Forbes

[Commentary] The changing of administrations offers a fresh chance for Washington to rethink network neutrality. While it’s easy to find faults with the prior regime, it is hard to articulate an alternative that would satisfy more than a narrow constituency. The replacement to Title II must balance the dual objectives of stimulating investment at the core and the edges of the Internet. With ironclad protections that ban new business models, investment at the core can be discouraged. Indeed, the imposition of Title II in early 2015 has been associated with ISP investment declines in recent studies by PPI and by USTelecom. Too little protection, including a naive reliance on antitrust enforcement, could threaten investment at the edge.

With this delicate balance in mind, an ideal regulatory regime for the Internet would embody three principles:
It would reject ex ante prohibitions of new business arrangements on the Internet, and instead embrace case-by-case review of allegations of discriminatory or exclusionary conduct;
It would reject asymmetric regulation of core and edge providers, and instead establish a forum for adjudicating complaints against any dominant platform provider, including Internet intermediaries and mobile operating systems; and
It would fill gaps in antitrust laws that leave upstart edge providers vulnerable.

[Hal Singer is a senior fellow at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy]

[Commentary] President-elect Donald Trump’s advisors, along with leading Members of Congress and the agency’s two Republican Commissioners, have already made clear their first priority: to end the agency’s misguided intrusions into the Internet economy, and to reinstate policies that encourage continued private investment. A visionary plan to transform the agency into an effective 21st century enabler of continued digital innovation is sitting on the Commission’s shelf, just waiting to be dusted off.

Ironically, or not, it was written almost twenty years ago, under the direction of William Kennard, appointed to Chair the agency from 1997 to 2001 by Democratic President Bill Clinton. In two drafts prepared in 1999, Kennard’s Office of Plans and Policy laid out the design for a dramatically redesigned Commission. “The FCC as we know it today will be very different both in structure and mission,” the proposal said, transitioning over five years “from an industry regulator to a market facilitator.”

[Larry Downes is an Internet industry analyst and author on business strategies and information technology.]

[Commentary] The AT&T-Time Warner merger is not a horizontal merger. AT&T and Time Warner are not competitors. AT&T provides wireless and broadband Internet service, while Time Warner creates movies, TV shows and other content that AT&T and other distributors transmit to consumers. AT&T and Time Warner operate at different levels of the distribution chain. Theirs would be a “vertical merger.” The central question in any merger review is how the transaction will impact consumer welfare. Because AT&T and Time Warner are not competitors, concerns about increased market power or loss of competition do not apply. Rather, the pertinent inquiry is whether AT&T ownership of Time Warner content will lead to exclusive dealing, improper favoritism, or other acts that narrow consumer choice and reduce service quality.

At the same time, we should carefully evaluate the parties’ claims that the merger will benefit subscribers by, for example, expanding the amount of available content that doesn’t count against monthly data caps. Rather than fall prey to hyperbole or to simplistic, knee-jerk claims that bigger is always worse, reviewing authorities owe it to consumers to analyze the AT&T-Time Warner merger according to the law and economic reality. That the proposed transaction is a vertical, rather than a horizontal, merger should give some comfort to concerned parties. But due diligence is still needed to ensure that the merger will benefit consumers.

[Commentary] Internet companies collect abundant information about people’s online activity. They use this information to determine people’s interests and shopping profiles, and then make money by selling personalized “behavioral” ads. The Federal Communications Commission is not too happy about this barter in people’s information.

It cannot regulate the likes of Google and Facebook (they are not communications companies), but it is proposing new rules that would apply to companies that come under its purview – Internet providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. One of the proposed regulations is entirely unobjectionable but also entirely useless. It would require better disclosure to consumers: the FCC wants every Internet company to clearly explain to people what information it collects and sells.

Disclosure is a great idea, but it has a fatal flaw. It doesn’t work. Do you know anyone who ever reads the fine print? Recognizing, perhaps, that disclosure is unlikely to budge the data collection meter, the FCC is setting its sights on more ambitious regulation. It wants to shut down a budding new market in which people pay for more privacy. Privacy, the FCC thinks, should not be for sale. There is something that rings hollow and paternalistic in the privacy-is-not-only-for-the-rich battle cry. Of all the things that wealthy people can buy, privacy and freedom from tailored ads are low on the wish list of low-income folks.

[Omri Ben-Shahar is Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School]

[Commentary] A minor media brouhaha erupted when Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler sent a letter to Verizon about the company’s disclosure of its intent to manage traffic for the heaviest users of its unlimited mobile plan for certain cell sites at times of peak congestion.

Before resorting to rules that can impose unintended negative consequences, it makes sense to investigate some technical solutions. This problem can be minimized with improved video encoding and can address what is two-thirds of fixed internet traffic and 40% of mobile traffic: real time entertainment.

