Daily Digest 9/5/2018 (Wireless Carriers Slowing YouTube, Netflix Videos)

Benton Foundation
Table of Contents

Broadband/Internet

YouTube, Netflix Videos Found to Be Slowed by Wireless Carriers  |  Read below  |  Olga Kharif  |  Bloomberg
Net Neutrality Looms at Kavanaugh Hearing  |  Read below  |  Cristiano Lima  |  Politico
Brett Kavanaugh's net neutrality views could have a broad impact if he joins the Supreme Court  |  Read below  |  Gigi Sohn  |  Op-Ed  |  NBC
Rhetoric Aside: What the Data Actually Say About Broadband Deployment  |  Read below  |  Dr George Ford  |  Analysis  |  Phoenix Center
NCTA, Others Push for Senate Version of Rural Broadband Funding  |  Read below  |  John Eggerton  |  Multichannel News
Hundreds of schools await funding for connectivity improvements as FCC deadline nears  |  Read below  |  Mel Leonor  |  Politico
Push for municipally-owned broadband network renewed in Albany, New York  |  Times Union

Wireless

Grassroots Leadership on 5G  |  Read below  |  FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr  |  Speech  |  Federal Communications Commission
  • Verizon Supports FCC initiative to streamline 5G small cell deployment  |  Verizon
  • AT&T Statement on Commissioner Carr’s Remarks at Indiana Statehouse and FCC’s Next 5G Order  |  AT&T
How to get from our 4G reality to the 5G future  |  Read below  |  Kim Hart  |  Axios
Largest US Wireless ISP Offers Its Take on Suburban Fixed 5G  |  Read below  |  Joan Engebretson  |  telecompetitor
AT&T and Verizon Are Making Very Different Bets on What 5G Will Mean for Consumers and Content  |  AdWeek
Boost, MetroPCS and Virgin to survive merger with Sprint, T-Mobile executives promise  |  Read below  |  Mike Dano  |  Fierce
Sprint again raises the price of its most expensive unlimited plan  |  Fierce
The race to become "smart cities"  |  Read below  |  Kim Hart  |  Axios

Platforms

Facebook and Twitter Have a Message for Lawmakers: We’re Trying  |  Read below  |  Cecilia Kang, Kate Conger  |  New York Times
Twitter says President Trump not immune from getting kicked off  |  Read below  |  Nancy Scola, Ashley Gold  |  Politico
House Majority Leader McCarthy: Twitter CEO should explain company's content monitoring practices  |  Read below  |  Juligrace Brufke  |  Hill, The
What I Hope to Learn from the Tech Giants  |  Read below  |  FCC Chairman Ajit Pai  |  Editorial  |  Federal Communications Commision
Alex Jones Said Bans Would Strengthen Him. He Was Wrong.  |  Read below  |  Jack Nicas  |  New York Times
Can You Spot the Deceptive Facebook Post?  |  New York Times
Modest Proposals: How the Internet Broke and What to Do About It  |  The Information
Tim Wu Thinks It's Time to Break Up Facebook  |  Read below  |  Nilay Patel  |  Vox
What they're saying: Big Tech, rivals fight over FTC antitrust policy  |  Axios

Communications and Democracy

Fake News  |  Read below  |  Michael Copps  |  Op-Ed  |  Benton Foundation
President Trump again calls for reexamining NBC’s TV license, despite the fact it doesn’t have one  |  Read below  |  Brian Fung  |  Washington Post
President Trump suggests protesting should be illegal  |  Washington Post
Chuck Todd: It’s Time for the Press to Stop Complaining—And to Start Fighting Back  |  Atlantic, The
Op-ed: Subtle sexism in political coverage can have a real impact on candidates  |  Columbia Journalism Review

Broadcasting

FCC Won't Pull Licenses From Hurricane-Affected 'Dark' Stations  |  Read below  |  John Eggerton  |  Broadcasting&Cable
FCC Notifies US-Based Foreign Media Outlets of Report Requirement on Outlets' Relations to Their Foreign Principals  |  Federal Communications Commission

Privacy/Security

Department of Commerce Launches Collaborative Privacy Framework Effort  |  Read below  |  Press Release  |  Department of Commerce
Analysis: Privacy advocates are back in court fighting NSA surveillance. It's an uphill battle.  |  Washington Post
The Lawyers and Lobbyists Behind Big Tech’s Big Push for Federal Privacy Law  |  National Law Journal
National Preparedness Month: 6 steps you can take to help protect your company’s information from the unpredictable  |  Federal Trade Commission
Bret Swanson: The business of digital privacy and security will be huge  |  American Enterprise Institute
Google Wants to Kill the URL  |  Wired

Labor

Like Bigger Peers, Tronc's Virginia Newsrooms Set To Unionize  |  National Public Radio
Podcast: For some under-represented people in tech, life is getting better. For others, this is the ‘dark timeline.’  |  Vox

