May 2, 2014 (Big Data Report)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2014
The Evolution of Video Streaming and Digital Content Delivery http://benton.org/calendar/2014-05-02/
NETWORK NEUTRALITY
Put Away the Party Hats – Wheeler in His Own Words - Kevin Taglang analysis
FCC’s Tom Wheeler and the Defining Question of Network Neutrality - Harold Feld analysis
New campaign calls out President Obama for network neutrality campaign pledge [w/video]
The FCC's Flimsy Defense of Fake Net Neutrality - op-ed
ISPs Shouldn’t Be Able To Pick Winners and Losers - op-ed
Net Neutrality: Good for Google, Not Consumers - op-ed
Net neutrality advocates need to get their facts straight - Richard Bennett analysis
The net neutrality debate: Why price discrimination can be good thing - op-ed
SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
Verizon to FCC: Restrictions on airwaves auction are unjust
CTIA's Carpenter: We Need More Spectrum [links to web]
Cable's Wi-Fi ambitions are about much more than customer retention
Suit Claims Google’s Deals With Android Device Makers Violates Antitrust Laws [links to web]
BROADCASTING/TV
Complaints Filed Against Stations For Political File Nondisclosures
NAB to FCC: Rescind New Vetting Of Station Sharing [links to web]
Trapped into paying extra for cable TV sports - analysis [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
If AT&T buys DirectTV, it could go head-to-head with Comcast-Time Warner Cable
AT&T Could Probably Buy DirecTV. But Why? - analysis
DirecTV Shows a Need for AT&T - analysis
AT&T's Direct Route into Cable Fray - analysis
Media merger mania could swell in wake of Comcast deal - analysis
As Netflix Resists, Most Firms Just Try to Befriend Comcast
Comcast CEO: We Have Fewer Subscribers Than Netflix, Even After Time Warner Deal
LABOR
Justice Department Requires eBay to End Anticompetitive “No Poach” Hiring Agreements - press release
Apple, Google and the Hubris of Silicon Valley's Hiring Conspiracy - analysis
The Death of the Federal Snow Day? (Telework) [links to web]
The Next Big Idea For Workers Will Come From The Old School Labor Movement [links to web]
EDUCATION
For True Learning, Digital Technology Is Not Essential - op-ed [links to web]
DIGITAL CONTENT
TV execs want Netflix to be more like Hulu and Amazon [links to web]
How to Ensure that Streaming Video Doesn’t Crush the Internet - analysis [links to web]
JOURNALISM/MEDIA
Freedom of the Press 2014: Media Freedom Hits Decade Low - press release
1. Destroy the Village. 2. Save it. - analysis [links to web]
Why I’m Bullish on the News - Marc Andreessen op-ed [links to web]
Lords of the Viral Internet [links to web]
PRIVACY/SECURITY
Findings of the Big Data and Privacy Working Group Review - press release
Trying To Limit The Collection Of Personal Data Would Be A Lost Cause
Snooping reports' pileup problem
Tech industry wants surveillance focus after ‘Big Data’ report [links to web]
Yahoo is the latest company ignoring Web users’ requests for privacy [links to web]
Hulu faces trial over sharing users’ video history with Facebook [links to web]
The rising strategic risks of cyberattacks McKinsey analysis [links to web]
Attackers Use Microsoft Security Hole Against Energy, Defense, Finance Targets [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Surveillance orders declined in 2013
Apple, Facebook, others defy authorities, notify users of secret data demands
The race to bring NSA surveillance to the Supreme Court
Edward Snowden: NSA Spies Most on Americans
Snowden: Why hasn’t the Director of National Intelligence been punished for lying to Congress? [links to web]
US and Germany Fail to Reach a Deal on Spying
POLICYMAKERS
FirstNet names CTO, agrees to fund key activities [links to web]
COMPANY NEWS
T-Mobile Adds More Customers Than AT&T, Verizon Combined [links to web]
Google Now for Android will automatically remember where you parked [links to web]
T-Mobile CFO Says Merger Could Help Put Un-Carrier Approach “On Steroids” [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Turkey's Erdogan: One of the World's Most Determined Internet Censors
Viacom buys Britain's Channel 5 Broadcasting for $760 million [links to web]
MORE ONLINE
Activists sue San Francisco over 'Google buses' [links to web]
California Analysis Pours Cold Water on Expanded TV and Film Subsidies [links to web]
Silicon Valley heading toward another tech bubble, some investors say [links to web]
The Dark Side of the Sharing Economy - NYTimes editorial [links to web]
Libraries Working To Bridge The Cultural Divide - op-ed [links to web]
Fox News Denies Shepard Smith Move Was a Result of Him Wanting to Come Out As Gay [links to web]
NETWORK NEUTRALITY
PUT AWAY THE PARTY HATS
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
[Commentary] Before an audience of the nation’s largest broadband providers, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler defended his latest proposal for Open Internet/network neutrality rules. We outlined just last week what that proposal looks like and shared initial reaction. Needless to say, the debate only heated up more this week. Chairman Wheeler aimed to discredit any notion that “we are gutting the Open Internet rules.” At The Cable Show in Los Angeles, Chairman Wheeler dispensed with niceties and told the audience to “Put away the party hats.” As the former chief lobbyist for the cable industry, Chairman Wheeler noted, “It has gone from regulatory constraints that were breathtakingly inhibiting to regulatory constraints that are barely discernible.” Especially concerning broadband, Wheeler noted that “the cable industry has important technical advantages, a leading market position, and very limited regulation. It is, to engage in understatement, an unusual situation.”
