October 2014

INTERNET/BROADBAND

CIVIL RIGHTS AND NET NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Marc Morial]
[Commentary] In the decades-long struggle for civil rights, the movement has focused on different Washington institutions, from Congress to the White House to the Supreme Court. This summer, part of the battle moved to the Federal Communications Commission. The critical question now facing the FCC is how to preserve the open Internet while continuing to expand opportunity and bring the transformative benefits of broadband technology to all Americans, including communities of color. The digital divide is still too large in this country -- but we will not close it by adopting obsolete utility rules that have never previously equalized service or economic opportunity for communities of color. Instead, we need the Internet to keep growing, getting faster and reaching more Americans. This issue is bigger than the ordinary give and take of party politics, campaign machinations, and legislation. It’s the next great chapter in our unceasing struggle for full citizenship -- offline and on. All communities deserve a vibrant, growing, and open Internet -- and we must ensure that we take the right approach today. [Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League]
benton.org/headlines/civil-rights-movement-knocks-door-fcc | Hill, The
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MESSAGE FOR FCC
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Susan Crawford]
[Commentary] Jean Tirole's Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is being celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic by academics and economists. But there is no joy in the power circles of US telecommunications policy. More than a decade ago, federal policy makers turned their backs on Tirole's sensible assessments of private communications utilities -- and with disastrous results. Tirole's insight was that any company controlling physical lines into homes and businesses, left to its own devices, would act as a natural monopoly, extracting tribute from every other business and customer that depends on communications capacity. To constrain that power, regulators might need to separate wholesale and retail communications-access services, and require interconnection with other networks.
[Crawford is the John A. Reilly visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School]
benton.org/headlines/nobel-winning-message-fcc | Bloomberg
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WIRELESS

PLATFORM PARITY
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
CTIA: The Wireless Association President Meredith Attwell Baker delivered the opening remarks at a network neutrality event at the University of Pennsylvania entitled: "Should Wireless Technologies Be Regulated Differently?" Not surprisingly, her answer was an unqualified yes. The Federal Communications Commission in 2010 did not apply the same Open Internet rules to wireless discrimination that it did to wired, citing different network management challenges, though it promised to monitor the space and revisit that call if necessary. In the new rules, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has signaled that the call is being revisited, saying that extending the rules to the burgeoning wireless broadband space is on the table. Baker suggests the idea should instead be tabled.
benton.org/headlines/ctia-strict-platform-parity-endangers-wireless-growth | Multichannel News
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GM WEIGHS IN ON WIRELESS NET NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Julian Hattem]
General Motors is warning the Federal Communications Commission that tough rules on Internet service providers could hurt the auto industry. “The coming years will see rapid innovation at the intersection of cars and mobile communications,” Harry Lightsey, executive director of GM’s Global Connected Consumer initiative. “By needlessly constraining the latitude our mobile network operator suppliers have in delivering their connectivity to owners of our vehicles, you would also constrain the innovations we are seeking to provide to our customers,” Lightsey wrote. GM’s opposition could give critics extra ammunition in their push to prevent the FCC from including the wireless industry.
benton.org/headlines/gm-warns-against-internet-rules | Hill, The
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SECURITY/PRIVACY

