January 16, 2013 (The Next FCC Chair)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2013
Cloud Computing and Big Data Forum and Workshop; MMTC’s Broadband & Social Justice Policy Summit 2013; and Brookings’ Broadband Technology Opportunities Program http://benton.org/calendar/2013-01-16/
POLICYMAKERS
The Next FCC Chair: Decisive Protector of the Public Interest - editorial
Sen Jay Rockefeller has never been shy about criticizing media [links to web]
House Commerce Committee Democrats Announce Subcommittee Memberships for 113th Congress - press release [links to web]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Limits on consumers’ Internet use fuel calls for federal investigation
AT&T Exempts Itself From Its Data Cap, Violates (at least) the Spirit of Net Neutrality - analysis
One-Fifth Of Women In Developing World Countries Think Internet Use Is Inappropriate For Them
Space Satellite Connects Rural Health Clinics to Broadband [links to web]
Banks Seek US Help on Iran Cyberattacks [links to web]
SEARCH
Facebook’s Bold, Compelling and Scary Engine of Discovery: The Inside Story of Graph Search
The digital age has changed what it means to 'search' - op-ed
Facebook on Collision Course With Google on Web Searches - analysis [links to web]
Facebook Calls Up a Search Party for Revenue - analysis [links to web]
Is Facebook Finally Useful? - analysis [links to web]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
Rep Eshoo to reintroduce wireless bill in coming weeks [links to web]
Phones Are a Big-Screen Hit but a Bit of a Fashion Challenge [links to web]
TELEVISION/RADIO
The Cable Bill's Too High. Here's Why - analysis
Court sides with Dish in striking down FCC TV rule
RMPBS, KUVO and I-News merge, redefining Colorado public media
NBC Rebuked for Skit
OWNERSHIP
Promoting Diversification of Ownership in the Broadcasting Services - public notice
Rupert Murdoch says Los Angeles Times purchase not a sure thing
Crisis Communications Advice for CBS: Fix Your CNET Mess. Now. - op-ed [links to web]
EDUCATION
Publishers answering the call for digital textbooks [links to web]
HEALTH
National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence Secure Exchange of Electronic Health Information Demonstration Project - public notice [links to web]
TELECOM
FCC Streamlines And Modernizes International Reporting Requirements - press release [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Rights Group Reports on Abuses of Surveillance and Censorship Technology
Rep Lofgren to introduce bill amending hacking law in honor of Swartz
How Obama's inaugural app mines data for Dems
President Obama ends term with fewer pressers than Bush or Clinton [links to web]
Why We’re Raising the Signature Threshold for We the People - press release
President Obama credits power of conservative media - analysis
STORIES FROM ABROAD
China's Journalists Are No Revolutionaries - op-ed [links to web]
French telecoms mergers face opposition [links to web]
MORE ONLINE
Petition to fire DOJ lawyer hits threshold in wake of activist suicide [links to web]
POLICYMAKERS
THE NEXT FCC CHAIR
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Gigi Sohn]
[Commentary] Even though current Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has not announced that he is leaving, there is still much talk about who is being considered to be his successor. But this focus on names is premature. Before we talk about who will be the next FCC Chair, there needs to be a conversation on the qualities the ideal candidate should possess. Because the issues and controversies that will come before the Commission over the next four years will be no less contentious than in the previous four. The next Chair will preside over matters such as the transition to all IP networks, finalizing the incentive auction and spectrum screen proceedings, figuring out how to promote broadband competition, and, of course, how to reinstate the agency’s authority (and indeed its relevance) should it lose the legal challenge to the open Internet rules. This is in addition to whatever transactions the Commission may be asked to decide by industry. The next FCC Chair should:
Be Comfortable as a Regulator
Understand the Role of Congress
Seek Greater Public Input
Be Dedicated to the Institution's Role as Defender of the Public Interest
benton.org/node/143370 | Public Knowledge
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
BROADBAND DATA CAPS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Liberals and consumer advocates are pushing the Obama Administration to investigate Internet providers for limiting the amount of online material that customers can consume each month. Critics of data caps say they are unnecessary and are unfairly used by monopolists to squeeze more profits out of consumers. Advocacy groups including Public Knowledge and Free Press are urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review the practice and are lobbying Congress to hold hearings. “Data caps can create an artificial scarcity in the broadband market that limits consumer choice and hinders the creation of new competitive content online,” said Christopher Lewis, Public Knowledge’s top lobbyist. The issue could flare into a major regulatory battle in the new Congress.