http://benton.org/node/182575
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FCC CHAIRMAN TOM WHEELER AND THE DEFINING QUESTION OF NETWORK NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: Tales of the Sausage Factory, AUTHOR: Harold Feld]
[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler caused quite a stir when he circulated a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on network neutrality. The proposed rule moves away from generally prohibiting wireline broadband providers from offering “paid prioritization” (aka Internet “fast lanes”) to explicitly permitting wireline providers to offer paid prioritization subject to conditions designed to guard against anti-competitive and anti-consumer conduct. To employ a crude analogy, network neutrality supporters see Chairman Wheeler’s proposal as roughly the equivalent of teaching the rhythm method in sex ed, while opponents are outraged that Chairman Wheeler would teach anything other than pure abstinence. But we as consumer advocates must reiterate to members of Congress in both parties, and to the White House, that because the DC Circuit has made it clear that the only way to have network neutrality is to classify broadband access as a Title II telecommunications service that is what they must do. We must show not merely the 3 Democrats on the FCC, but the rest of the political class in Washington, that Title II reclassification is not a “nuclear option” or “third rail” but a necessary and well supported prerequisite to a healthy Internet policy.
benton.org/node/182567 | Tales of the Sausage Factory
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NEW CAMPAIGN CALLS OUT OBAMA FOR NET NEUTRALITY CAMPAIGN PLEDGE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Kate Tummarello]
As the Federal Communications Commission considers allowing Internet “fast lanes,” the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is looking to hold President Barack Obama accountable to the commitment he made to an online “level playing field” during his 2008 campaign. The campaign’s site hosts a video from a 2007 campaign event where then-Sen Obama described himself as “a strong supporter of net neutrality.” Internet providers should not “charge different rates to different websites,” because that “destroys one of the best things about the Internet, which is there’s this incredible equality there” he said. Companies like Google and Facebook “might not have been started if you had not had a level playing field for whoever’s got the best idea, and I want to maintain that basic principle in how the Internet functions,” he said. As president, he said, he would “make sure that that’s the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward.” Joe Niederberger, who posed the net neutrality question to Obama in 2007 and is now behind NoSlowLane.com, criticized the Obama Administration for the current plan to allow Internet “fast lanes.” “The new FCC chair should carry out the president’s promise and support net neutrality,” he said in a video on the site.
benton.org/node/182577 | Hill, The | campaign video
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THE FCC'S FLIMSY DEFENSE OF FAKE NET NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Craig Aaron]
[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler wants you to calm down. In a blog post on the FCC website, he claimed that the many critics of his plan are "misinformed." Does that mean that it's time for network neutrality fans to put down their pitchforks? Hell, no. It's time to get even louder. Try as he might to convince people that he's on the right course, Chairman Wheeler doesn't seem to grasp one basic problem: Encouraging online discrimination in the name of the open Internet is unacceptable. Yet that's exactly what his plan would do: allow Internet service providers to charge new fees to content companies for preferential treatment. If the chairman truly wants to do right by the Internet and avoid losing another costly court battle, reclassifying broadband is the only viable option. If Chairman Wheeler doesn't reclassify and continues down the wrong path, either the rules will be struck down when the FCC acts or, more likely, they'll never be enforced. And under the convoluted approach he's proposed, future FCC chairs who think differently than Chairman Wheeler does will be under zero obligation to take action. Reclassification is the approach on the strongest legal footing. Reclassifying broadband is also the only approach that puts the needs of Internet users first. Innovators need the certainty that comes with common carriage, not Chairman Wheeler's "just trust me" approach to stopping harmful behavior by AT&T, Comcast or Verizon. [Aaron is President and CEO, Free Press]
benton.org/node/182579 | Huffington Post
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PICKING WINNERS AND LOSERS
[SOURCE: US News, AUTHOR: Bartees Cox]
[Commentary] There are a few reasons why the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet proposal doesn’t quite go far enough in creating strong network neutrality rules. I’d like to concentrate on one in particular. The FCC’s proposal invites Internet Service Providers to choose winners and losers online. Even though the proposal explicitly says that ISPs will not be able to block or discriminate against websites, the commercial reasonableness standard within the new proposal leads one to believe otherwise. The baseline concept of network neutrality prevents discrimination and traffic bias. But the concept of commercial reasonableness is steeped in discrimination and bias. It’s very difficult to see how this standard, which inherently offers less protection than the previous Open Internet Rules, can serve the same policy goals. And from a competitive standpoint, there are a slew of reasons that large ISPs have to avoid partnerships with their competitors. Point blank, the new proposal offers less protection than the previous Open Internet Rules. Additionally, the FCC’s call to approach discrimination on a case-by-case basis creates uncertainty, and disadvantages small businesses and entrepreneurs. [Cox is the director of media relations at Public Knowledge]
benton.org/node/182585 | US News
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NET NEUTRALITY NOT GOOD FOR CONSUMERS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: G Keith Cambron]
