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AGENDA

PRIVACY ON THE AGENDA?
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) -- the new chairman of the House subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade -- he plans to examine whether the government should do more to protect the privacy of Internet users. He is considering whether to form a bipartisan group of lawmakers that would study the issue more closely and make recommendations to the subcommittee. Whether that comes to legislation or not, we don't know," he said. Chairman Terry said he will not start the year by pushing any particular privacy-protection measures. "We're coming in with open minds," he explained. Terry's subcommittee, which is part of the Energy and Commerce Committee, held numerous hearings last Congress on online privacy issues under Chairwoman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA). Rep Terry took over the panel after rep Bono Mack lost her bid for reelection. He said the subcommittee will use the previous hearings as a starting point, but noted that there are new members who did not participate in the previous hearings.
benton.org/node/143706 | Hill, The
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COMPUTER FRAUD AND ABUSE ACT
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jennifer Martinez]
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said his committee will look at a computer hacking law that has come under fire since the death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz. "We certainly are going to look at that very carefully and see what we can do in that area, but at this point in time we're looking at what occurred in specific instances and what needs to done to make sure that the law isn't abused," Chairman Goodlatte told reporters at the State of the Net Conference. "There's a lot of legal input, judicial input into this and we're going to look at that and pair it up against what the language of the law is today and how we're going to pursue it—but we're just starting on that." He also added that the committee "may" hold hearings on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and Rep Zoe Lofgren's draft measure to narrow CFAA, but emphasized that "no decisions have been made yet."
benton.org/node/143704 | Hill, The
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

AT&T TO BUY ALLTEL
[SOURCE: IDG News Service, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]
The parent company of Alltel, a mobile telephone network serving rural customers in six states, has agreed to sell the business to AT&T for about $780 million, Atlantic Tele-Network announced. The all-cash transaction will give Alltel customers access to a nationwide 4G mobile network, a larger selection of mobile devices and additional retail locations, said Michael Prior, Atlantic Tele-Networks CEO. Many of the company's employees will benefit from new career opportunities at the larger company, he added. The deal will give AT&T a larger presence in some rural areas where it did not have a lot of customers, Prior said during a conference call with press and analysts. Atlantic Tele-Network purchased Alltel from Verizon Wireless for $200 million in a deal that closed in April 2010, and Atlantic Tele-Network spent an additional $85 million to set up Alltel, Prior said. The sale to AT&T represents a "strong return on our investment," Prior said. "It is clear this is the right time to enter into this strategic transaction." It has become "increasingly challenging" to operate a stand-alone rural mobile network spread across six states, Prior said. Atlantic Tele-Network believes Alltel is best operated as part of a larger, national network, he said. Atlantic Tele-Network's Alltel serves 585,000 mobile customers in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Ohio and Idaho, while AT&T has about 106 million mobile customers across the U.S. Alltel had about $350 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2012. The transaction is subject to approval from the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
benton.org/node/143643 | IDG News Service | GigaOm | ars technica
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

