May 17, 2013 (Learn everything, and do the right thing)
"Learn everything, and do the right thing."
-- FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski
http://benton.org/node/152099
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2013
Next week’s agenda: http://benton.org/calendar/2013-05-19--P1W/
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
AP phone records seizure reveals telecom’s risks for journalists - analysis
President Obama: 'Need to find balance' on leaks [links to web]
Those AP Subpoenas - editorial
Concerns Arise on U.S. Effort to Allow Internet ‘Wiretaps’
CBO Scores Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act - research [links to web]
Introducing: Project Open Data [links to web]
Turkey: It’s a Nice Place to Visit, But I Wouldn’t Want to Be a Reporter There - op-ed [links to web]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Getting to All-IP - analysis
Who Controls the Internet? [links to web]
Rules for Railroads Don’t Track With the Policy Needs of 21st Century Telecom Technologies - speech
Gov. Walker would use online sales tax to lower income tax [links to web]
BROADCASTING
Low-Powers Have High Anxiety Over Repack [links to web]
10 Reasons Why The Auction Will End Broadcasting
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
Leading Commerce Committee Democrats Clarify Congressional Intent of Spectrum Provisions, Urge Serious Consideration of DOJ Views - press release
Wireless companies warm to unlimited streaming of some apps
AT&T CEO: Data Caps Are About Charging Content Providers - analysis
Confusion and Uncertainty as AT&T's Policies Needlessly Complicate App Development - analysis
The Phony Wireless Bandwidth Crisis: Two-Faced Data Flood Warnings - editorial [links to web]
GE Doesn’t Stall Way to Find Callers Opposed by E-ZPass [links to web]
Google to boost speed, cut data use on mobile devices [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
Apple Fights Back in Antitrust Case Over E-Book Prices
Activists Crowdsource Tribune Bid To Prevent Koch, Murdoch Buy [links to web]
PRIVACY
Lawmakers raise privacy concerns over Google Glass
Google allows Android app vendors to illegally collect user data, lawsuit alleges [links to web]
EDUCATION
E-Rate Needs Overhaul for Digital Era, Experts Argue
FCC Announces Carry-Forward of Unused Schools and Libraries Universal Service Funds for Funding Year 2013 - public notice
POLICYMAKERS
Senate greenlights Ernest Moniz nomination 97-0 [links to web]
Exit interview: Julius Genachowski Leaves the FCC [links to web]
FCC's Genachowski reflects on tenure [links to web]
FCC Announces Membership of the Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council - public notice [links to web]
Steve Jobs’s Widow Debuts on Philanthropic Stage [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Foxconn Audit Finds a Workweek Still Too Long
Yahoo spared $2.7 billion Mexican damages [links to web]
Deutsche Telekom Can Sell T-Mobile Before Share Lock-Up Ends [links to web]
UK lawmakers accuse Google of deception [links to web]
Turkey: It’s a Nice Place to Visit, But I Wouldn’t Want to Be a Reporter There - op-ed [links to web]
MORE ONLINE
How Twitter Is Changing the Geography of Communication [links to web]
Lax state rules provide cover for sponsors of attack ads [links to web]
TiVo’s Next Frontier: What to Watch on Live TV [links to web]
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Honors Wes Moore with Thought Leader Award - press release [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
TELECOM’S RISKS FOR JOURNALISTS
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Susan McGregor]
[Commentary] That Associated Press phone records could be obtained by the Department of Justice without the AP’s awareness underscores a key feature of how the law views information related to telephone and other networked communications that can be a dangerous vulnerability for news organizations and independent journalists. While many of us may think of telephone calls as broadly “private,” these and other common communications are inevitably conducted over third-party networks, generating two legally distinct types of data: the “metadata” about the call and the “content” of the call. While the latter is protected under the general “right to privacy” of the Fourth Amendment, the former is not. This so-called “metadata” is considered the property of the network owner, and can therefore be subpoenaed directly from and disclosed by the provider without violating any constitutional protections. “Under federal law there’s a whole category of metadata called subscriber information that the police can get with a subpoena,” says Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who specializes on issues relating to criminal law, privacy and free speech. That metadata can include the name, address, payment method (including credit card number, if applicable), length of service, numbers dialed and call durations related a given account.