benton.org/node/143345 | Hill, The
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AT&T AND DATA CAPS
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Michael Weinberg]
[Commentary] Last year, Comcast started exempting its own online video service from the data cap it imposed on consumers. When consumers streamed online video (say, because they were thinking about cutting the cord and replacing their Comcast cable subscription with an online competitor), that video counted against their cap. Unless, of course, that online video came from Comcast. Online video coming from Comcast was exempted from Comcast’s own data cap, giving consumers a disincentive to watch video from a competitor. We urged the Federal Communications Commission to investigate this anticompetitive use of data caps, and are still waiting for a resolution. Today, while we continue to wait for the FCC to investigate data cap abuse, AT&T has decided to follow suit and exempt data from its own services from the data cap it imposes on its DSL and U-verse customers. Unlike every other type of data on those connections, data from an AT&T wireless phone does not count against the DSL/U-verse cap.
benton.org/node/143369 | Public Knowledge
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WOMEN AND INTERNET ACCESS
[SOURCE: Fast Company, AUTHOR: Addy Dugdale]
A study released by Intel Corporation on women and the Internet has found some interesting trends. Researchers, who consulted with the U.S. State Department and UN Women, found that one-fifth of women in some countries feel that it would be inappropriate for them to use the Internet. The report issues a call to double the number of women and girls online in developing countries from 600 million today to 1.2 billion in 3 years. Around 2,200 women and girls from four countries--India, Egypt, Mexico, and Uganda--took part in the research, which found that 25% of women in developing nations lacked Internet access. In some sub-Saharan countries that figure rises to 45%.
benton.org/node/143343 | Fast Company
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SEARCH
GRAPH SEARCH
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Steven Levy]
To date, sorting through your Facebook friends could be a frustrating task. Although the site has a search bar, there has been no easy way to quickly cull contacts based on specific criteria. But Facebook’s Graph Search will eventually allow a billion people to dive into the vast trove of stored information about them and their network of friends. For years now, Facebook watchers have wondered when the company would unleash the potential of its underpowered search bar. (Nobody has feared this day more than Google, which suddenly faces a competitor able to index tons of data that Google’s own search engine can’t access.) They have also wondered how a Facebook search product might work. Now we know. Graph Search is fundamentally different from web search. Instead of a Google-like effort to help users find answers from a stitched-together corpus of all the world’s information, Facebook is helping them tap its vast, monolithic database to make better use of their “social graph.”
benton.org/node/143368 | Wired
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WHAT IT MEANS TO ‘SEARCH’
[SOURCE: American Public Media, AUTHOR: Nicholas Carr]
[Commentary] When we talk about "searching" these days, we're almost always talking about using Google to find something online. That’s a big change for a word that long carried existential connotations -- a word that had been bound up in our sense of what it meant to be human. We didn’t just search for car keys or missing socks. We searched for truth, for meaning, for transcendence. Searching was an act of exploration that took us out into the world, beyond ourselves, in order to know the world, and ourselves, more fully. In its original form, the Google search engine did just that. It transported us out into a messy and confusing world -- the world of the web -- with the intent of helping us make sense of it. But that’s less true now. Google’s big goal is no longer to read the web. It's to read us. These days, Google's search engine doesn’t push us outward so much as turn us inward. It gives us information that fits the pattern of behavior and thinking we’ve displayed in the past. It reinforces our biases rather than challenging them, and subverts the act of searching in its most meaningful sense.
benton.org/node/143367 | American Public Media
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TELEVISION/RADIO
CABLE BILL’S TOO HIGH
[SOURCE: Forbes, AUTHOR: Igor Greenwald]
The cable bill is too damn high, as just about every U.S. cable subscriber will attest. This is a truth even industry analysts and cable executives can no longer deny, though they haven’t yet agreed on whom to blame. A little over two years ago, Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett was warning about “the widening disconnect between flat-to-declining consumer disposable income, particularly in the bottom two quintiles of household income, and the rising price of media and telecommunications services.” Just the television portion of the cable bill has nearly doubled to $78 monthly over the last decade. And U.S. cable and broadband rates are now at nosebleed levels relative to those on offer in foreign capitals, despite delivering inferior technology to the one that lets Koreans, Scandinavians and Hong Kongers surf the Internet much faster. Is it because our sports are so much more exciting, our comedies that much funnier or our news shows more informative? If only. That’s down to the fact that our cable markets are entirely uncompetitive on price, even in places where cable providers have let the satellite dish to make significant inroads. And why are they uncompetitive on price? That’s no mystery at all. It’s because government has failed to foster the sort of competition that’s held down prices around the world.