NETWORK NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) said that if the D.C. Circuit overturns the Federal Communications Commission's Open Internet order, she will be ready with a bill to clarify the FCC's authority to make such rules. In a speech at the annual State of the Net Conference of the Congressional Internet Caucus (she is co-chair), Rep Eshoo said that "clarifying" the commission's ability to ensure "a free and open Internet" was a consumer protection issue and that, "should the court overturn the FCC's rules, I will be prepared to introduce legislation." That will be an uphill climb in a Republican-controlled House, where leadership has expressed no love for the FCC's network neutrality rules. Rep Eshoo put in a plug for the FCC's proposal to adjust its spectrum screen, which is the amount of spectrum owned by one company in a market that triggers additional concentration concerns. She said the screen should be reformed, including by treating spectrum less than one gigahertz different from other spectrum because it was more valuable.
benton.org/node/143640 | Broadcasting&Cable
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GENACHOWSKI CRITIQUE
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Christopher Mitchell]
[Commentary] In a recent column, Chairman Genachowski explains why the U.S. Needs 'Gigabit Communities.' He's right, but refuses to do anything meaningful to get us there. It starts off with an accurate observation... “Walking the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show last week, I kept thinking of that line from Jaws, ‘You're going to need a bigger boat.’ All the Internet-connected, data-hungry gadgets that are coming to market sent a strikingly clear message: we're going to need faster broadband networks.... It's essential to economic growth, job creation and U.S. competitiveness.” Yes! If only the head of the Federal Communications Commission understood what is preventing us from building those networks. Hint: It isn't a lack of demand. Google was inundated with applications for its gigabit service. Hundreds of communities have built their own networks (some of which he praises).
[Christopher Mitchell is the Telecom Director at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance]
benton.org/node/143638 | Huffington Post, The
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IIA BROADBAND GUIDE
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The Internet Innovation Alliance is releasing a "guide to all things broadband" -- a booklet meant to give legislators guidance on informed decisionmaking about Internet policy as IIA sees it. Among that guidance is that the transition to IP delivery is the future of communications, a future that will require reforming regulations meant for a copper wire, analog world. "Requiring incumbent telephone providers to maintain costly antiquated networks siphons investment away from deployment of advanced, high-speed next-generation IP-based networks that consumers prefer," the guide says. The guide recommends going easy on regulations meant "for a bygone analog monopoly provider era," getting more spectrum into the hands of broadband companies through broadcast incentive auctions, and by approving secondary spectrum deals between private companies.
benton.org/node/143924 | Multichannel News | IIA
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HOW ONLINE POKER WAS LOST
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Steve Friess]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had promised Nevada’s gambling industry a federal law to legalize Internet poker by the end of 2012, calling it the state’s “most important issue” since the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain was scuttled. But in the end, Sen Reid rolled snake eyes. And as the 113th Congress gets under way, the odds of legislation passing are even worse. Now, questions are mounting over Reid’s handling of the issue, which would legalize Internet poker but bar almost all other online wagering. Why, critics ask, did Sen Reid antagonize Republicans at a critical juncture by attacking the efforts of his Senate colleague Dean Heller (R-NV) to garner GOP support? Why did Sen Reid and former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) draft a measure so certain to anger powerful stakeholders — from lottery directors to Native American tribes to gaming officials — in states other than Nevada? They say Sen Reid had the best shot ever to have pushed the bill through Congress last year. But he never formally introduced legislation — not because he lacked GOP support, some say, but because he didn’t have enough Democrats with him.
benton.org/node/143922 | Politico
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DIVERSITY

SEXIST HOLLYWOOD?
[SOURCE: The Wrap, AUTHOR: Alexander Kaufman, Brent Lang]
Women remain underrepresented in Hollywood as the percentage of female filmmakers stagnated last year, according to a new study. In 2012, women represented just 18 percent of all directors, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films, according to a report from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University titled "The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 250 Films of 2012." That number remained the same as in 2011, and has increased just 1 percentage point since 1998. Among the study's other findings:
Women accounted for 15 percent of writers working on the top 250 films of 2012. Seventy-eight percent of the films had no female writers.
Women make up 17 percent of all executive producers working on the top 250 films of 2012. Sixty-one percent of the films had no female executive producers.
Women accounted for 25 percent of all producers working on the top 250 films of 2012. Thirty-two percent of the films had no female producers.
benton.org/node/143634 | Wrap, The
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA

