Brian Fung

As far too many of us have learned as a result of the recession, the public library is often the only place where out-of-work Americans can go to apply for jobs and unemployment benefits online. In many cases, the only way libraries can afford to offer those services is with help from the federal government. Through a public program known as E-Rate, Washington gives institutions a bit of money each year to defray the costs of buying Internet service and equipment.

That initiative got a big boost recently, with the Federal Communications Commission announcing plans to spend $1 billion a year for the next two years on better Wi-Fi, amid a broader push to modernize the E-Rate program. Now the FCC has to decide how to divide up that $2 billion -- and libraries are smack in the center of a brewing fight about it. Library directors from five cities, including Seattle, Memphis and Hartford (CT), have sent letters to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler saying that they stand to be shortchanged if the commission moves forward with a plan to tie the money to the square footage of their facilities.

Under the proposal, the FCC would give libraries a budget for WiFi funding at a rate of $1 per square foot -- which some say isn't nearly enough. "Wi-Fi costs are not merely a function of the square footage of a room with wireless connectivity," wrote Matthew Poland, chief executive of the public library system in Hartford (CT). "Wi-Fi performance is a function of users."

Poland argued that other libraries -- such as those serving wealthy suburbanites -- tend to be bigger. Not only would the proposed formula give more funding to suburban facilities, but those libraries would be taking in money that might be put to better use elsewhere. Inner-city libraries, Poland wrote, serve more users in a tighter space; their patrons tend to be less wealthy and disproportionately unemployed or under-employed. The upshot: It isn't fair for large, rich libraries to get even more money when small, needy libraries might get less.

You would think a company that had just been accused of breaking the law would keep a low profile. But if we've learned anything about John Legere, the fiery chief executive of T-Mobile, it's that he doesn't do low-profile.

Days after the Federal Trade Commission charged T-Mobile with illegally charging consumers in a practice known as "cramming," Legere is turning his guns away from his usual targets -- the giants of the wireless industry -- and training his sights on Washington instead.

"On Tuesday of this week, we all got to see Washington politics and the big carrier lobbyists at their best," Legere wrote in a lengthy, rough-around-the-edges blog post. "While I love our democracy, I hate the way DC works sometimes [sic], and I just could not sit still and let them get away with it."

Legere's company has pushed back hard against the FTC's allegations, saying it no longer allows companies that peddle spammy horoscope information or sports scores to bill customers that never signed up for their services. "T-Mobile has in the past and will continue to keep our pledge to bill customers only for what they want and what they have purchased for as long as I am CEO of this company! NO EXCUSES!" Legere wrote.

[Commentary] In a 191-page report, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board said that although the controversial PRISM program (among others) could be unconstitutional, it was mostly fine.

Privacy advocates have been quick to criticize the report. Here's why they're so upset, and it's not just because the PCLOB sided with the government: The oversight board apparently thinks collecting call records is out-of-bounds, but somehow sifting through the actual content of your e-mails and Skype calls is A-OK.

If that discrepancy strikes you as a little backwards, you're probably not alone. Internet-based communications let you do far more than a simple phone call. Yet the PCLOB believes the former actually deserve weaker protections than the latter.

Administration officials have made it a point to say that nobody is listening in on your phone calls. But that may be small comfort when electronic communications have become such a dominant part of US work and personal life.

Money in politics just got a little less opaque. A little-known rule by the Federal Communications Commission takes effect for every TV station in the country.

In a nutshell, it requires broadcasters that run political ads to disclose who paid for them. It may sound like a simple idea. But it could have tremendous effects on the way campaigns compete and spend money -- not to mention for third-party groups and members of the general public who are interested in campaign finance, too.

The rule about online record-keeping now applies to all broadcasters everywhere that run political ads. That's likely to increase the number of covered stations from 200 to perhaps around 1,000, estimates Dennis Wharton, a spokesperson for the National Association of Broadcasters.

There are around 1,800 TV stations in America, but those that don't run political ads, such as public broadcasting stations, won't be affected by the rule.

[Commentary] Did Facebook overstep its bounds when it ran a secret psychological experiment on a fraction of its users in 2012? That's the question at the heart of the most recent Internet firestorm.

The consensus is that Facebook probably did something wrong. But what, exactly? To say this is one more example of Facebook prioritizing power over privacy is to vastly oversimplify what's going on here.

The reality is that people are objecting for a lot of reasons. Whatever your gut feelings about Facebook, don't give into them. Yet.

There has been a vigorous yet healthy debate going on about the convergence of business and academic research, and whether Facebook acted irresponsibly or unethically with its users' data. To understand why, let's unpack some of the charges being lobbed at the social network. Call it a taxonomy of Facebook critiques.

It used people's data for an academic study.

It manipulated people's newsfeeds to make them happy or sad.

The study made it past an institutional review board. How? The IRB looked at the results of Facebook's data analysis and gave it the green light, but evidently didn't consider how Facebook acquired the data in the first place. Was that an ethical lapse? If Facebook were an arm of the government or a federally funded academic institution, then yes. Research conducted in those environments on human subjects require an IRB's approval. But as a private entity, Facebook isn't legally bound by those requirements, nor was the study itself, apparently.
People should've been given the opportunity to opt in or out.

It's creepy.