Policymakers

Chairman Pai Hails Guilty Plea Over Threats to His Family  |  Read below  |  John Eggerton  |  Broadcasting&Cable, Federal Communications Commission
Sen Mark Warner, Congress' Chief Tech Watchdog, Is Not Happy With Google  |  Wired
Editorial: Republicans are rushing Kavanaugh’s confirmation. What are they not telling us?  |  Washington Post
Leecia Eve, Verizon VP, Should Not be the Next Attorney General of New York  |  Bruce Kushnick
Alan Davidson, former Director of Digital Economy at US Dept of Commerce, joins Mozilla as VP of Global Policy, Trust & Security  |  Mozilla

Company News

Amazon's market value reaches $1 trillion, joining Apple  |  Bloomberg
Today's Top Stories

Broadband/Internet

YouTube, Netflix Videos Found to Be Slowed by Wireless Carriers

Olga Kharif  |  Bloomberg

The largest US telecommunication companies are slowing internet traffic to and from popular apps like YouTube and Netflix, according to new research from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The researchers used a smartphone app called Wehe, downloaded by about 100,000 consumers, to monitor which mobile services are being throttled when and by whom, in what likely is the single largest running study of its kind. Among US wireless carriers, YouTube is the No. 1 target of throttling, where data speeds are slowed, according to the data. Netflix’s video streaming service, Amazon’s Prime Video and the NBC Sports app have been degraded in similar ways, according to David Choffnes, one of the study’s authors who developed the Wehe app.

From January through early May, the app detected "differentiation" by Verizon more than 11,100 times, according to the study. This is when a type of traffic on a network is treated differently than other types of traffic. Most of this activity is throttling. AT&T did this 8,398 times and it was spotted almost 3,900 times on the network of T-Mobile and 339 times on Sprint’s network, the study found. The numbers are partly influenced by the size of the networks and user bases. C Spire, a smaller privately held wireless operator, had the fewest instances of differentiation among U.S. providers, while Verizon had the most. Carriers say they’re throttling to manage internet traffic. 

Net Neutrality Looms at Kavanaugh Hearing

Cristiano Lima  |  Politico

The Senate formally kicks off the confirmation battle over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with lawmakers poised to grill the judge for several days on a host of issues. Key among them for the tech and telecom crowd: Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion in a 2017 ruling that upheld the Obama-era net neutrality rules. “Kavanaugh’s position goes against a free & open internet,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) tweeted, adding that the judge’s rationale for his dissent in United States Telecom Association v. Federal Communications Commission “is bordering on absurdity, and shows that he might not understand what #NetNeutrality actually means.” He’s not the only Democrat ready to pounce on the subject. “I will be asking him tough questions on this topic and ... to justify that dissent and his distorted view of the First Amendment,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said.

Another topic to watch: Kavanaugh’s skepticism of the Chevron doctrine, the precedent that judges should defer to agency interpretations on statutes. Though less attention-grabbing than the judge’s past comments on presidential immunity or his views on Roe v. Wade — two hot-button issues expected to draw intense scrutiny — his stance on agency deference could be a critical one, given the Supreme Court’s sweeping influence over how courts handle initiatives across the federal government. (For a refresher on Kavanaugh’s views on all things tech and telecom, read up here and here.)

Brett Kavanaugh's net neutrality views could have a broad impact if he joins the Supreme Court

Gigi Sohn  |  Op-Ed  |  NBC

Most critiques of the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, focus on his positions on a woman’s right to choose, his extreme deference to presidential power, or his views on sensible gun laws. But let me add: His decided opposition to net neutrality and any oversight of big broadband and cable companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon represent another incredibly problematic aspect of his judicial rulings that could have a broad impact on Americans for decades to come. In a long dissent when the full DC Circuit Court of Appeals declined to even rehear opponents' arguments that the Federal Communication Commission didn't have the right to regulate broadband providers as "common carries," Judge Kavanaugh made it clear that he believes that big broadband and cable companies should be able to control your internet experience as they see fit. While Kavanaugh’s views are already far outside of the mainstream from his current perch, there is reason to be very concerned about what could happen if he is confirmed to the High Court.

[Gigi Sohn is a Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and the Benton Foundation Senior Fellow and Public Advocate. She was Counselor to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler from November 2013-December 2016.]

Rhetoric Aside: What the Data Actually Say About Broadband Deployment

Dr George Ford  |  Analysis  |  Phoenix Center

Looking at the Federal Communications Commission’s Form 477 data from 2015 and 2016, three empirical facts emerge:

  • First, prices and speeds in single-provider markets belie the rhetorical “monopoly” characterization made by some advocacy groups. The data show that single-provider areas have the same prices as multiple-provider areas. Rather than being a “monopoly” problem, a more accurate characterization of the single-provider areas is that at least one provider is bringing the full benefits of broadband to places that multiple providers have yet to serve. 
  • Second, the deployment of cable broadband services between 2015 and 2016 is disproportionally focused on rural markets. This shift in deployment is encouraging.
  • Third, despite claims that the larger broadband providers seek to minimize competition between them, the vast majority of their competitive service territories include another large provider of broadband.

