing no signs of dissipating. The average, global fixed broadband speed will jump from 11.3 Mbps in 2012 to 39 Mbps in 2017 – a 3.5-fold increase -- Cisco predicted in its latest Visual Network Index (VNI) Forecast. In North America, Cisco’s predicting a slightly smaller jump -- from 13 Mbps in 2012, to 38 Mbps in 2017. Again, that’s just the global average speed and just one prediction among many presented by Cisco in its latest study of global broadband usage. Depending on the ISP and the region of the world, maximum burst speeds for residential broadband services, particularly in the downstream, are running anywhere from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps.
benton.org/node/152814 | Multichannel News
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CORD CUTTERS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Anton Troianovski]
For all the fuss over Americans dropping their cable subscriptions in favor of Internet video, another type of cord cutting appears to be more common. Hundreds of thousands of Americans canceled their home Internet service last year, surveys suggest, taking advantage of the proliferation of Wi-Fi hot spots and fast new wireless networks that have made Web connections on smartphones and tablets ubiquitous. Last year around 1% of U.S. households stopped paying for home Internet subscriptions and relied on wireless access instead, according to consumer surveys by Leichtman Research Group Inc. Just 0.4% of households in the last year canceled their pay-television subscriptions in favor of getting video entertainment over the Internet via services such as Hulu or Netflix. Dropping home Internet service isn't a great deal for heavy Internet users, however. While smartphones are fine for email and social networking, wireless data plans can be expensive and easily drained by even a single streamed high-definition movie. Free Wi-Fi is more widely available than ever, but cutting the Internet cord means users have to rely on cellular access at home. Still, frustrated by rising cable and Internet bills, some subscribers are testing whether their smartphones and free Wi-Fi might be good enough. Others, unable to afford both services, are having to make do without easy access to streaming video for entertainment and education, underscoring the persistent differences in how people of various economic levels go online.
benton.org/node/152839 | Wall Street Journal
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MEEKER’S INTERNET REPORT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jenna Wortham]
Mary Meeker, the Internet analyst, has become something of a legend in the tech world for her annual Internet Trends report. Here are some major takeaways from her latest:
Mobile Is Moving Fast -- There are about 2.4 billion Internet users worldwide, a gain of 8 percent from 2012, driven largely by emerging markets like Iran and Indonesia. And there are 1.5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, compared with 1.1 billion a year earlier. That’s roughly 30 percent growth. In addition, mobile makes up 15 percent of Internet traffic over all.
Wearables, Sharables, Drivables, Flyables -- The next few decades will be about wearable computing, like Google glass and fitness tracking bracelets, as well as new gadget categories like drones and smarter cars. That, in turn, will drive the personal data revolution.
The Personal Data Revolution – The amount of personal data from wearables, videos and even sound files that we upload to the Web is growing exponentially and will continue to grow.
Facebook Is Still the King of Social Media
The Rise of the Visual Web -- On average, more than 500 million photos are shared each day. Meeker expects that figure to double year over year.
Americans Share Less Than the Rest of the World -- On average, 24 percent of the world says they share “most or everything” that they do. But only 15 percent of Americans admitted to sharing nearly everything online.
benton.org/node/152771 | New York Times
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

NYTIMES ENDORSES SOFTBANK-SPRINT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] A federal government committee has cleared the proposed acquisition of Sprint by SoftBank, a Japanese telecommunications company, after securing concessions from both of them that should address national security concerns about the deal. Though they still have to clear a few more hurdles, the deal’s approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is encouraging news. SoftBank is offering to buy a 70 percent stake in Sprint for $12.1 billion and to invest a further $8 billion in the company. The deal, if approved by the Federal Communications Commission and Sprint’s shareholders, should make the telecommunications industry more competitive by providing consumers better and cheaper choices for phone and broadband connections. It should also help Sprint, which has long struggled financially, compete more effectively with the much larger companies that dominate the industry, AT&T and Verizon.
benton.org/node/152820 | New York Times
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DISH UPS CLEARWIRE BID
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sharon Terlep, Shalini Ramachandran]
Dish Network has increased its bid for mobile-broadband operator Clearwire, topping the offer Sprint Nextel raised last week. On May 22, Dish offered to acquire Clearwire for $4.40 a share in cash, a 29% premium over Sprint's offer of $3.40 a share. Clearwire shares jumped 19% to $4.15 after hours. The offer values Clearwire at about $6.3 billion. "The Clearwire spectrum portfolio has always been a key component to implementing our wireless plans of delivering a superior product and service offering to customers," said Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen in a statement. Clearwire shareholders are to vote on Sprint's takeover offer on May 31, but many of them have opposed the terms. Dish, which said it released its letter to Clearwire publicly due to the short notice, said it intends to commence a tender offer for the outstanding Clearwire shares before Friday's meeting. Dish said its offer is for all stockholders, but it's also willing to buy out only minority stockholders so long as it can acquire at least 25% of Clearwire's voting stock.
benton.org/node/152819 | Wall Street Journal
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HEALTH AND MEDIA