[Layton is researcher at the University of Aalborg, Denmark]

[Commentary] Four months after the Facebook emotion study happened, in May 2012, Facebook made changes to its data use policy, and that’s when it introduced this line about how it might use your information:

“For internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.” Facebook helpfully posted a “red-line” version of the new policy, contrasting it with the prior version from September 2011 -- which did not mention anything about user information being used in “research.”

Defenders of the Facebook study including my colleague Jeff Bercovici say that everyone on the Internet is doing A/B testing -- showing users two versions of something to see which resonates more based on how they click, share, and respond.

But the Facebook study with its intention to manipulate the Facebook environment for unknowing users to see whether it made them feel elated or depressed seems different to me than the normal “will this make someone more likely to buy this thing” kind of testing.

“They actually did a test to see whether it would have a deleterious effect on their users,” says Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum. “This isn’t A/B testing. They didn’t just want to change users’ behaviors, they wanted to change their moods.”

Getting readers to click on headlines and share articles is what Upworthy does better than almost any other website in existence. That’s the talent that allowed it to become one of the fastest-growing media start-ups ever, with more than 10 million unique visitors in June, according to comScore.

But in a surprise twist worthy of, well, an Upworthy headline, the people behind the viral-with-a-purpose publisher are on a mission to cleanse the web of content that exists primarily to be clicked on or shared. Their latest source is a piece of open-source code to encourage publishers and advertisers to distinguish between content that’s actually engaging and content designed just to produce page views, Facebook shares and other blunt-instrument metrics.

The code is a tool that lets publishers start measuring what Upworthy calls “attention minutes,” a new metric it’s attempting to promote as an industry standard. The web analytics firm Parse.ly is adding Upworthy’s code to its product, and Chartbeat has taken up the banner as well, adopting attention minutes as a standard metric.

Google is planning to launch a new health service called Google Fit to collect and aggregate data from popular fitness trackers and health-related apps, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the company’s plans.

It will launch the service at the Google I/O conference for developers, being held on June 25 and 26. Such a service would mark a direct challenge to Apple’s HealthKit framework, rolling out with its new mobile platform iOS 8 in the fall to aggregate data from wearable devices and apps.

Google Fit will aggregate data through open application programming interfaces (APIs), instruction sets that allow apps to share information, and will also announce partnerships with wearable device makers at its I/O conference, Forbes understands.

One source with knowledge of Google’s plans said Google Fit would allow a wearable device that measures data like steps or heart rate to interface with Google’s cloud-based services, and become part of the Google Fit ecosystem. Google could not be reached for comment at the time of writing.

BBC News is preparing to announce 500 more job losses, as part of its ongoing cost-cutting programme, and that industrial action could well follow.

Including new cuts to BBC Radio, the corporation is facing a total of between 550 and 600 redundancies.

In July, the corporation is set to announce that it will cut between 475 and 500 jobs from its News division, with a further 75 to 85 going from its radio operation in the UK (as opposed to the World Service, which broadcasts globally).

The cuts represent just over 6 per cent -- about one in 16 -- of the entire headcount in News, which currently employs around 8,000 people. The jobs will go over the next two years.

The announcement could easily herald another autumn of industrial unrest at the BBC, whose staff are highly unionised -- the two biggest unions there are the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the Broadcasting Entertainment Cinematograph and Theatre Union (Bectu). The unions have already said that the 2014 pay offer from the BBC -- a below-inflation 1 per cent, subject to a minimum of £390 per year for lower paid staff -- is ‘completely unacceptable’.

The huge job cuts could potentially sour relations between the unions and BBC director-general Tony Hall, who had placatory meetings with the unions when he took the helm over in 2013.

Does Chet Kanojia have a plan B for Aereo if it loses at the Supreme Court? Yes. A defeated Aereo can rise again on the strength of its technology. While Kanojia is shy on details, it’s clear he isn’t giving up. Here’s how Aereo might rise again:
It could regroup by selling its own cloud service to small cable operators that represent 7.5 million subscribers and can’t afford to develop their own technology. Comcast has already rolled out a similar service via its XI operating system, letting customers schedule recording from their phones and computers.
It might exploit its transcoding technology, say company insiders. This converts thousands of broadcast video streams into digital formats for a fraction of the cost of rival methods. As folks spend more time watching video online, Aereo could help provide more content options.
“It could shift ownership of its over-the-air antenna to users, then charge maintenance and upkeep to sustain recurring revenue,” says Jim Boyle, managing director of Sqad, a media forecaster. Even Diller has entertained the notion that Aereo could become a cable provider, striking licensing deals with content providers.