[Commentary] When I began my career as an engineer at Bell Telephone Labs in the 1970s, regulators had a guiding principle: Businesses should subsidize consumers to promote the public good and ensure universal service. It was common to charge businesses twice as much as consumers for basic phone service, and for additional features such as call waiting. Businesses accepted the policy because they recognized the value of services that helped customers reach them. When toll-free, 1-800 service was introduced, it proved popular with both businesses and consumers, even though businesses paid the entire cost of communicating with their customers. Forty years later, public policy has taken a sharp turn. The "net neutrality" Internet-regulation rules -- the latest iteration of which Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler previewed -- would force consumers to subsidize communication businesses by driving up prices for cable services. The rules would prevent broadband carriers such as AT&T and Comcast from charging market prices to content providers who use more bandwidth, such as Netflix and Google. But the bandwidth cost would just be passed on to consumers, who would have to pay more for cable and DSL. Self-appointed consumer advocates are in an uproar over the idea that businesses that benefit from broadband transport should bear part of the cost along with the companies that provide the bandwidth. Meanwhile, consumers are unhappy that carriers now often charge for broadband based on usage, particularly on smartphones and tablets. If Google and Netflix are really champions of a free Internet -- not companies serving their own interests -- there is another solution. They can send monthly checks to their subscribers to defray the cost of additional bandwidth charges. They collect a good deal of information about their users and could roll out such a service swiftly. I'll await my first installment.
[Cambron is the former president and CEO of AT&T Labs]
benton.org/node/182685 | Wall Street Journal
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NET NEUTRALITY ADVOCATES NEED TO GET THEIR FACTS STRAIGHT
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Richard Bennett]
[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules are based on the false premise that American broadband services are sub-standard compared to those in other countries. Advocates who buy this notion believe that network price and quality can only be improved by regulatory action that forces providers to make uneconomic investments. Before we can have a rational discussion about network policy, we need to get the facts straight. Average broadband speeds in five of the top 10 are actually declining, while those in the US are improving. Chairman Wheeler’s Open Internet rules aim to preserve the goose that has laid these golden eggs while protecting America’s innovators and ordinary citizens from the hypothetical harms than can arise in markets with minimal competition. In short, the proposed regulations permit a degree of experimentation with the pricing of technical services on the Internet provided that the common, baseline service continues to be adequate for the common, baseline set of applications. The most common complaint emanating from the fainting couches occupied by (the mainly far left) net neutrality advocates is that the proposed regulations don’t go far enough to preserve the Internet as it has always been. This is an odd standard to apply to a technical system notable for its disruption of traditional industries such as music, journalism, travel, and retail. Net neutrality advocates also worry that Internet Service Providers have incentives to exploit customers and harm innovation, fears inspired by every profit-maximizing business. But these incentives are counter-balanced by conflicting incentives to sign up more subscribers and to provide richer services.
benton.org/node/182609 | American Enterprise Institute
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THE NET NEUTRALITY DEBATE: WHY PRICE DISCRIMINATION CAN BE GOOD THING
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Bronwyn Howell]
[Commentary] Amongst all of the brouhaha circulating following the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality announcement, some of the most puzzling comments concern the purported ‘evils of price discrimination’ that will inevitably emerge if -- heaven forbid -- a network operator dares to charge one person a different price to move traffic over the Internet than another person. The mere fact that discrimination could occur is deemed sufficient cause by many to justify its legislative prohibition. The ‘evils of price discrimination’ are almost always voiced by individuals fervently advocating for the necessity of universal and uncapped Internet access tariffs – often to the extent that metered Internet access should be legislated out of existence, so that the digital world can flourish unbounded and ‘free’, just as its instigators intended. If one digs a little deeper, one would probably find that the vast majority of these ardent advocates currently purchase their (uncapped) fixed Internet connection in a ‘triple play bundle’ alongside their cable or IPTV subscription and some form of voice telephony service. Do these advocates realize the double standard they exhibit when calling for the prohibition of one form of price discrimination while at the same time benefiting from price discrimination that underpins the entire business case of their digital experiences? Because ‘flat rate’ Internet access and triple play bundles are simply other forms of price discrimination. If price discrimination is illegal then surely these too must be banned? [Howell is general manager for the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation]
benton.org/node/182569 | American Enterprise Institute
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SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
VERIZON TO FCC: RESTRICTIONS ON AIRWAVES AUCTION ARE UNJUST
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Alina Selyukh]
Verizon Communications has urged the Federal Communications not to restrict how much it can buy in the 2015 auction of wireless spectrum, saying such a limit would subsidize the smallest national carriers and their foreign owners. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently proposed rules for the complex sale of valuable airwaves scheduled for mid-2015. The rules would reserve part of the spectrum in each market for wireless carriers that do not already have dominant blocks of low-frequency airwaves there. That would benefit the No. 3 and No. 4 carriers, Sprint and T-Mobile US, by limiting the two biggest carriers, Verizon and AT&T, which dominate the highly valued low-band spectrum. The sale is considered one of the most complex undertakings by the FCC. It would first involve TV stations' giving up airwaves they exclusively use and the FCC then auctioning them off to wireless carriers. Congress has mandated that the FCC raise enough money to pay broadcasters for their lost spectrum and fund a new $7 billion public safety network.