SMOKING ON SCREEN
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Dylan Matthews]
The tobacco industry really took a beating in 1998. The Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) they signed with state attorneys general required them to give states $206 billion in compensation for the Medicaid and other costs of treating sick smokers. But the agreement also banned them from engaging in product placement deals for TV or movies. R.J. Reynolds couldn’t pay to have George Clooney smoke Winstons anymore. You’d expect to see fewer cigarettes in movies after a deal like that. But the size of the decline may surprise you. A new study in JAMA Pediatrics by Elaina Bergamini, Eugene Demidenko and James Sargent at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College* finds that the MSA led to an exponential decline in the appearance of tobacco brands in movies. Bergamini et al added up all the tobacco brand appearances in the top 100 grossing movies each year from 1996 to 2009. They find that the appearances dropped by about 7 percent every year, and then plateaued in 2006 at around 22 appearances a year:
benton.org/node/152817 | Washington Post
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RADIO/TELEVISION

TALK RADIO
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Sue Wilson]
[Commentary] Is talk radio the same as "bonafide news"? More than three-quarters of the American public say no, according to Pew Research, and one would think an agency sworn to protect the public interest and its airwaves would agree with that vast majority. But will Tom Wheeler, nominated to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, choose to put the public interest first, or will his FCC continue to simply turn a blind eye, as the agency has done since the Reagan administration?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-wilson/tom-wheeler-fcc_b_3343395.html?...
benton.org/node/152812 | Huffington Post, The
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PRIVACY/SECURITY

PRIVACY AND DATA SECURITY
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Natasha Lamb, Corey Johnson, Michael Connor]
[Commentary] Looking for a mortgage? Tell us how much you owe and how much you earn. Think you might have a health problem? Tell us your age, gender and medical history. Want to buy a new pair of shoes? Please provide your size, preferred color, style and zip code – and, by the way, how did that last pair work out for you? These inquiries may seem like a slight nuisance, but the repercussions are broad. As the global economy shifts to a digital economy, data has become the lifeforce of commerce. Big data is big business, presenting enormous opportunities for economic growth. But not without risk – data privacy and security have quickly become critical business and social risks, leading us to question whether, in fact, our secrets are safe. How are companies handling those vast terabytes of personal information? Have adequate measures been taken to ensure it can't be hacked by foreign governments, criminals, or thrill-seeking computer activists? And do the companies we place our faith in have appropriate policies and practices to ensure they're protecting the privacy we as consumers want and demand? [Natasha Lamb is vice president, shareholder advocacy and corporate engagement, at Trillium Asset Management LLC; Corey Johnson is sustainability research analyst at Pax World Funds; Michael Connor is executive director of Open MIC, a non-profit organization that works with companies and investors on open media issues.]
benton.org/node/152770 | Guardian, The
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PUBLIC-PRIVACT CYBERSECURITY PARTNERSHIP
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Irving Lachow]
[Commentary] What makes the US-China cyberespionage dispute unique is that the two countries are playing a game – spy vs. spy – that is accepted in international relations, but they are playing it by different rules. The US government views espionage as a national security activity, not as a tool for furthering the economic well-being of US companies. In contrast, China views the well-being of its companies as being directly tied to the security interests of the nation. In their minds, drawing a line between espionage focused on stealing state secrets and espionage focused on stealing corporate secrets is arbitrary. If the US wishes to stop Chinese economic cyberespionage, it will need to increase the costs and reduce the benefits of such activities. That will cause China and other competitors to rethink whether such activities are worth it. Government actions are important, but the key players in this game sit in the private sector. A true public-private partnership is needed. There are several policy levers that the US government can use to achieve those goals, though changing China’s fundamental views through government actions alone will be difficult. A more powerful option is for the US government to help industry lower the value that China gains from its activities. This can be done in three ways.
First, the US government must provide companies with actionable intelligence that they can use to protect their networks.
Second, government agencies must incentivize companies to take actions that improve their cybersecurity.
Third, the US government needs to clarify the legal framework that delineates what kinds of “active defenses” are permissible under different circumstances.
benton.org/node/152835 | Christian Science Monitor, The
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ANONYMOUS PAYMENT SCHEMES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Nicole Perlroth]
Cybersecurity experts say billions of dollars made from child pornography and illicit sales of things like national secrets and drugs are being moved through anonymous Internet payment systems like Liberty Reserve, the currency exchange whose operators were indicted for laundering $6 billion. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, described it as the largest online money-laundering case in history. Liberty Reserve was shut down, but cybersecurity experts said it was just one among hundreds of anonymous Internet payment systems. They said online systems like the Moscow-based WebMoney, Perfect Money, based in Panama, and CashU, which serves the Middle East and North Africa, require little more than a valid e-mail address to initiate an account. The names and locations of the actual users are unknown and can be easily fabricated. And they worry that the no-questions-asked verification system has created a safe harbor for illicit activity.
benton.org/node/152836 | New York Times
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ACCESSIBILITY