OBAMA’S TECH
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Ben Popper]
The tech team behind the 2012 Obama campaign has probably received more attention than any political programmers in history. A so-called "dream team of engineers from Facebook, Google and Twitter [who] built the software that drove Barack Obama’s reelection" were extolled in the press for bringing Silicon Valley strategies like Agile development to the normally hidebound process of a political campaign. In the post mortems that followed Obama’s victory, many credited the superiority of the Democrats’ tech team and its famous Narwhal platform, in contrast to the failure of Mitt Romney’s digital efforts, with mobilizing the vote and winning crucial swing states. But in the aftermath of the election, a stark divide has emerged between political operatives and the techies who worked side-by-side. At issue is the code created during the Obama for America (OFA) 2012 campaign: the digital architecture behind the campaign’s website, its system for collecting donations, its email operation, and its mobile app. When the campaign ended, these programmers wanted to put their work back into the coding community for other developers to study and improve upon. Politicians in the Democratic party felt otherwise, arguing that sharing the tech would give away a key advantage to the Republicans. Three months after the election, the data and software is still tightly controlled by the president and his campaign staff, with the fate of the code still largely undecided. It’s a choice the OFA developers warn could not only squander the digital advantage the Democrats now hold, but also severely impact their ability to recruit top tech talent in the future.
benton.org/node/143635 | Verge, The
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CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

NATIONAL DAY OF CIVIC HACKING
[SOURCE: The White House, AUTHOR: Brian Forde, Nicholas Skytland]
This summer, on June 1-2, 2013, citizens in cities across the Nation will join together to improve their communities and governments as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking. Civic Hacking Day is an opportunity for software developers, technologists, and entrepreneurs to unleash their can-do American spirit by collaboratively harnessing publicly-released data and code to create innovative solutions for problems that affect Americans. While civic hacking communities have long worked to improve our country and the world, this summer will mark the first time local developers from across the Nation unite around the shared mission of addressing and solving challenges relevant to OUR blocks, OUR neighborhoods, OUR cities, OUR states, and OUR country. National Day of Civic Hacking is a call to action for anyone who wants to make a positive impact on their town, city, and country. A coalition of leading organizations, companies, and government agencies have banded together to issue this challenge with the goal of promoting transparency, participation, and collaboration among governments, startups, and citizens. These partners will support Civic Hacking Day by hosting activities across the country that invite anyone to become part of the civic hacker community—whether you’re a newbie or an expert—and by connecting people in person or online during the weekend celebration. The event is taking place in conjunction with Random Hacks of Kindness and Code for America's Brigade meetings and is being modeled after the Innovation Endeavors’ Super Happy Block Party. A number of Federal agencies, including NASA, the Census Bureau, and the Department of Labor, are participating by offering specific challenges for hackers to work during the event.
[Brian Forde is the Senior Advisor to the U.S. CTO for Mobile and Data Innovation; Nicholas Skytland is the Program Manager of NASA's Open Innovation Program]
benton.org/node/143636 | White House, The
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

PRESS FREEDOM
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] There are sound reasons for the European Union to review safeguards for press freedom and media plurality. Some newer member states, Hungary in particular, have in recent times taken steps that gravely threaten press independence. But there is a contradiction in wanting to defend this fundamental principle while at the same time giving Brussels greater powers over Europe’s media.
Proposals published this week by an independent panel charged with examining press freedom ring alarm bells. Though the report carries no legal weight, it has been endorsed by the European Commission as the starting point for discussions that could eventually lead to new regulations. The point of contention is not the report’s suggestion that members should have independent media councils with powers to investigate complaints and perhaps even impose fines. Most already have such bodies. It is that these councils should be subject to monitoring by the European Commission to ensure they “comply with European values.”
benton.org/node/143914 | Financial Times
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CYBER ATTACKS FROM CHINA
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Mark Milian]
About one-third of the world’s cyber attack traffic was traced back to China, according to a report by Akamai Technologies. Between July and September of last year, about 33 percent of the attacks originated in China, double the percentage in the previous quarter, the report said. The U.S. was the second-largest source with 13 percent. Next came Russia, Taiwan and Turkey, which each accounted for less than 5 percent of the attacks.
benton.org/node/143912 | Bloomberg
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January 23, 2013 (AT&T to buy Alltel)

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