benton.org/node/182652 | Reuters
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CABLE’S WI-FI AMBITIONS
[SOURCE: Fierce, AUTHOR: Sue Marek]
Although members of the CableWiFi Alliance have said repeatedly that the primary incentive behind their growing Wi-Fi hotspot portfolio (which now stands at 250,000 nationwide) is to complement their customers' broadband service in the home and differentiate themselves from their telecommunications competitors, there are signs that a bigger agenda is afloat. At the recent Cable Show, Wi-Fi was part of nearly every discussion. NCTA Chairman Michael Powell positioned the cable industry's Wi-Fi footprint as a competitor to wireless carriers when he spoke with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler. And Chairman Wheeler agreed, noting: "Wi-Fi offers new opportunities in broadband and high speed data as well as voice service." Likewise, Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts claimed that his company is the "biggest wireless provider in the country already," and said that the convergence of Wi-Fi with the cable network is a powerful tool that will be very important in the future. "It distinguishes us from the competitors and gives us a better business," he said. Cable operators have invested a lot of time and money into growing their Wi-Fi networks. It's only a matter of time before they come up with a way to monetize this important asset.
benton.org/node/182587 | Fierce
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BROADCASTING
COMPLAINTS FILED AGAINST STATIONS FOR POLITICAL FILE NONDISCLOSURES
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The Sunlight Foundation and Campaign Legal Center filed complaints against 11 broadcast TV stations for allegedly failing to post the requisite information about political advertising sponsors in their online political files. The complaints say the stations failed to identify the candidate the ad referred to, the issue of national importance and the CEO or board of directors of the sponsor. The groups have been tracking the online broadcaster filings in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United and subsequent court decisions that allowed more money from outside groups into the political system without ways to specifically track the underlying funders. "Often the only way to track this money, which is so obviously influencing our elections, is through the broadcasters’ political files, which until 2013, were kept only on paper, locked away in file cabinets," said the Sunlight Foundation.
benton.org/node/182571 | Broadcasting&Cable | TVNewsCheck
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OWNERSHIP
AT&T-DIRECTV VS COMCAST-TWC?
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
AT&T may be getting more involved in the pay-TV business with a bid for DirecTV. If that's true, it could have major implications for the US TV market. Merging with one of the nation's biggest satellite TV providers would put AT&T on strong footing to compete against an expanded Comcast (if the cable company successfully buys Time Warner Cable). AT&T has about 5.7 million TV customers on its U-verse service, while DirecTV boasts about 20 million subscribers. A combined Comcast-Time Warner Cable would control about 30 million customers. The mergers would create two big giants, each controlling around one-third of the US pay-TV market. One big question is whether AT&T could get a merger past federal regulators, who are already looking closely at the proposed Comcast deal. A serious move by AT&T to pursue DirecTV (more on that in a bit) would trigger a pretty complicated game of regulatory chess: The Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department would probably need to determine whether or how an AT&T-DirecTV merger would affect a Comcast-TWC merger.
benton.org/node/182599 | Washington Post
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AT&T COULD PROBABLY BUY DIRECTV. BUT WHY?
[SOURCE: Revere Digital, AUTHOR: Peter Kafka, Amy Schatz]
[Commentary] Comcast and Time Warner Cable? Doable, but rough. Sprint and T-Mobile? Really rough. But if AT&T wants to buy DirecTV, it has decent odds of getting it done. At least from the regulators’ perspective. So let’s say regulators say the deal is OK with them. What does it do for AT&T? That one is harder to parse. It’s hard to argue, as Comcast and Time Warner Cable can, that the two companies can find operational efficiencies -- since maintaining telecommunications/broadband pipes and operating satellite TV networks are two distinct things. The most obvious answer is that combining the two companies will give them more power when it comes to negotiating licensing deals with TV programmers. But that’s only relevant if AT&T decides or is allowed to keep its pay TV subscribers. And even then, the combined company may not be able to do much more than it was doing as two separate companies. Analyst Craig Moffett estimates that AT&T might eventually end up saving $400 million a year in programming costs.