TREATY FOR THE BLIND
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Harold Feld]
[Commentary] In a few weeks, the 186 governments that are members of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will gather in Morocco with the goal of crafting a Treaty For The Blind. The agreement would facilitate global production and lending of audio books, Braille translations, and otherwise enable the visually impaired and those with certain learning disabilities to have affordable access to books. This will most benefit the millions of blind people in the developing world who live in poverty, by adopting many of the rights to translate works into braille or other forms accessible to the visually impaired that are already law in the United States. But last minute lobbying by Hollywood and publishing interests in the U.S. and Europe have threatened to derail the Treaty for the Blind at the last minute.
benton.org/node/152773 | Public Knowledge
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CONTENT

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND FREE SPEECH
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: April Dembosky]
In the US Supreme Court’s 1964 landmark ruling on obscenity, Justice Potter Stewart famously refused to define pornography. “But I know it when I see it,” he wrote. Half a century later, social media networks are the new arbiter of what is offensive and what is free speech. Facilitating free speech while controlling offensive content has become a controversial test and technological challenge for social networks such as Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, particularly as they work to create an environment that is appealing to advertisers and other commercial partners. Other internet companies such as Google and Yahoo have been able to build algorithms to control what kind of content appears next to certain kinds of ads. Google, for example, can ensure that ads for real estate do not appear next to search results about forest fires destroying homes. This practice, rooted in traditional newspaper or television advertising, prevents airline ads being shown in the context of news stories or television plots about aircraft crashes. But content on social networks is created by users and is constantly changing. If networks censor the content too much, they lose the trust and prodigious posting of their users. If they do not police enough, they offend other users and scare off advertisers.
benton.org/node/152837 | Financial Times
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POLICYMAKERS

MARTY FRANKS
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Martin Franks, executive VP of planning, policy and government affairs for CBS, is retiring effective Sept. 30. Franks has been instrumental in CBS' retransmission negotiations and has been a top executive, based out of both New York and Washington. "It is with considerable reluctance that I have accepted Marty Franks' decision to retire, effective Sept. 30. At the same time, of course, I wish him nothing but the very best in that retirement," CBS Corp. president and CEO Leslie Moonves said in an e-mail to staffers. "The CBS we know today would not have been possible without Marty's contributions over the past 25 years," he wrote. "His achievements are almost too numerous to mention. For example, he was instrumental in enacting Retransmission Consent, and then helped turn it into what is now a fast-growing, nine-figure revenue source for our Company. Marty also played a key role in helping repeal the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules that helped make it possible for broadcast networks to own the programs we air, and then syndicate them both at home and abroad. As a result, our CSI franchise alone has earned more than $3 billion for the Company, and the ownership of content has become a cornerstone of our success.”
benton.org/node/152769 | Broadcasting&Cable | TVNewsCheck
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

NEXT-GENERATION WIRELESS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Daniel Thomas]
The European telecoms sector is falling far behind the US in next-generation wireless services after years of investment shortfall, a development likely to hamper the continent’s competitiveness for years to come. From roughly the same level of spending in 2007, investment in the wireless industry in the US has increased by more than two-thirds in the past five years, while comparable expenditure has decreased slightly overall across Europe, according to a scathing new report by GSMA, the mobile industry body. The difference in spending began growing at a time when new superfast 4G mobile data technologies became available, such that about a fifth of US mobile connections are expected to be using mobile broadband over 4G, or LTE, networks by the end of this year, compared with just 2 per cent in Europe. Tom Philips, head of government and public affairs at the GSMA, which produced the report with Navigant Economics, the consultancy, described the report’s findings as shocking for the European sector. “The [investment] gap looks like it is getting worse, not better. Europe is so regulated that it cannot afford to invest. Everything in Europe is subscale,” said Philips.
benton.org/node/152828 | Financial Times | GSMA press release | read the report
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EUROPE’S TELECOM AGENDA
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: David Meyer]
Europe is in trouble. The Eurozone crisis, which is far from over, has laid bare the economic and even social divisions between north and south. Polling shows internal support for the EU is at an all-time low of just 41 percent. The European project needs a boost. Might lower mobile roaming charges and a net neutrality guarantee help save the day? It may sound absurd, but that is indeed the gist of a major speech given by Neelie Kroes, the EU’s digital chief. And Kroes wants to move fast: her team tells me the plan is for official proposals to be published “by September at the latest” before seeking approval from member states by October and the European Parliament by December. If successful, the proposals would be law by Easter next year.
benton.org/node/152827 | GigaOm
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