July 2014

Mediacom Exec Asks Sen McCaskill To Widen Bill Data Net

Tom Larsen, group VP of cable operator Mediacom, has written Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Claire McCaskill (D-MO) suggesting that as part of her inquiry into pay-TV bills, she should ask Missouri broadcasters to disclose the rates they charge multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) for carriage of their stations.

That way, he says, she can better determine how much of a cable or satellite bill goes to those station owners, the rate at which that payment is rising, how much or little of that is being reinvested locally and more.

Title II does not prohibit paid prioritization

[Commentary] Much of the controversy surrounding the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality proceeding involves the issue of paid prioritization: whether an Internet content or application provider can pay for priority delivery or minimum guaranteed speed over last-mile broadband networks.

Title II Section 202 prohibits telecommunications providers from engaging in “unreasonable discrimination.” But there’s an important limitation on the scope of Section 202. It does not require that the telecommunications provider offer only a single class of service to all people. Rather, it only prohibits discrimination among “like” services -- services that a customer may view as “functionally equivalent.”

In other words, we need to separate differentiation (offering different products at different prices) from discrimination (offering the same product at different prices).

[Lyons is an associate professor at Boston College Law School]

Kartik’s Story: Fighting For ICTs To Be Accessible To All

[Commentary] People with visual impairments have been struggling with accessibility for a long time, and we urgently need to make sure that accessible information and communication technologies (ICTs) are available for all, especially those in developing countries.

Thanks to advances in optical character recognition (OCR) -- a technology that converts printed or typewritten text into a format that can be accessed by screen readers -- there have been some improvements. However, much technical content remains inaccessible.

For people living in poverty and those in rural areas, the challenges are multiplied. Battling these obstacles has made me determined to change things for the disability community.

[Sawhney is a rising sophomore at Stanford University]

The Internet is a politically and culturally loaded tool, particularly when it comes to censorship

[Commentary] Censorship is always bad, right? Not to many people around our connected globe, and there is sometimes validity to their views. Unfortunately the tension between those views places a profound and perhaps dangerous dilemma at the heart of the Internet.

Guidance for Schools Issued on How to Keep Parents Better Informed on the Data They Collect on Students

The Department of Education announced new guidance for schools and districts on how to keep parents and students better informed about what student data is collected and how it is used.

The new guidance recommends that schools and districts provide parents with information, such as:

What information are you collecting about students?
Why are you collecting this information?
How is the information protected?
Do you share any personal information with third parties? If so, with whom and for what purpose(s)?
Who should parents contact if they have questions about your data practice

Tech seeks life after death for accounts

Members of the tech industry and estate lawyers are pushing Congress to tweak an e-mail privacy law to ensure that digital accounts don’t die when their users do.

With pressure building on Congress to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Communications Act (ECPA), some are asking lawmakers to explicitly allow people to control who can access their online accounts after they die or become incapacitated.

NAB: Exclusivity Rules Are Crucial

The National Association of Broadcasters has quantified for the Federal Communications Commission what it says are the significant economic benefits of network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity rules.

In reply comments in the FCC's inquiry into retransmission consent regulations, NAB offered up a Compass Lexecon study of ratings changes for 10 TV stations that did not have the exclusive rights to affiliate and syndicated programming until they petitioned the FCC for waivers that were granted.

The study says the stations' Nielsen ratings were projected to be 24.4% higher in prime time than they would have been without that exclusive programming. "Elimination or weakening of the Commissions' exclusivity rules is likely to have an economically significant impact on local stations and their incentives to invest," the study said.

TV Viewers Distracted By Other Video Screens

About 48% of prime-time TV viewers are double-timing the tube with other screens, whether using social media, checking email or shopping online, according to a study of 55,000 Internet users worldwide conducted by global research firm TNS.

This growing habit of “screen stacking” dovetails with the proliferation of devices and online video viewing. Insights like this are vital for marketers, as they shed light on emerging behavior that brands should consider when aiming to reach the distracted viewer.

China to Declare Qualcomm A Monopoly

Chinese regulators have concluded Qualcomm, one of the biggest makers of chips used in mobile devices, has a monopoly, according to Xu Kunlin, director of the anti-monopoly bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission, China's economic planning agency.

Weekly Digest

Cities Seek FCC Help to Expand Broadband

This week’s round-up covers the latest news on municipal broadband. In the spirit of disclosure, in 2012, the Benton Foundation and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) released “Broadband at the Speed of Light: How Three Communities Built Next-Generation Networks”, a report that highlights municipal network success stories.

Benton

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