benton.org/node/182640 | Revere Digital
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DIRECTV NEEDS AT&T
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Shalini Ramachandran]
[Commentary] The world has become a tougher place for DirecTV since 2010, when AT&T unsuccessfully tried to buy the satellite-TV operator. After years of outperforming the rest of the pay-TV industry, subscriber growth has slowed sharply while programming costs are rising and cheap online video alternatives are multiplying. In response to changing market conditions, DirecTV's satellite-TV rival Dish Network has invested billions of dollars in trying to diversify into wireless broadband and launch its own online-video service. DirecTV, in contrast, has bought back stock -- lots of it. The company has spent $29.7 billion on repurchases in the past eight years, according to regulatory filings. DirecTV has taken some steps to develop online-video services but it isn't as advanced as Dish, which hopes to offer its service beginning this summer, people familiar with the matter say. DirecTV's strategic position is in the spotlight now that AT&T has come back with yet another approach. A person close to the situation says DirecTV, which became independent in late 2009 when its then-biggest shareholder Liberty Media Corp. divested its stake, is likely open to a sale. The company's board, say people familiar with the situation, is concerned with satellite TV's Achilles' heel: its inability to offer an Internet-access broadband service competitive with the packages delivered by cable and phone companies.
benton.org/node/182682 | Wall Street Journal
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AT&T’S ROUTE INTO CABLE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Miriam Gottfried]
Tying up with AT&T could make sense for DirecTV, whose subscriber-growth rate has fallen year over year since 2010. As a satellite provider, DirecTV lacks its own broadband offering, which puts it at a disadvantage to cable peers. AT&T's fiber broadband could fill that gap. For AT&T, buying DirecTV would give it access to the satellite company's free-cash flow. That could be valuable, as roughly 85% of AT&T's free cash flow is expected to go toward its dividend in 2014. And doubling down on video would make AT&T less exposed to wireless at a time when aggressive promotions by T-Mobile US have been shaking up the industry. But buying DirecTV, which has an enterprise value of $59.5 billion, would hardly solve all of AT&T's problems. AT&T would be tying itself to a business in structural, if gradual, decline. Doing a deal also would mean passing up the opportunity to buy the satellite-TV company that also comes with a sizable swath of wireless spectrum: Dish Network. Getting Dish to the bargaining table may, in fact, be AT&T's primary goal in talking to DirecTV.
benton.org/node/182681 | Wall Street Journal
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MEDIA MERGER MANIA COULD SWELL IN WAKE OF COMCAST DEAL
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Mike Snider, Roger Yu]
Comcast's move to acquire Time Warner Cable is creating a ripple effect that could transform the pay-TV industry. The latest undulation: The floating of a possible purchase of satellite provider DirecTV by telecom giant AT&T. Among other moves or speculation since Comcast announced its $45 billion bid for Time Warner Cable in March 2014: DirecTV and competitor Dish Network have talked about merging, according to a Bloomberg report; Netflix announced connection deals with Verizon and Comcast; and Apple had reportedly approached Comcast, too. Not to be forgotten: Sprint's expected attempt to buy T-Mobile, and TV upstart Aereo's challenge to broadcasters is under review by the Supreme Court. A common thread to all of these: "A trend to get bigger and amass more market share and be in a better position to dictate terms," says Phil Swann of TVPredictions.com. All the speculation suggests that behind the scenes, the biggest pay-TV players are making preparations for a transformed marketplace should the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal be approved. "The writing is on the wall that these kinds of partnerships have to get made," says Digital World Research analyst PJ McNealy.
benton.org/node/182683 | USAToday
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WILL FIRMS RESIST COMCAST?
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jonathan Mahler]
Virtually every media and tech company -- content providers like CBS and Disney, video streaming services like Amazon, Netflix and YouTube, and social media and e-commerce sites -- has a major stake in the outcome of the government’s review of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. The question these companies now face is whether their interests are better served by speaking out about it, or by keeping any possible complaints to themselves as they try to negotiate the best deals they can with Comcast. For the time being, almost none are publicly speaking out, partly because they are wary of antagonizing a company with which they do business. Privately, though, media executives are eager to echo Netflix’s concern about the deal, and to cast themselves as victims of the potential megamerger. They use words like “omnivorous” and “rapacious” to describe Comcast, while expressing skepticism on the prospect of the largest cable company buying the second-largest. “Every company, including ours, knows how we feel about the merger, but the question is, Are we going to do anything about it?” said one senior media executive, who like others, insisted on anonymity to discuss a sensitive business relationship. “Who’s going to be the first to kick sand in the bully’s face?”
