1. Monthly archive
  2. December 2014

December 2014

Comcast’s secret hotline for special cardholders really exists. But it’s not much different from the regular one.

Comcast has been giving out special get-out-of-customer-service-hell-free cards in response to people who've had less than satisfying experiences with the company. If you manage to get your hands on one, treasure it: It carries a unique code you can use (just once!) to access a "no-wait customer service hotline." Here's why this program is resurfacing now: It seems that the recipients of these cards include "congressional staffers, journalists, and other influential Washingtonians."

The implication is that Comcast may be ingratiating itself with federal officials at the same time that it's trying to convince regulators to approve its massive merger with Time Warner Cable. Except that these cards, aside from the no-wait thing, don't actually do anything special. It turns out that the whole program was dreamed up so that Comcast employees who didn't work in customer service could have something -- anything -- to say when frustrated customers confronted them in person about their problems.

[Dec 24]

FCC LPFM Announcement

By this Public Notice, the Federal Communications Commission considers 96 groups of mutually exclusive (MX) applications filed in the recent low power FM (LPFM) window and uses a point system to tentatively select applications for grant. The tentative selectees, i.e., the single applicant with the highest point total or the applicants tied for the highest point total from each MX group, are identified, in bold, in Attachment A. Commencing on December 24, 2014, the first business day after the date of the release of this Public Notice, the FCC initiates a 30-day period for filing petitions to deny against the applicants tentatively selected and a 90-day period for the filing of voluntary time-share proposals (pointaggregation requests) and major change amendments.

[Dec 23]

Petitioner Drops KTTV License Challenge Over 'Redskins'

Native American radio host Larry Smith has withdrawn his petition to deny the renewal of Fox's KTTV Los Angeles. The one-page filing did not provide a clue as to why, but the Federal Communications Commission's dismissal of a similar complaint may have been the reason. Smith was one of three Native Americans to join legal activist John Banzhaf in asking the FCC to deny the renewal over use of the term "Redskins" to refer to the Washington professional football team, which he said was indecent (profane) and might constitute hate speech or fighting words.

[Dec 23]

Why do cable news shows use so many celebrity ‘experts’?

Cable news has copious hours of airtime to fill, and it sometimes fills them with expert analysts who not only aren’t experts but also really aren’t even analysts. They just play them on cable TV news shows. Cable news may be the only mainstream news source that does this sort of thing. Other news outlets don’t usually turn over their airwaves and pixels to nonexperts when an expert is called for. [Dec 24]

A controversial YouTube video could create a crazy new form of copyright

[Commentary] Inside a federal courthouse in Pasadena (CA), Google tried to stop a ruling that could upend the entertainment industry.

The case of Garcia v. Google Inc. was considered in an appeals court, in front of a panel of 11 judges. The plaintiff, an actress in the film Innocence of Muslims, argues that she holds copyright to her five-second performance, and has demanded that Google take the movie down. But Google says that if her lawsuit is taken seriously, then frivolous copyright claims will be used to constrain free speech and debilitate the Internet companies that host it. The Ninth Circuit shouldn’t use the unfortunate facts of her situation to create a new kind of intellectual property, where extras and bit parts carry the creative status of author.

The court may soon cite a dubious copyright to silence protected speech. We should hope they don’t.

[Dec 23]

Beyond 'The Interview': A short list of films banned for political reasons

[Commentary] “The Interview" may not be much of a film, but then again, it doesn't take much to put a Hollywood movie on one or more countries' blacklists. A quick search of the Internet reveals scores of titles that have been censored for one reason or another. The most common motive for banning a movie is because it's too sexy, violent or "deviant," which is a reminder that for all its Puritanical impulses, the United States remains one of the world's most open cultures. But there have been plenty of films that drew condemnation for their political views, explicit or otherwise.

North Korea's Internet outage was likely the work of hacktivists --- but not the ones you might think

Although analysts largely believe some hacktivists were involved in North Korea's Internet outage, it's unlikely anyone from hacker group Anonymous was actually responsible for taking down the country’s systems.

Anonymous appears only loosely connected if at all to North Korea's outage. More likely, it's an attempt by some members of Anonymous to claim credit at an advantageous moment, said Gabriella Coleman, a researcher who studies Anonymous at McGill University. But just because Anonymous wasn't the culprit doesn't rule out other hacker groups. For instance, a group known as Lizard Squad (which gained notoriety for reportedly taking down the PlayStation Network) also celebrated the North Korean Internet disruption.

[Dec 23]

Cuba’s Promising New Online Voices

[Commentary] In December 2010, nearly three years after he took power from his ailing brother Fidel, Raúl Castro called on Cubans to be critical of the system, acknowledging that the Communist Party had failed its citizens in myriad ways. Cuba’s diverse and growing community of bloggers and independent journalists have done just that, becoming a powerful alternative to the official press, which for decades has delivered hyperbolic and dull content, but little substantive journalism.

Few segments of Cuban society will stand to benefit more from improved relations between Washington and Havana than this group. As Internet access on the island expands and the Cuban government can no longer credibly argue that the United States represents an existential threat, independent writers could become even more important agents of change.

[Dec 24]

Ireland Lends Support to Microsoft in Email Privacy Case

The Irish government has given qualified support to Microsoft’s efforts to block the American authorities from seizing a customer’s emails that are stored in Ireland.

The move is linked to a continuing legal dispute over a United States search warrant for emails related to a drug trafficking investigation. Those messages are stored in a Microsoft data center in Dublin. The Irish government said that courts in the United States should respect the sovereignty of other countries when issuing search warrants, though it added that Ireland and the United States had existing treaties that could allow the data to be shared with the American authorities.

[Dec 24]

First test results for new Mexican broadband network due January

Mexico expects to receive first reports in Jan. 2015 from field tests that will lay the groundwork for a new national mobile broadband network, the Communications and Transport Ministry said.

Mexico is looking for a group of private companies to help it launch a national mobile broadband network on a 700 megahertz (MHz) wireless spectrum to help spur competition in a sector long dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim. The network is expected to require investment of about $10 billion over 10 years. The government will receive reports in January from tests carried out in Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, and Acapulco, the ministry said in a statement. The tests aim to collect real-time information about a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network on the 700 MHz frequency band.

[Dec 23]

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