benton.org/node/152044 | Columbia Journalism Review
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THOSE AP SUBPOENAS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] The same press corps that has blessed every Obama Administration enforcement action and regulatory intrusion has suddenly concluded that the feds are dangerously overreaching. The reason? The government is now investigating the press. Welcome to the club, but we'd also add some context to the shouts of media outrage. The press is exercised because the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors as part of a criminal probe into a national-security leak. Some of the loudest protests are coming from those, such as the New York Times, that cheered the criminal pursuit of the leak to conservative columnist Robert Novak during the Bush years in the Valerie Plame case. Then the target was Scooter Libby (who wasn't even the leaker) while now it's someone who leaked to their mainstream comrades at AP. Such double standards are one reason the public mistrusts the media.
benton.org/node/152101 | Wall Street Journal
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INTERNET WIRETAPS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Somini Sengupta]
Surveillance can be a tricky affair in the Internet age. A federal law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act allows law enforcement officials to tap a traditional phone, as long as they get approval from a judge. But if communication is through voice over Internet Protocol technology — Skype, for instance — it’s not as simple. That conversation doesn’t pass through a central hub controlled by the service provider. It is encrypted — to varying degrees of protection — as it travels through the Internet, from the caller’s end to the recipient’s. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has made it clear it wants to intercept Internet audio and video chats. And that, according to a new report being released Friday by a group of technologists, could pose “serious security risks” to ordinary Internet users, giving thieves and even foreign agents a way to listen in on Americans’ conversations, undetected. The 20 computer experts and cryptographers who drafted the report say the only way that companies can meet wiretap orders is to re-engineer the way their systems are built at the endpoints, either in the software or in users’ devices, in effect creating a valuable listening station for repressive governments as well as for ordinary thieves and blackmailers.
benton.org/node/152103 | New York Times
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
GETTING TO ALL-IP
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
[Commentary] On May 10, the Federal Communications Commission released a Public Notice seeking public comment on how to structure real world trials that will inform the transition from today’s telephone networks to, well, the networks of tomorrow. The goal of any trials would be to gather a factual record to help determine what policies are appropriate to promote investment and innovation while protecting consumers, promoting competition, and ensuring that emerging networks remain resilient. In the FCC’s new proceeding, it seeks comment on several potential trials relating to the ongoing transitions from copper to fiber, from wireline to wireless, and from time-division multiplexing (TDM) to all-Internet Protocol (IP) networks.
http://benton.org/node/152022
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POLICY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
[SOURCE: Verizon, AUTHOR: Craig Silliman]
Speaking at the Media Institute, Craig Silliman, Verizon’s senior vice president of public policy and government relations, said in prepared remarks: “A highly innovative 21st century communications marketplace requires a 21st century policy framework to match the Internet ecosystem that broadband and mobile innovations have helped create. We need a framework to address today’s issues: not local wireline voice competition, but privacy, cybersecurity, network management, spectrum policy and more, many of which have a global component.” In his speech, Silliman outlined four principles that he believes policymakers should focus on: protecting consumers, encouraging innovation, incenting investment, and, with rapid changes in the industry, technology-agnostic rules that focus on the needs of consumers and ensure flexibility as new innovations and business models emerge.
benton.org/node/152076 | Verizon
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BROADCASTING
INCENTIVE AUCTIONS AND THE END OF BROADCASTING
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Andrew Dodson]
The International Broadcasting Network believes that going forward with the incentive auction and repacking scheme will be chaotic, will result in the total destruction of the low power television (LPTV) industry and will lead to the demise of the entire television broadcasting industry. Really? Here’s 10 reasons why.
1) The Federal Communications Commission will be flooded by permit applications as a result of the repack, and it will not have the ability to process them in an expeditious manner.
2) Manufacturers of broadcast transmission equipment will be unable to meet the sudden demand. With manufacturers downsizing, moving overseas or going out of business, it’s already difficult to buy transmitting antennas, connectors and other products that the repack will require.
3) There will not be enough qualified tower crews to serve all the stations that will have to install new antennas. Many tower crews have quit the business.
4) There will not be enough qualified RF engineers to install or retune all the transmitters that will be necessary as a result of the repack. Older RF engineers are retiring at an alarming rate, and there are very few younger people who have any interest or desire to learn the trade.
5) Rebuilding or modifying a transmission facility usually requires approval from various federal, state and local agencies, and those approvals can be difficult to obtain.
6) For stations rebuilding near the Canadian or Mexican border, foreign approval will have to be obtained. Obtaining Mexican approval can take years and often requires that illegal bribes be paid.
7) When a station is off the air for any extended period of time, as will be necessary during the repack, the station’s audience is lost. It’s exceedingly hard to regain a lost audience.
8) When a station is off the air for twelve consecutive months, its license is automatically forfeited.