benton.org/node/182684 | New York Times
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COMCAST CEO: WE HAVE FEWER SUBSCRIBERS THAN NETFLIX, EVEN AFTER TIME WARNER DEAL
[SOURCE: Variety, AUTHOR: Todd Spangler]
Comcast continues to paint Netflix as a competitor, as the cable giant keeps trying to make the case that it needs to swallow Time Warner Cable to have a presence on a national scale -- and compete with what it portrays as surging digital-video rivals. Comcast Chairman-CEO Brian Roberts said that with the TW Cable acquisition and subsequent spinoff of systems to Charter Communications, Comcast will add a net 7 million customers. That would give Comcast about 30 million video subscribers -- and Roberts noted that Netflix now has more than 35 million US subscribers. The merger will give “the industry a better opportunity to have a footprint regionally and hopefully nationally,” Roberts said. In reality, Comcast and Netflix aren’t really directly competitive: They offer different kinds of content, and Netflix is not a replacement for the broad programming available on pay TV. Comcast does offer a Netflix-like streaming service, Streampix, but that’s bundled with TV and has a much smaller content lineup. In addition, Comcast’s video biz is far larger in dollar terms. Comcast posted $5.18 billion in video revenue for the first quarter of 2014, whereas Netflix generated $1.27 billion.
benton.org/node/182605 | Variety
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LABOR
NO POACH AGREEMENT
[SOURCE: Department of Justice, AUTHOR: Press release]
The Department of Justice has reached a settlement with eBay that prevents the company from entering into or maintaining agreements with other companies restraining employee recruitment and hiring. The department’s Antitrust Division filed the proposed settlement in the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose. If approved by the court, the settlement would resolve the department’s competitive concerns and the original lawsuit filed on Nov 16, 2012. In its lawsuit, the department alleged that senior executives and directors of eBay and Intuit entered into an agreement, beginning no later than 2006, that prevented each firm from recruiting employees from the other and that prohibited eBay from hiring Intuit employees that approached eBay. The agreement between eBay and Intuit diminished important competition between the firms to attract highly skilled technical and other employees to the detriment of affected employees who had less access to better job opportunities and higher pay. The proposed settlement would prohibit eBay from entering or maintaining anticompetitive agreements relating to employee hiring and retention for five years.
benton.org/node/182589 | Department of Justice | Department of Justice | The Hill | USAToday
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APPLE, GOOGLE AND THE HUBRIS OF SILICON VALLEY'S HIRING CONSPIRACY
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Paul Barrett, Brad Stone]
[Commentary] The tech aristocrats, who from 2005 through 2009 secretly forged a series of no-recruit agreements, suspected what they were doing wasn’t quite kosher. But why did they think they could get away with it? And now that they’ve been exposed, what does the episode tell us about the nature of a corporate culture built on the labor of a relatively well-paid but evidently exploited cohort of digitally talented serfs? Well, they did kinda get away with it. The $324 million Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe agreed to pay works out to about 0.4 percent of their combined total revenue for the most recent quarter. The individual plaintiffs will end up with a few thousand dollars apiece. It’s unlikely, moreover, that the defendants will suffer any lasting taint when it comes to new hires. One reason the bosses had the cojones to try this caper is that Apple and Google in particular are the dream factories of America’s digital and marketing elites.
benton.org/node/182650 | Bloomberg
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JOURNALISM/MEDIA
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 2014: MEDIA FREEDOM HITS DECADE LOW
[SOURCE: Freedom House, AUTHOR: Press release]
Global press freedom has fallen to its lowest level in over a decade, according to a Freedom House report. The decline was driven in part by major regression in several Middle Eastern states, including Egypt, Libya, and Jordan; marked setbacks in Turkey, Ukraine, and a number of countries in East Africa; and deterioration in the relatively open media environment of the United States. Freedom of the Press 2014 found that despite positive developments in a number of countries, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa, setbacks were the dominant trend in every other region. The share of the world’s population with media rated “Free” remains at just 14 percent, or only one in seven people. Far larger shares live in “Not Free” (44 percent) or “Partly Free” (42 percent) media environments. Key Global Findings:
Of the 197 countries and territories assessed during 2013, a total of 63 (32 percent) were rated Free, 68 (35 percent) were rated Partly Free, and 66 (33 percent) were rated Not Free.
All regions except sub-Saharan Africa, whose average score leveled off, showed declines, with the Middle East and North Africa suffering the worst deterioration.
Triggers for country declines included governments’ overt attempts to control the news -- whether through the physical harassment of journalists covering protest movements or other sensitive stories, restrictions on foreign reporters, or tightened constraints on online news outlets and social media -- as well as the role of owners in shaping media content through directives on coverage or dismissals of outspoken journalists.
Country improvements were largely driven by three factors: a growing ability of private firms to operate television and radio outlets; greater access to a variety of views via online media, social media, and international outlets; and improved respect for legal protections for the press.
China and Russia maintained a tight grip on local media while also attempting to control the more independent views provided either in the blogosphere or by foreign news sources.