SOCIAL ENGINEERING
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Caitlin Dewey]
Engineers who want access to your e-mail or iCloud account have three ways to go about the task: They can try to persuade you to give the passwords up directly (“active engineering”); they can try to guess or reset the passwords using other information about you (“passive engineering”); or they can pretend to be someone else entirely and get account access that way (“pretexting”). Of these options, passive engineering is probably the easiest to pull off — it is, after all, just another strain of “Google stalking,” that favored technique among curious daters and other casual snoops. By gathering information from your social media accounts (as well as from public records, your employer’s Web site, your long-forgotten wedding page, and what have you), a social engineer can get a pretty good picture of what you like, where you live and what you’re generally about. That might be enough information to guess your password. If not, it’s definitely enough information to let the engineer escalate to some other type of attack.
benton.org/headlines/dont-worry-about-getting-hacked-worry-about-getting-socially-engineered | Washington Post
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FLOODWATCH
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Nancy Scola]
Online advertisers collect tons of digital data to understand us as consumers. Now we're getting a chance to see what they're seeing. A team of digital specialists recently launched Floodwatch, a free extension for the Chrome browser that tracks and analyzes the ads that cross your screen as you move around the Web and displays the data visually to reveal a bird's-eye sense of how you're being targeted. Online advertisers -- or at least their algorithms -- are studying us all day long. This is an opportunity to study them back.
benton.org/headlines/turning-tables-online-advertisers | Washington Post
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CONTENT

HBO GO
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
HBO is finally offering its streaming service, HBO Go, as a standalone subscription next year. This is a huge deal for cord-cutters, people who forego pricey cable subscriptions in favor of online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. One of the more immediate effects has to do with HBO's relationship with Netflix. While HBO's latest move highlights more than ever how the two companies are head-to-head competitors, it's just as likely they'll find themselves sharing common interests over the long run. That's particularly true on questions of policy, regulation and dealings with broadband providers. Standalone HBO Go isn't some side project; it's HBO's play for a vast segment of the population. Simply by being in the same business puts HBO Go and Netflix in similar positions. Of course, HBO enjoys a much cozier relationship with broadband providers than Netflix does, because some of those broadband providers are cable companies that have existing deals with HBO for its content. In that respect, HBO Go has a major advantage. Thanks to what we'll call Big HBO, the standalone HBO Go will have some extra pull that Netflix doesn't have.
benton.org/headlines/hbos-taking-netflix-never-now-theyll-share-same-headaches-too | Washington Post
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HBO MOVE COULD OPEN FLOODGATES
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Mike Snider]
[Commentary] Could Time Warner and HBO have just broken the logjam preventing the move to a full-fledged Net-delivered TV future? That remains to be seen. A stand-alone HBO subscription service would require no pay TV subscription and could lead to other content providers following suit. Or it could lead to an uptick in the intrigue that comes with negotiations between content providers and pay TV companies. Studios and networks that do not follow HBO's lead demand higher prices from pay TV providers for their content. Pay TV services in turn could attempt to punish HBO saying that their relationship is diluted by the stand-alone move. Consumers who abhor pay TV will have to wait to see whether it's pay TV providers or content companies that blink in the days to come. It will be hard for other companies, especial networks, to follow suit, says Erik Brannon, analyst with market research firm IHS. "The business in pay TV is too lucrative to rock the boat. But this is a recognition that we are now in a new developing world," he said.
benton.org/headlines/hbos-stand-alone-service-could-open-floodgates | USAToday
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HBO GO AND NET NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Adi Robertson]
[Commentary] Several years ago, someone came up with a potent worst-case scenario for an Internet without network neutrality: it would look like cable TV. With the option to slow down or block individual sites and programs, Internet service providers would give you the Internet equivalent of basic cable, then charge extra for "News" and "Hollywood" bundles with Digg and YouTube instead of CNN and Showtime. So what happens when, after almost a year with no net neutrality rules, a company whose name is synonymous with premium cable jumps online? "I think cable operators are aware that more and more content is going to move online," says John Bergmayer of Public Knowledge. "Instead of trying to stop that trend, I think cable companies would just like to find ways to control it -- either by offering the online content themselves or coming up with ways to get online video services to pay them." The most extreme version of this would be throttling a particular Internet service: if you don’t pay a little extra, HBO Go slows to a crawl, and the cable-fication of the Internet begins. Whether or not the Federal Communications Commission adopts meaningful network neutrality rules, as it’s promised to do this year, HBO is still a step towards a world where everything lives on the Internet by default. Even if it sides with ISPs instead of Netflix, it’s no longer literally tied to traditional television. Is the Internet heading the way of cable? "I don’t know. I think today it looks like cable," says Matt Wood of net neutrality advocacy group Free Press. "It sounds to me like this is probably an improvement."
benton.org/headlines/without-network-neutrality-what-stops-hbo-turning-internet-cable | Verge, The
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FCC AND REDSKINS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: George Will]
[Commentary] Wretched excess by government can be beneficial if it startles people into wholesome disgust and deepened distrust and it prompts judicial rebukes that enlarge freedom. So let’s hope the Federal Communications Commission embraces the formal petition inciting it to deny licenses to broadcasters who use the word “Redskins” when reporting on the Washington Redskins. Using the FCC to break another private institution to the state’s saddle for the satisfaction of a clamorous faction illustrates how the government’s many tentacles give it many means of intimidating people who offend it.
benton.org/headlines/will-fcc-try-tackle-redskins | Washington Post
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TELEVISION