Privacy-minded lawmakers are already capitalizing on an opening created by the Supreme Court when it unanimously ruled that police must have a warrant to search your cell phone.

Members of Congress who back stronger protections for e-mail and other electronic communications have begun citing the Court's landmark privacy endorsement, in an attempt to add momentum to their own privacy legislation.

The push to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a decades-old law that allows cops to read your e-mails if they've lain dormant for more than 180 days, has the support of the Justice Department and 220 cosponsors of a House bill known as the Email Privacy Act. The proposal would force police to get a warrant if they want to look at a suspect's e-mail. Today, that type of inspection requires little more than a subpoena.

"Even the Supreme Court of the United States, with an average age of 67, has moved ahead of Congress on technology issues," Rep Jared Polis (D-CO), one of the cosponsors, told the Washington Post. "The Court has put new wind in the sails of EPCA reform. This same standard [Fourth Amendment protections for cell phone contents] should apply to electronic communications."

The Supreme Court's ruling against Aereo is a huge deal — not because it'll upend the TV industry, as some may have hoped, but because of the disruption it won't cause. What is (was?) Aereo, and what does the decision mean for the way we watch TV?

What is Aereo? Based in New York City, Aereo was founded by chief executive Chet Kanojia in 2012. The company uses tiny antennas to grab TV signals out of the air. Those antennas feed the broadcast programming to a DVR, which then plays the programming back to you on your PC, tablet or phone on demand.

Why is it so controversial? At issue was whether Aereo should have to pay money to TV broadcasters for their content. Right now, Aereo pays nothing -- it gets the TV signals for free just as you or I might with our own televisions grabbing signals over public airwaves. But unlike us, Aereo gets to make money off of relaying those transmissions over the Web.
What did the Supreme Court decide? The court held in a 6-to-3 vote that Aereo wasn't simply providing equipment for consumers to watch their own taped shows later, as the company claimed. Instead, Aereo was found to have violated copyright law.

Does this reading of the situation actually make sense? Well, the majority of the justices believe Aereo is really no different from a cable company, which also pays for content and transmits broadcast signals to the public. Three conservative justices disagreed. They argued in a dissent that Aereo doesn't transmit anything, publicly or privately. It's simply facilitating what customers would do on their own if they had the equipment.

Is Aereo dead? Not immediately, but pretty much. Even top Aereo investor Barry Diller admits as much.
What does this mean for the way I watch TV? The justices' decision makes life a lot harder for cord-cutters. To continue watching broadcast TV, you'll need to grab a digital antenna and hook it up to your TV. Or, you'll have to pay your cable company for those channels.

Could an AT&T merger with DirecTV result in savings for consumers? Senate lawmakers pressed the two companies' chief executives on that question.

But although both firms said that the acquisition would lower their operating costs, consumers wouldn't likely see those savings reflected in their monthly bills immediately, if ever. The most that TV viewers can expect right now, said AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson, would be that prices simply rise less quickly.

That didn't seem very comforting to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who kept asking variations of the same question in an attempt to secure a commitment by AT&T to price relief.

AT&T expects the DirecTV deal would eliminate the need for both companies to seek profits on the products they each sell to consumers separately. That would give AT&T greater bargaining leverage with content companies. AT&T might be able to save as much as 15 percent on programming costs, said Stephenson. But citing complexities in the programming industry, Stephenson stopped short of predicting any effects on consumers' bills.

[Commentary] AT&T hit Capitol Hill to sell Congress on its proposed merger with DirecTV. Among its arguments? If the merger goes through, we can go head-to-head with Comcast.

AT&T's case boils down to two arguments when it comes to challenging Comcast: A bigger AT&T will lower programming costs and offer a more efficient bundle of services. Testifying before a House subcommittee, AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson dropped a fascinating statistic. He claimed that for every dollar the company makes off of its video subscribers, $0.60 goes straight to the people who make the content.

In other words, 60 percent of AT&T's video revenue turns right around and leaves.

This brings us to AT&T's second argument, which is that a DirecTV merger would promote cheaper bundles. AT&T took aim at what it and DirecTV called a "synthetic bundle" -- taking, for example, broadband from one company, combining it with video from another, and then selling that as a package to consumers. Because AT&T and DirecTV each have to visit a home to make two separate equipment installations for the synthetic bundle to work, that drives up costs.

Is the Federal Communications Commission the wrong agency to handle matters of net neutrality and Internet openness? That's what some in Congress and elsewhere are suggesting. Instead, they say, ensuring that Internet providers don't abuse their network operator roles should be a matter for the Federal Trade Commission and antitrust law.

In a hearing, members of the House Judiciary Committee grilled current and former federal officials over the possibility of letting the FTC take on the punishing of broadband companies that have harmed consumers.

"Do you believe the FTC would be effective at protecting the competitive interest?" asked Rep Jason Smith (R-MO). Former Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell and current FTC commissioner Joshua Wright told the committee that using the FTC to regulate companies after the fact would be enough and that the FCC does not need to regulate Internet service providers (ISPs).

So far, there's been no evidence of a market failure that would require the FCC's preemptive regulation, they said. But network neutrality advocate Tim Wu testified in the hearing that looking at Internet policy solely through the lens of antitrust law would ignore the non-economic harms that Internet providers could wreak on the Internet, such as suppressing speech and limiting diversity.