The world’s eight worst-rated countries remain Belarus, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
In the United States, the study found that conditions have deteriorated due primarily to attempts by the government to inhibit reporting on national security issues.
benton.org/node/182564 | Freedom House
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PRIVACY/SECURITY
FINDINGS OF THE BIG DATA AND PRIVACY WORKING GROUP REVIEW
[SOURCE: The White House, AUTHOR: John Podesta]
In January, President Obama asked me to lead a wide-ranging review of "big data" and privacy—to explore how these technologies are changing our economy, our government, and our society, and to consider their implications for our personal privacy. Together with Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, the President's Science Advisor John Holdren, the President's Economic Advisor Jeff Zients, and other senior officials, our review sought to understand what is genuinely new and different about big data and to consider how best to encourage the potential of these technologies while minimizing risks to privacy and core American values. On May 1, we presented our findings to the President. We knew better than to try to answer every question about big data in three months. But we are able to draw important conclusions and make concrete recommendations for Administration attention and policy development in a few key areas. Our review raised the question of whether the "notice and consent" framework, in which a user grants permission for a service to collect and use information about them, still allows us to meaningfully control our privacy as data about us is increasingly used and reused in ways that could not have been anticipated when it was collected. Big data raises other concerns, as well. One significant finding of our review was the potential for big data analytics to lead to discriminatory outcomes and to circumvent longstanding civil rights protections in housing, employment, credit, and the consumer marketplace. We make six actionable policy recommendations in our report to the President: 1) Advance the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, 2) Pass National Data Breach Legislation, 3) Extend Privacy Protections to non-U.S. Persons, 4) Ensure Data Collected on Students in School is used for Educational Purposes, 5) Expand Technical Expertise to Stop Discrimination, and 6) Amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
[Podesta is a Counselor to the President]
benton.org/node/182593 | White House, The | The White House | WH fact sheet
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TRYING TO LIMIT THE COLLECTION OF PERSONAL DATA WOULD BE A LOST CAUSE
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Joseph Marks]
Preventing companies and government agencies from gathering embarrassing or damaging personal information about you may be a fool’s errand, a White House panel on privacy in the age of big data said. Instead, lawmakers and regulators should focus their efforts on preventing the dissemination or other use of damaging personal data, according to the report from the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology Policy. In some cases that damaging data may be as personal as an individuals’ genome that, if shown to a potential employer, could lead to job discrimination based on her likelihood of developing a degenerative disease. In other cases, organizations may collect the most common characteristics of terrorists or criminals, which could lead to discrimination against people who have those characteristics but are neither terrorists nor criminals. The report follows a three-month study led by White House Counselor John Podesta on how the explosion of new data sources and new tools to gather intelligence from them will affect Americans’ privacy.
benton.org/node/182677 | nextgov
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SNOOPING REPORTS PILE UP
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Josh Gerstein]
Could surveillance reform succumb to death by a thousand blue-ribbon panels? That’s what some are fearing as bookshelves in congressional offices, lobbying suites and newsrooms across Washington begin to sag with the accumulation of snooping-related reports and recommendations unveiled since Edward Snowden’s stunning disclosures last June about widespread National Security Agency gathering of US telephone data. The White House added two more studies to the growing stack May 1: assessments of the risks and dangers inherent in collection and mining of so-called “big data” by both government and the private sector. One writeup came from Obama advisers and Cabinet officials like counselor John Podesta, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. Another came from a 20-member council of outside experts on technology issues. The teeming pile of reports stands in contrast to the few tangible signs of legislative progress on many of the issues the various boards have focused on. That disconnect is fueling concerns in some quarters that there’s plenty of diagnosing going on and, so far, little in the way of treatment.
benton.org/node/182679 | Politico
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
SURVEILLANCE ORDERS DECLINE
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Josh Gerstein]
Amid a major public and press furor over National Security Agency surveillance, federal surveillance orders and demands for national-security related information declined slightly last year, according to statistics made public by the Justice Department. The Obama administration said it filed 1,655 applications with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2013, down from 1,856 the previous year. The court maintained its controversial record of virtually never rejecting a government surveillance request, doing so zero times in 2013. The last rejection of such an application was in 2009. The court did modify 34 applications for surveillance and/or physical searches, the Justice Department said in a letter sent to leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees. The government made 178 applications last year for business records under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act -- the mechanism used to authorize the NSA's now-famous telephone metadata program. That's down from 212 such applications in 2012. All of last year's requests for 215 orders were granted, but judges made changes to the vast majority of those -- with 141 modifications reported by the Justice Department. The FBI's issuance of National Security Letters -- administrative subpoenas for certain types of information from telephone companies, Internet firms and other utilities -- also ratcheted back a bit last year. There were 14,219 requests in 2013 covering 5,334 Americans or legal residents, DOJ said. That's down from 15,299 NSL's in 2012, covering 6,223 individuals.