benton.org/node/143344 | Forbes
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PLUG AND PLAY RULING
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Diane Bartz]
An appeals court struck down a rule that had been issued by the Federal Communications Commission to allow customers to watch cable and satellite TV on "plug and play" televisions, replacing set top boxes. Satellite TV company Dish Network to the rule because it included prescriptions on encrypting programming that prevented Dish and others from, for example, making deals with studios to play new movies on a pay-per-view basis. At the request of Dish, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down the 2003 rule that had been drafted by the cable companies. The FCC rule - called the "plug and play" order - set standards that allowed customers to buy televisions that could plug into cable and satellite networks without using a set top box. In its objection, Dish argued that the FCC lacked authority to impose the standards on satellite providers. The court agreed.
benton.org/node/143366 | Reuters
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COLORADO PUBLIC MEDIA
[SOURCE: Denver Post, AUTHOR: Joanne Ostrow]
Rocky Mountain PBS signed a merger agreement with the investigative reporting service I-News and with public radio station KUVO (89.3 FM), designed to "redefine public media" in Colorado, RMPBS president and CEO Doug Price said. The three organizations will share newsgathering and other resources. While the state's largest public TV entity had previous partnerships with KUVO and I-News, this merger formalizes the relationship and extends the reach of each across TV, radio and online platforms. For the public, the result is expected to be three to five deeply researched journalism projects a year, Price said. For the I-News Network, the merger means a ready infrastructure at RMPBS so the reporting team can focus on journalism, rather than the business model, said I-News executive director Laura Frank. For jazz, blues, news station KUVO, the merger means access to the business acumen of RMPBS, already evident in clearing hurdles to technical improvements for the station, and stability in an uncertain era for terrestrial radio. For RMPBS, the deal provides access via KUVO to the growing Latino audience, and a weightier newsroom with the five I-News staffers.
benton.org/node/143379 | Denver Post
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NBC REBUKED
[SOURCE: International Herald Tribune, AUTHOR: ]
On this date in 1938… a sharp reprimand to the National Broadcasting Company for presenting a skit called “Adam and Eve,” in which Mae West played the part of Eve, was delivered today [Jan. 15] in a letter from Frank R. McNinch, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The program provoked widespread criticism from listeners when it was given on December 12. Mr. McNinch said the commission had received letters criticizing the program as “profane,” “obscene,” “indecent,” “vulgar,” “filthy,” “sexy,” and “insulting to the American public.”
benton.org/node/143372 | International Herald Tribune | Listen to the program
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OWNERSHIP
PROMOTING DIVERSIFICATION OF OWNERSHIP IN THE BROADCASTING SERVICES
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
The Federal Communications Commission seeks comment on whether to collect information from holders of equity interests in a licensee that would be attributable but for the single majority shareholder exemption and from holders of interests that would be attributable but for the higher EDP thresholds adopted in the Diversity Order, published May 16, 2008, for purposes of determining attribution of certain interests in eligible entities. The FCC must receive written comments on or before February 14, 2013 and reply comments on or before March 1, 2013.
The FCC is also seeking further comment on its requirement that licensees and other entities filing the FCC Form 323, Ownership Report for Commercial Broadcast Station, provide an FCC Registration Number (FRN) generated by the Commission’s Registration System (CORES) (CORES FRN) for attributable individuals reported on the Form 323. The FCC must receive written comments on or before February 14, 2013 and reply comments on or before March 1, 2013.
benton.org/node/143337 | Federal Communications Commission | CORES NPRM
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MURDOCH AND THE LA TIMES
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Meg James, Nicole Sperling]
Now that Rupert Murdoch is spinning off News Corp.’s publishing properties into a separate company, media observers have identified the Los Angeles Times as a likely target for acquisition. Murdoch isn’t one of them. "It won’t get through with the Democratic administration in place," Murdoch said during a break in the Golden Globes ceremony in Beverly Hills. Murdoch was alluding to federal regulations that seek to limit media consolidation. A Federal Communications Commission rule adopted in 1975 bars the same company from owning newspapers and television stations in the same market. News Corp. owns two television stations in Los Angeles: KTTV-TV Channel 11 and KCOP-TV Channel 13. Adding the L.A. Times to the portfolio would put Murdoch in violation of the cross-ownership rules.
