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Advertisers need to be vigilant about self-regulation if they want to keep Washington out of their business. That was the message delivered by Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), the new chairman of the commerce subcommittee on communications, technology and the Internet in his address before the Association of National Advertisers Advertising Law and Public Policy Conference in Washington.
Pryor's subcommittee is where most of the advertising industry’s most pressing issues will be debated, including privacy, Do Not Track, and food-marketing guidelines to children. "I'm OK with self-regulation. It works well. But one bad actor or loophole could bring down the wrath of Congress on the industry," Sen Pryor said. "If you go the self-regulation route and you’re going to say that should forestall federal regulation, that’s fine. But you better make sure you do it the right way." Sen Pryor signaled the committee and the subcommittee would be "spending quite a bit of time" on privacy, an issue over which a lot of the Senators have very strong opinions. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the full committee, for example, has never trusted self-regulation for privacy issues and never missed an opportunity to say so.
Sen. Pryor Talks Privacy, Food Guidelines to Ad Biz
When the San Francisco 49ers' new stadium opens for the 2014 NFL season, it is quite likely to have the best publicly accessible Wi-Fi network a sports facility in this country has ever known. 68,500 fans will be able to connect to the wireless network, simultaneously, without any limits on uploads or downloads. Smartphones and tablets will run into the limits of their own hardware long before they hit the limits of the 49ers' wireless network.
The 49ers’ plan to build the greatest stadium Wi-Fi network of all time
As expected, Liberty Media said that it has agreed to purchase 26.9 million shares of common stock and 1.1 million warrants from three Charter Communications shareholders for $2.617 billion, giving the Denver-based media giant the largest individual stake in the mid-market multiple system operator (MSO).
Liberty will purchase the stakes from Apollo Management, Oaktree Capital Management and Crestview Partners, for a price of about $95.50 per share. As a result, Liberty will become Charter’s largest individual shareholder with 27.3% of its outstanding shares. As part of the agreement, Liberty also received the right to elect four members of Charter’s 11-member board of directors and has agreed not to raise its stake above 35% before January 2016 or above 39.99% hereafter. Liberty said it would fund the deal through a combination of cash on hand and new loan arrangements.
Liberty Buys 27% Interest in Charter Private-Equity Investors to Profit from Liberty's Bet on Charter (Wall Street Journal) Liberty Media in $2.6bn cable ‘pipes’ bet (FT)
Tired of paying $100 for hundreds of channels if you only watch five of them? You’re not alone: An increasing number of companies is also looking for alternatives to the traditional cable bundle. The alliance of companies pushing for unbundling contains a few unexpected candidates — one of them may even be the very company that charges you for that bundle.
So who is trying to break up the bundle, and how?
- Verizon: Putting its money where your eyes are
- Cablevision: Suing to get rid of the duds
- Aereo: A new kind of bundle
- Boxee: Unbundling the DVR
- Netflix: Showing that you can succeed without a bundle
Five companies that want to break up your cable bundle
The Republican National Committee’s sweeping new strategy document admits what observers have been saying since the GOP lost the White House for the second time running last year: The party faces an identity crisis. How the report suggests fixing that is mostly a matter of process — better outreach, spending differently on TV ads, rethinking the endless party primary. But when it comes to technology, the RNC knows it needs to do something dramatic if it wants to catch up with Democrats. Party Chairman Reince Priebus had a few ideas.
Here are the highlights:
- Chase the data
- Hire the talent
- Get cozy with tech types
What’s Missing From the GOP’s Technology Strategy?
If the Internet was taken out by a virus, an accident, or a deliberate, concentrated attack, we have no "plan B." And because so many surprising services and systems rely on the Net today, much of what makes our society work could simply cease functioning. Cue people screaming, running away in terror, the collapse of civilization and so on and so on. Well, maybe.
What Would We Do If The Internet Crashed? The Internet could crash. We need a Plan B (Danny Hillis)
In under a decade, Andy Rubin took Android from an idea on a whiteboard to the most popular smartphone platform on the planet.
More than 750 million devices have been activated, more than 25 billion apps have been downloaded, and the little green Android robot now has brand recognition approaching Apple’s apple. But having won the popularity contest, Android’s new challenges are thornier and its path forward less clear. Android’s share of the tablet market still lags behind the iPad, and the Android @ Home effort, an initiative to get developers to build apps to automate home devices, has sputtered. Even though three Android phones are now sold for every iPhone, Google has still yet to fully figure out how to leverage the open system to its advantage. While Android has been great for handset makers, especially Samsung, it’s failed to advance the Google ecosystem as much as hoped or make much money. "Ironically, in some cases Microsoft may be making more money off Android than Google, because of patent payments," said Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg. In other instances, Android has completely run away from Google. Amazon's Kindle Fire is built on Android, but you’d never know it — and the Amazon app store competes with Google’s. Rubin is a visionary and an architect, a hands-on hacker who worked as an engineer at Apple and a manager at Microsoft before founding and leading two innovative and successful startups, Danger and later Android.
Praise for Rubin tends to revolve around his talent for getting things started.
Disconnect: why Andy Rubin and Android called it quits
[Commentary] A decade ago, America was hurtling toward an ill-conceived war in Iraq, justified by false claims that Saddam Hussein maintained weapons of mass destruction and that his regime had ties to Al Qaeda. The misguided war in Iraq was first and foremost a folly of American policy makers. But it was also a failure of American journalism.
The sad fact is that most major news organizations reported the buildup toward war without adequate skepticism or scrutiny. But the nonprofit press wasn’t taken in by the Bush administration’s marketing and manipulations. Even as most of the journalism world struggles to be heard, the nonprofits are having more influence than ever as they collaborate to raise vital issues like war and peace and wealth and poverty in ways that reflect the public interest. The reinvigoration of the progressive press got its start when magazines like The Nation, The American Prospect and Mother Jones questioned accounts of weapons inspectors that called the administration’s assertions into question. And independent nonprofit broadcasters like Democracy Now, Free Speech TV, and Link TV, gave voice to the widespread opposition of political leaders in most nations and millions of protesters in the streets of America and around the world.
[Stehle is executive director of Media Impact Funders]
How a Misguided War Led to a Powerful Nonprofit Partnership
It has been six months since we introduced Congress.gov. During that time we’ve been busy working to develop the beta into a full system. The first update after the September launch was in October when we made searching variants of citations easier. In November we continued to revise Congress.gov. With the start of the 113th Congress in early January, we updated the beta system for the transition. The major enhancement to the system came toward the end of January when we added the Congressional Record.
Six Months of Congress.gov
New scientific research must be published for free online, the vice-president of the European Commission said, in a move designed to increase the knowledge pool open to small business and lead to more innovative products. All scientists receiving European Union funding will have to publish their results in an open-access format, Neelie Kroes, the commissioner responsible for Europe’s digital agenda, said in Stockholm. Commissioner Kroes also launched the global Research Data Alliance — a group committed to pooling and coordinating scientific data so it can be shared better.
European Union Opens Up Access to Scientific Research