9) The repack will be so chaotic that viewers will give up on broadcast television and permanently switch to other sources for information and entertainment.
10) As for LPTV, lenders and investors will have no interest in supplying the funds necessary for rebuilding.
benton.org/node/152082 | TVNewsCheck
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
CONGRESSIONAL INTENT AND INCENTIVE AUCTIONS
[SOURCE: House of Representatives Commerce Committee]
Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Diana DeGette (D-CO), Mike Doyle (D-CA), and Doris Matsui (D-CA) sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski regarding the spectrum provisions in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012. The letter from the Democratic members was sent in response to a recent letter from Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI), Greg Walden (R-OR) and other Republican members of the House Commerce Committee. The Republicans urged the FCC to "implement the Spectrum Act as Congress intended" and not to "pick winners and losers before the auction even commences." In the new letter the Democrats write: “The Republican letter included a number of inaccuracies and omissions concerning the spectrum provisions in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012. As members directly involved in the passage of that legislation, we write to clarify details about the legislative history, especially with regard to Congressional intent.” The members also noted that the views of the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice should be entitled to “serious consideration on such core antitrust principles as market foreclosure and the relative competitive value of various spectrum bands.” The Justice Department's Antitrust Division has recommended that the FCC use "rules, weights, or caps" to prevent industry giants Verizon and AT&T from buying up the most valuable spectrum at auction. The agency argued that ensuring that Sprint and T-Mobile have access to the critical resource will boost competition and lower prices for consumers.
benton.org/node/152067 | House of Representatives Commerce Committee | The Hill | B&C
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WIRELESS STREAMING
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
Coming soon to your smartphone: unlimited video streaming of some television shows, without getting stuck with an expensive wireless bill for high data usage. Maybe. The idea of allowing consumers to subscribe to a content provider such as ESPN so they can watch their favorite shows without being charged for data use has been controversial. But it got new momentum this week when Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, said he saw such deals in the industry’s future. Stephenson did not mention specific plans to broker deals with content providers. But his forecast that such deals could be feasible sparked protest from consumer advocacy groups. They say carriers have long argued that networks are strained from too much video traffic. But, the groups say, wireless firms appear to welcome more traffic if the content provider pays a higher fee. “Allowing a few deep-pocketed partners to pay for preferred treatment will stifle innovation, hinder competition, raise prices over time and give mobile phone companies the power to pick and choose the content you can access,” said Matt Wood, policy director for the public interest group Free Press. Federal regulators have not opposed the idea, and analysts say President Obama’s nominee to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, probably won’t put up any obstacles. Consumer groups and some Democratic lawmakers may push Wheeler to look into the issue. But current “open access” rules at the FCC are “lenient toward wireless operators,” said Paul Gallant, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities, in a research note. And “while the rules are not black and white, they do not appear to ban such payments by content companies.”
benton.org/node/152071 | Washington Post
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AT&T AND DATA CAPS
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Michael Weinberg]
[Commentary] The quest to determine why data caps really exist may be starting to wind down. Internet service providers (ISPs) have admitted, either explicitly or implicitly, that monthly data caps have nothing to do with network congestion. And, while some have started to portray data caps as legitimate forms of price discrimination, that argument did not hold up to close scrutiny either. So what's left? Why are ISPs going to all of this effort to make customers deal with something they hate? AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has finally let the cat out of the bag. Data caps are all about forcing content creators to pay in order to reach subscribers. By creating data caps, ISPs create a new market that never needed to exist and never existed before: the market for not being counted against data caps. And that market can be big money. But it can also fundamentally change the way the internet economy functions. There are problems with this market.
benton.org/node/152054 | Public Knowledge
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CONFUSION AND UNCERTAINTY
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: John Bergmayer]
[Commentary] The video chat feature of Google's new Hangouts app for Android doesn't work over cellular if you're an AT&T subscriber. Does that sound familiar? Yes, because it's another story about AT&T and restrictions on the Open Internet. But it should also be familiar for another reason, because at first glance this is the same as what happened with Apple's Facetime video chat app last year—AT&T is deciding what apps its users can use on the data connections they pay for. It's interesting how arbitrary this is.