NONCOMMERCIAL STATIONS AND INCENTIVE AUCTIONS
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Top public broadcast officials paid a call to the Federal Communications Commission to push for a guarantee that there would be some spectrum reserved for noncommercial broadcasting in each market. Noncommericals have already petitioned the FCC to make that change in its May incentive auction order, but it made the point in numbers they hope are too big to ignore, including PBS President Paula Kerger, CPB President Patricia Harrison and almost a half-dozen top execs from both organizations, all of whom met with Gary Epstein, chief of the Incentive Auction Task Force, Bill Lake, chief of the Media Bureau, and FCC managing director Jon Wilkins. They pointed out that universal service is their statutory mission, and that the FCC has supported that mission in the past and should do so into the future. They want the FCC to rewrite the May order to specify that if a noncommercial gives up its entire channel for auction, at least one channel will be reserved during repacking of stations, essentially a placeholder, to enable a new noncommercial to take its place.
benton.org/headlines/noncommercial-broadcasters-push-fcc-spectrum-reserve | Broadcasting&Cable
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NAB ON REPACKING
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith and other NAB execs met with Federal Communications Commission staff and Commissioners to argue that the post-incentive auction population coverage losses TV stations would experience according to FCC scenarios "does not represent the true impact of repacking on broadcasters and their millions of viewers." Specifically, the item is a Second Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking "to address aggregate broadcaster-to-broadcaster interference and the methodology for predicting interference between broadcast and wireless operations in the same or adjacent channels in nearby markets during and following the Incentive Auction."
benton.org/headlines/nab-fcc-lowballed-population-losses-repacking | Broadcasting&Cable
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WATCHING CABLE ON THE WEB
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has said that one of his top goals is to promote competition in the industries he regulates. The agency is now mulling a rule change that could increase competition and choice for TV viewers by helping companies launch pay-TV services that stream channels through the Internet. It's a good idea, but it wouldn't do much to counteract the forces that are driving pay-TV bills into the stratosphere. The FCC may not have the authority to break up cable bundles. The best it may be able to do is bar the bundling of local TV stations with non-broadcast networks such as ESPN, Fox News, the Golf Channel or Showtime. That would help a company such as Aereo, which wants to offer consumers a low-cost way to view their local TV broadcasts through the Internet, but not companies such as Sony and Dish Network, which are piecing together full-fledged online alternatives to cable. Nevertheless, it's time for the FCC to create a common set of rules for pay-TV providers regardless of how they transmit their signals, and to welcome the new competitors that broadband makes possible.
benton.org/headlines/watching-cable-web | Los Angeles Times
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October 2014

Revealed: how Whisper app tracks ‘anonymous’ users

Remarks of Commissioner Ajit Pai at WISPAPALOOZA

Mass internet surveillance threatens International law, UN report claims

October 16, 2014 (Civil Rights and Net Neutrality)

Accessibility Claims Expected Over Websites

Facebook makes is easy to tell people you’re safe, in case of a natural disaster

Will the FCC try to tackle ‘Redskins’?