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November 2016

Will Trump care about student data privacy?

Parents, teachers and privacy advocates are urging a federal commission not to bend to requests to change a federal law so that a centralized federal database of students’ personal data can be established. The Education Department has plans to build a system of records that will collect detailed data on thousands of students — even though experts say there are not sufficient safeguards to protect student privacy. How President-elect Donald Trump would feel about such a database is unclear. He has criticized a strong federal role in education — and even threatened to eliminate the Education Department, but he has not made an issue of student data privacy.

When a city has gigabit Internet, prices for slower speed tiers drop

The mere presence of gigabit Internet speeds in a metro area drives down the price of plans with slower speeds, according to new industry-funded research. Thus, the data suggests that even customers who don't purchase gigabit Internet benefit from its availability. This research also found—to no one’s surprise—that having more Internet service providers in a particular region drives prices down and that the presence of fast speeds encourages other ISPs to offer higher-speed plans to match their competitors.

The study, titled “Broadband competition helps to drive lower prices and faster download speeds for US residential consumers,” analyzed DSL, cable, and fiber broadband plans from the 100 largest DMAs (designated market areas) in the US. It was written by Analysis Group, an economics consulting firm, with research funding from the Fiber to the Home Council, an industry consortium founded by fiber network equipment manufacturers.

Statement of Commissioner Pai on DC Appeals Court Rebuking FCC Overreach

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission adopted the VoIP Symmetry Order on a partyline vote. As I said in my dissent, the order “alters our rules to mean something they’ve never meant before.” This morning, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that order, finding it unlawful. I welcome this latest reminder from the federal courts that neither the FCC nor any other administrative agency is above the law.

Here’s what large tech companies lost when Trump’s win killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Here’s what American technology companies would have gotten had the Trans-Pacific Partnership been finalized.

  • The TPP’s e-commerce chapter included the world’s first set of international trade rules that would have barred governments from blocking how companies share data across national borders.The Internet works by freely moving data across the world.
  • In many of the participating countries it is not currently illegal to break the digital rights management, a digital lock that technology companies can add to their products to prevent piracy, tinkering and repair.
  • Six of the twelve participating countries would have expanded their copyright terms an additional 20 years.
  • Tech companies also were in favor of the TPP’s ban on “forced localization,” or laws that require a company to keep its citizens’ user data stored within its borders.

Stephen Bannon: A media bubble destroyed the Clinton campaign

We’ve seen all manner of blame-throwing ever since Hillary Clinton, polling’s prohibitive favorite in the 2016 presidential race, tanked in key states when voters actually did their thing. Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, for instance, cited a “hostile press corps” that presumably obsessed over the candidate’s email scandal. In an interview, incoming White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon advances another view. “The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” Bannon said. “It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing idea what’s going on. If The New York Times didn’t exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post and everything else is predicated on The New York Times. It’s a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information — and her confidence. That was our opening.”

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