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  2. June 2017

June 2017

Former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler: Net Neutrality Fight Destined For Courtroom

Rep Don Beyer (D-VA) held a forum just outside of DC for his constituents to come learn and voice their concerns about the fate of network neutrality. Though Rep Beyer was the host, the real headliners of the event were former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler and former FCC general counsel Jon Sallet, who both spoke at length to a packed house about how we got to where we are today, with the rules under fire, and what consumers can still do to try and make their voices heard. A couple key take-aways?

No Neutrality Without Title II: “What I hope you’ll think about is that that legal term is a smokescreen for not having to discuss” the bright-line net neutrality principles, privacy guidelines, and the FCC’s oversight authority, Wheler said. “Those who are trying to overturn the rules want to talk about them in these [legalistic] terms, instead of talking about the effect of Title II.” “We looked hard to see if there would be ways other than Title II to accomplish these goals,” Wheeler said. “They weren’t there.”

Why Commenting Is Important: Both Sallet and Wheeler admitted that the FCC’s mind is probably already made up, no matter what public comments come in to the proceeding now. But those comments become vital in the case of a lawsuit and “can shape what happens if it’s necessary to go to court one more time,” as Sallet put it. “We can all predict what can happen at the FCC, but I can tell you this,” Sallet said: “When I was general counsel, I didn’t think that what the FCC said was the last word. I knew there would be a day in court.”

Astroturfing Plan by Silicon Valley & Radical Allies To Take Control of Internet July 12

[Commentary] Recently, Amazon, Netflix, and Mozilla have taken note of the success of astroturfing and are leveraging a “stick-it-to-the-man” ethos to advocate for internet regulation, in this case advocacy to regulate internet providers under Title II of the Communications Act, which empowers the Federal Communications Commission to regulate broadband through price controls as well as tax consumers to raise funds for government run networks. A culmination of their efforts will take place on a July 12th “Day of Action,” which will display their protests both on and offline to pressure Congress and the FCC to capitulate to its agenda to take control of the internet.

The event is yet another campaign funded by Battle for the Net, an organization of radical left-wing activists, including Free Press, Fight for the Future, and Demand Progress, seeking more regulation and government control over markets This July 12th, remember that what you will witness on website and browsers is one heck of an astroturf campaign, and their mission is straightforward: take control of the internet, by any means necessary.

[Roslyn Layton is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Internet, Communications and Technology Policy at the American Enterprise Institute and served on the President Elect Transition Team for the FCC from 2016-2017.]

Iowa’s congressional delegation is bravely protecting the internet

[Commentary] Some partisan activists have sought to leverage the public’s privacy concerns to advance their political agenda and have resorted to spreading accusations and false information that misleads the public. Immediately after the Congressional vote, the media was flooded with stories suggesting that internet privacy had been “repealed.” Other stories made misleading claims that Congress “voted to allow your web history to be sold to the highest bidder.” None of this is true. Congress did not repeal internet privacy. They kept the FTC’s two decades of privacy rules in place while preventing the inequitable Obama mandates from going into effect.

Congress did the right thing by stopping the FCC’s power grab to protect consumer privacy and indeed protect the internet itself. It is far better public policy to leave the internet in the free market to continue to bring us innovation after innovation which has transformed our lives for the better in the past generation. Take a moment and send an email of appreciation to the members of the Iowa delegation who stood up for you, your family, and your neighbors in this cause.

[Donald P. Racheter is president of the Public Interest Institute, a public policy research institute in Muscatine]

Chairman Pai Announces Wayne Leighton as Chief of FCC Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the agency has chosen Wayne Leighton as chief of the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, continuing the work he has been doing as acting chief. Prior to serving as acting chief, Leighton served as a senior economist in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and as wireless advisor to then-FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate. Prior to his FCC service, Leighton worked for an economic consulting firm, was senior economist with the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and has been a professor of economics at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. He earned a doctorate in economics from George Mason University and undergraduate degrees in business and economics from Texas A&M University.

30 small ISPs urge Ajit Pai to preserve Title II and net neutrality rules

A group of small Internet service providers urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to preserve the FCC's network neutrality rules and the related classification of ISPs as common carriers. "We have encountered no new additional barriers to investment or deployment as a result of the 2015 decision to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service and have long supported network neutrality as a core principle for the deployment of networks for the American public to access the Internet," the ISPs said in a letter to Pai that was organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The current rules are necessary "to address the anticompetitive practices of the largest players in the market," but "the FCC’s current course threatens the viability of competitive entry and competitive viability," the companies wrote.