benton.org/node/152052 | Public Knowledge
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OWNERSHIP
APPLE FIGHTS E-BOOK CASE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Edward Wyatt, Brian Chen]
Don’t mess with the legacy of Steve Jobs. That is one of several factors that seem to be motivating Apple’s vigorous defense against a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of conspiring with five of the largest publishing houses to fix prices on electronic books, according to people close to the case. Unlike the five publishers, all of which have settled the case, filed in April 2012, Apple is aggressively disputing the government’s assertions that Apple and the publishers wanted to force Amazon, which controlled 90 percent of the e-book market before Apple entered it, to raise its prices, according to court papers filed this week. A trial is scheduled to begin June 3 in Federal District Court in New York. Among other defenses, Apple says that both Amazon and the publishing companies were already contemplating a move to a different pricing model in 2009, before Apple entered the e-book business. Apple cites one Amazon executive who referred in an e-mail to the idea that Amazon got publishers to accept what it wanted all along as “Jedi mind tricks.”
benton.org/node/152104 | New York Times
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PRIVACY
GOOGLE GLASS AND PRIVACY
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Eight members of Congress expressed concern about the privacy implications of Google's wearable computer, Google Glass. They worried that the device could allow users to identify people on the street and look up personal information about them, such as their address, marital status, work history and hobbies. “As members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, we are curious whether this new technology could infringe on the privacy of the average American,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Google CEO Larry Page. The lawmakers asked what kind of data Glass will collect, whether it will be able to use facial-recognition technology and whether people will be able to opt-out of data collection. They asked Page to explain how Google will decide whether to reject third-party applications based on privacy concerns and whether the company plans to alter its privacy policy. The letter was signed by Reps. Joe Barton (R-TX), John Barrow (D-GA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Walter Jones (R-NC), Richard Nugent (R-FL), Bobby Rush (D-IL) and Loretta Sanchez (D-CA).
benton.org/node/152087 | Hill, The | WSJ | B&C | Bloomberg
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EDUCATION
E-RATE OVERHAUL
[SOURCE: Education Week, AUTHOR: Alyson Klein]
As school districts strive to put more technology into schools to support 1-to-1 computing initiatives and prepare for the common-core online assessments, the federal E-rate program is in danger of becoming as outdated and insufficient as a sputtering dial-up connection in a Wi-Fi world. While the program can boast great success since its inception—just 14 percent of schools were connected to the Internet when the E-rate was launched in 1996, compared with near-universal access today—it is now at risk of buckling under the weight of districts' technological demands in the age of laptops, tablets, smartphones, and 24/7 online activity. The strains are likely to get even more acute as most states prepare to give assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards. Those tests, slated to debut in 2014-15, will require hefty connectivity capabilities. Recent technical difficulties with online testing in some states highlight the need for better, more reliable technologies in schools. Demand for E-rate dollars, which help schools and libraries get connected to the Internet, has outpaced the aid available for years. This year, districts asked for nearly $5 billion worth of projects, but the E-rate program itself is capped at $2.33 billion. The cap is now adjusted for inflation, but it was largely set in the late 1990s, well before the proliferation of mobile devices, wireless cards, and online testing.
benton.org/node/152046 | Education Week
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FCC ANNOUNCES CARRY-FORWARD OF UNUSED SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES UNIVERSAL SERVICE FUNDS FOR FUNDING YEAR 2013
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
On May 2, 2013, the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) submitted projections of demand and administrative expenses for the federal universal service fund for the third quarter of 2013. According to USAC’s projections, $450 million in unused funds from previous funding years is available to carry forward to increase disbursements to schools and libraries via the E-rate program, more formally known as the schools and libraries universal service program. The Federal Communications Commission’s rules state that “[a]ll funds collected that are unused shall be carried forward into subsequent funding years for use in the [Erate program] in accordance with the public interest and notwithstanding the annual cap.” Consistent with the FCC’s rules, the Wireline Competition Bureau announces that $450 million in unused funds will be carried forward to ensure funding is available for all eligible priority one funding requests received from schools and libraries in funding year 2013 in excess of the annual cap.
benton.org/node/152075 | Federal Communications Commission
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
LATEST FOXCONN AUDIT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Vindu Goel]
Foxconn Technology, the company that manufactures Apple’s popular iPads and iPhones, has made substantial progress toward improving safety and other working conditions at three of its Chinese plants dedicated to making Apple products. But it has not yet achieved the most difficult goal: reducing the average workweek to the maximum allowed by Chinese law, a global monitoring group said. The auditors, supervised by the Fair Labor Association, said Foxconn was still working toward lowering the average workweek to the 49-hour cap. And labor unions at the plants that are supposed to represent the workers’ interests are still dominated by management, the group said. Still, the average workweek has come down sharply from the typical 60 hours or more that has been common practice at the Chinese suppliers of Apple and other technology companies.
benton.org/node/152095 | New York Times
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