benton.org/node/143340 | Los Angeles Times
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
SURVEILLANCE AND CENSORSHIP TECHNOLOGY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Markoff]
A Canadian human rights monitoring group has documented the use of American-made Internet surveillance and censorship technology by more than a dozen governments, some with harsh human rights policies like Syria, China and Saudi Arabia. The Citizen Lab Internet research group, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, used computer servers to scan for the distinctive signature of gear made by Blue Coat Systems of Sunnyvale (CA). It determined that Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Republic employed a Blue Coat system that could be used for digital censorship. The group also determined that Bahrain, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuela used equipment that could be used for surveillance and tracking. The authors said they wanted to alert the public that there was a growing amount of surveillance and content-filtering technology distributed throughout the Internet. The technology is not restricted from export by the State Department, except to countries that are on embargo lists, like Syria, Iran and North Korea.
benton.org/node/143387 | New York Times
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AARON’S LAW
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jennifer Martinez]
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) posted a copy of a draft bill to social news website Reddit that would modify a computer hacking law in the wake of Internet activist Aaron Swartz's death. She plans to seek co-sponsors for the bill in the "coming days" and asked Reddit users to submit their feedback on her draft bill. Rep Lofgren said the government was able to levy "such disproportionate charges" against Swartz because of "the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute." Lofgren's draft bill, which she hopes to name "Aaron's Law," would amend these measures so they exclude terms of service violations.
benton.org/node/143382 | Hill, The | WSJ
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INAUGURATION APP AND PRIVACY
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Steve Friess]
Looking for a public toilet using the new Inauguration smartphone app? That might just land you on left-leaning email lists or solicited in coming years to be a Democratic campaign donor. Thousands have downloaded the free program since its release by the official Presidential Inaugural Committee, but few are likely to notice that the terms-of-service and privacy statement — aka the fine print — give the committee permission to share their data “with candidates, organizations, groups or causes that we believe have similar political viewpoints, principles or objectives.” Users at various places in the app and on the PIC’s website are asked for their mobile phone numbers, email and home addresses, as well as permission to locate devices by GPS. Not all of that is required to use some of the functions of the app. The legalistic language also gives the PIC use of any activity, postings or comments made via the app or the 2013pic.org website "without limitation in advertising, fundraising and other communications in support of PIC and the principles of the Democratic party, without any right of compensation or attribution."
benton.org/node/143380 | Politico
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WE THE PEOPLE
[SOURCE: The White House, AUTHOR: Macon Phillips]
First the threshold for the White House to respond to “We The People” petitions was 5,000 signatures, then 25,000. Starting Jan 15, petitions must receive 100,000 signatures in 30 days in order to receive an official response from the Obama Administration. This new threshold applies only to petitions created from this point forward and is not retroactively applied to ones that already exist. In the last two months of 2012, use of We the People more than doubled. In just that time roughly 2.4 million new users joined the system, 73,000 petitions were created and 4.9 million signatures were registered. As we’ve seen overall use skyrocket, more petitions are crossing the threshold — and doing so much more quickly.
benton.org/node/143371 | White House, The
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POWER OF CONSERVATIVE MEDIA
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Erik Wemple]
[Commentary] President Barack Obama may have added a novel entry to the well-worn Washington tradition of media blamedom. He suggested that certain reporters and editors are responsible for a big hole in his social life: “I think there are a lot of Republicans at this point that feel that given how much energy has been devoted in some of the media that’s preferred by Republican constituencies to demonize me, that it doesn’t look real good socializing with me. Charlie Crist down in Florida I think testifies to that. And I think a lot of folks say, ‘Well, you know, if we look like we’re being too cooperative or too chummy with the president, that might cause us problems; that might be an excuse for us to get a challenge from somebody in a primary.’” His remark boosts the stature of conservative media. He’s saying that the prospect of censure from right-leaning media outlets weighs heavily enough on Republican lawmakers that they won’t be seen hanging with the president. That’s called power.
benton.org/node/143341 | Washington Post
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