10 Facts About Smartphones as the iPhone Turns 10

10 findings about smartphones:

1) About three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) say they own a smartphone, up from 35% in 2011.
2) Half of younger adults live in a household with three or more smartphones.
3) Mobile devices aren’t just for calling or texting. Americans are using their phones for a variety of nontraditional phone activities, such as looking for a job, finding a date or reading a book.
4) The smartphone is becoming an important tool for shoppers.
5) Growing shares of Americans – especially those who are lower-income – rely on smartphones to access the internet. Overall, 12% of U.S. adults were “smartphone-only” internet users in 2016 – meaning they owned a smartphone but did not have broadband internet at home. This represents an increase from 8% in 2013.
6) More than half of smartphone owners say they get news alerts on their phones, but few get these alerts frequently.
7) While smartphones are becoming more integrated into our lives, many users aren’t taking the necessary steps to secure their devices.
8) Smartphone ownership is climbing in developing nations, but the digital divide remains. Median smartphone adoption in developing nations rose to 37% in 2015, up from 21% in 2013, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 21 emerging and developing nations conducted in 2015. But with a median of 68%, advanced economies still have considerably higher rates of smartphone adoption, with the highest rates among surveyed countries found in South Korea, Australia, Israel, the U.S. and Spain.
9) Americans have different views about where it is and isn’t appropriate to use a cellphone.
10) The smartphone is essential for many owners, but a slight majority says it’s not always needed. Some 46% of smartphone owners said their smartphone is something “they couldn’t live without,” compared with 54% who said in a 2014 Pew Research Center survey that their phone is “not always needed.”

Rep Chaffetz to join Fox News as a contributor

Fox News has hired Rep Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) to be a contributor for the cable news channel after the congressman ends his House term early on June 30. Rep Chaffetz will start his role at Fox on July 1, according to a statement from the network. "In this role he will offer political analysis across FNC and FOX Business Network’s (FBN) daytime and primetime programming," the network said.

The Utah congressman and head of the House Oversight Committee announced in May that he he would resign from Congress to pursue other opportunities. Shortly after, Washingtonian reported that he'd been telling fellow lawmakers he planned to join Fox News.

DNC hires Raffi Krikorian, a former Uber exec, as their chief technology officer

As Democrats begin to rebuild in the wake of their 2016 presidential election defeat, the party’s official political organ is tapping Raffi Krikorian, a former top engineer at Uber’s self-driving-car program, to be its next chief technology officer. The hire comes as the Democratic National Committee looks to improve its tech tools in a bid to reach more voters — while preventing another major cyber breach, the likes of which by Russian-backed hackers in 2016 helped sink Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Krikorian departed Uber in February; he had served as the senior director of engineering at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh. He then briefly joined New America, a nonpartisan policy think tank, as the director of engineering focused on public-interest technology. He did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, nor did the DNC. When he assumes his new role, though, Krikorian will face no shortage of endemic tech troubles to tackle — beginning with shoring up the DNC’s cyber defenses after Russian hackers targeted Democrats in 2016, stole their private emails and shared them with WikiLeaks.

In the digital age, The New York Times treads an increasingly slippery path between news and advertising

The April 2 edition of the Sunday New York Times, where the paper features its best journalism, included a six-page special section, “Women Today,” pegged to a summit in Manhattan a few days later. What wasn’t in any of the stories was the fact that the Times itself owned a minority stake in the conference.

Although the paper’s own standards call for transparency in this area, the section didn’t disclose the paper’s financial interest. These sections, often paired with Times-backed live events, are a growing part of the business model of what has been the newspaper of record, and just one example of the extent to which the newsroom and the company’s marketing department now work together in an effort to generate new sources of revenue. The editor of these sections meets once a week with the advertising department to discuss possible projects, while the advertising studio of the Times acts as a matchmaker between reporters and sponsors. In one sense, such initiatives might be seen as the new normal, as newspapers like the Times scramble for creative approaches in an industry whose finances are growing creakier by the day. But the Times is a unique beast, in journalism and within its own midtown Manhattan tower, and a bevy of new initiatives being rolled out to buoy the company’s bottom line worry journalists at a paper that has long maintained a firm separation between its news and business operations. Continuing job cuts in the newsroom, even as the business side of the paper continues to grow, have made those tensions even more acute.

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