benton.org/node/182617 | Politico
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APPLE, FACEBOOK, OTHERS DEFY AUTHORITIES, NOTIFY USERS OF SECRET DATA DEMANDS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Craig Timberg]
Major US technology companies have largely ended the practice of quietly complying with investigators’ demands for e-mail records and other online data, saying that users have a right to know in advance when their information is targeted for government seizure. This increasingly defiant industry stand is giving some of the tens of thousands of Americans whose Internet data gets swept into criminal investigations each year the opportunity to fight in court to prevent disclosures. Prosecutors, however, warn that tech companies may undermine cases by tipping off criminals, giving them time to destroy vital electronic evidence before it can be gathered. Fueling the shift is the industry’s eagerness to distance itself from the government after disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance of online services. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google all are updating their policies to expand routine notification of users about government data seizures, unless specifically gagged by a judge or other legal authority, officials at all four companies said. Yahoo announced similar changes in July. As this position becomes uniform across the industry, US tech companies will ignore the instructions stamped on the fronts of subpoenas urging them not to alert subjects about data requests, industry lawyers say. Companies that already routinely notify users have found that investigators often drop data demands to avoid having suspects learn of inquiries.
benton.org/node/182671 | Washington Post
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THE RACE TO BRING NSA SURVEILLANCE TO THE SUPREME COURT
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Adrianne Jeffries]
It’s been almost a year since the nation learned that the government has been heavily surveilling Americans using a web of programs that potentially violate the Constitution or at least some laws. The legality of those programs has yet to be definitively challenged. Even if the programs are legal, many feel the government is at least obligated to be transparent about them. There have been at least 25 major lawsuits have been filed against the National Security Agency, President Barack Obama, telecommunications companies that facilitated data collection, and others involved in the government’s surveillance programs since Edward Snowden’s first revelations on June 6th, 2013, according to investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica. There have been various rulings by lower courts and appeals courts, some of which contradict each other. So far, only one case has been dismissed. The lack of consensus suggests that some part of the NSA program should eventually come before the Supreme Court. There are arguably three cases closest to reaching the Supreme Court, all challenging section 215 and the phone-record surveillance. Two were filed after the Snowden revelations, and one was filed back in 2006 but just recently cleared a legal hurdle: Klayman v. Obama et. al., ACLU et. al. v. Clapper et. al., and Jewel et. al. v. National Security Agency.
benton.org/node/182623 | Verge, The
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EDWARD SNOWDEN: NSA SPIES MOST ON AMERICANS
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Dustin Volz]
Edward Snowden told a crowd of fans that the US government's surveillance programs collect more data on Americans than it does on any other country. "Do you think it's right that the NSA is collecting more information about Americans in America than it is about Russians in Russia?" Snowden said. "Because that’s what our systems do. We watch our own people more closely than we watch any other population in the world." Snowden also took several shots at the National Security Agency and its top officials, and criticized the agency for wearing two contradictory hats of protecting US data and exploiting security flaws to gather intelligence on foreign threats. "US government policy directed by the NSA ... is now making a choice, a binary choice, between security of our communications and the vulnerability of our communications," Snowden said, suggesting the government was biased toward the latter activity.
benton.org/node/182621 | National Journal
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NO “NO SPYING” DEAL
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Sanger]
The effort to remake the intelligence relationship between the United States and Germany after it was disclosed last year that the National Security Agency was tapping Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone has collapsed, according to German officials, who say there will be no broad intelligence sharing or “no-spy” agreement between the two countries when Chancellor Merkel arrives at the White House on May 2. For a number of months, German officials said the chancellor could not visit Washington until there was a resolution, including what they called a “restoration of trust” between the allies. But the talks hit the rocks as soon as they began. Germany demanded a no-spy agreement that would ban the United States from conducting espionage activities on its soil. That led to a series of tough exchanges between the president’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, and her German counterpart, Christoph Heusgen.
benton.org/node/182676 | New York Times | The Hill
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
ERDOGAN: INTERNET CENSOR
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Joe Parkinson, Sam Schechner, Emre Peker]
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned his democratically elected government into one of the world's most determined Internet censors. His political party passed laws letting him shut down websites without a court order and collect Web browsing data on individuals. He put a veteran spy in charge of Turkey's telecommunications regulator. He also has blocked dozens of websites. Twitter was banned for two weeks in late March and early April, and Google's YouTube video-sharing service has been dark since March 27. An opposition newspaper columnist and academic was sentenced to 10 months in jail for a tweet that insulted the prime minister, while 29 defendants are on trial on allegations that include using tweets to organize protests and foment unrest last year. "Let people say whatever they want, we will take care of this ourselves," Erdogan said after blocking Twitter. Tensions were high May 1 as protesters clashed with police trying to enforce a ban on the traditional march to Istanbul's Taksim Square, long symbolic as a place of dissent on May Day. Some critics of Erdogan say privately that they feel more nervous about making antigovernment statements. In cafes and bars here, people compare technical workarounds aimed at dodging the government's website blockages and surveillance efforts.
benton.org/node/182675 | Wall Street Journal
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... and we are outta here. Have a great weekend.