NCTA, Others Push for Senate Version of Rural Broadband Funding

John Eggerton  |  Multichannel News

Cable and telecommunication Internet service providers have gotten together to lobby for the broadband buildout funding provisions in the Senate version of the "Farm Bill." The Senate and House have each passed versions, now being reconciled in conference. That came in a letter to Farm Bill conferees from the heads of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, ITTA-The Voice of America's Broadband Providers, USTelecom and NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association. They are particularly supportive of the Senate version's better targeting of broadband funding to prevent overbuilding, including where there is already federal funding via the Universal Service Fund broadband subsidies. The Senate version requires that areas eligible for Rural Utilities Service broadband buildout funds be at least 90% unserved by high speed broadband, defined as at least 25 Mbps downstream/3 Mbps upstream. NCTA et al. wrote that the bill "would better protect taxpayer money and direct that money to areas that need it most." They also pointed out that "the standard contained in the Senate Farm Bill is consistent with the standard adopted by Congress for the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 pilot broadband program that will be administered by RUS."

Hundreds of schools await funding for connectivity improvements as FCC deadline nears

Mel Leonor  |  Politico

The Federal Communications Commission has, for years, sought to issue funding decisions by Sept. 1 for applications made through E-rate, a federal program that subsidizes phone and internet access for public schools and libraries. But connectivity advocates say roughly $945 million in funding requests remain on the table, roughly a third of the $2.8 billion schools and libraries requested this fiscal year. "We've got a bunch of kids going back to school and these projects haven't been reviewed yet," said Evan Marwell, CEO and founder of EducationSuperHighway. The nonprofit advocates for better connectivity in schools and has, for months, complained of pervasive delays. Marwell urged FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to lend the weight of his leadership to the issue to "get these projects approved as soon as possible." "These kids are now faced with likely spending another year without the broadband that they need to take advantage of digital learning in the classroom," he said.

Wireless

Grassroots Leadership on 5G

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr  |  Speech  |  Federal Communications Commission

Indiana is going to be one of the first states in the country to see 5G—the next-generation of wireless broadband. Indiana’s national leadership in mobile broadband is a direct result of this state’s policy decisions. A year ago, community leaders identified the opportunities that come with next-generation broadband and decided to address the challenges that threatened to stand in the way. A year after enacting Indiana’s small cell bill, the results are in—and they are remarkable. Since state leaders reformed the law, wireless providers have built over 1,000 small cells in more than 30
communities across the state. Based on your work, I am announcing today the next steps in the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to bring more broadband to more Americans. Later in Sept, the FCC will vote on a proposal designed to support small cell deployment. It contains four main ideas:

  1. First, it reaffirms local control over wireless infrastructure decisions where it is most appropriate, while ensuring that commonsense guardrails apply to outlier conduct. It implements long-standing federal law that bars municipal rules that have the effect of prohibiting deployment of wireless service.
  2. Second, the proposal affirms that local governments may charge wireless providers for the costs associated with reviewing small cell deployment. We propose that fees must amount to a reasonable approximation of local governments’ costs. To encourage cooperation between local governments and wireless providers, the FCC in the order provides specific fee amounts, below which we presume the local governments’ fees are lawful.
  3. Third, we tailor the “shot clocks” that have long governed local review of infrastructure deployments to account for the size and scale of small cells. Requires municipalities to approve or disapprove applications to attach small cells to existing structures within 60 days and applications to build new small cell poles within 90 days.
  4. Fourth, we preserve local governments’ reasonable aesthetic reviews. 

These are commonsense ideas drawn from the hard work of leaders right here in Indiana’s General Assembly and in 19 other state legislatures. By taking your ideas nationwide, we help ensure that every community in our country is 5G Ready. And that will make a difference to American jobs and families. 

How to get from our 4G reality to the 5G future

Kim Hart  |  Axios

Speedy 5G networks may be on the horizon, but consumer demand for wireless broadband is so intense that mobile companies like AT&T and Verizon need alternatives now — even if it means sharing airwaves with each other and with rival tech firms like Google. 5G networks are far from being fully deployed. While we're waiting, the tech, telecom and equipment industries have put aside (some of) their competitive differences to ensure the Federal Communications Commission approves a spectrum-sharing plan that will open up military airwaves for commercial use across the country. They want to use a wide swath of prime airwaves known as Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) that are controlled by the Navy. As soon as a final dispute is resolved, premium frequencies will be available to companies, as long as the Navy still gets first dibs.

The sticking point is how the spectrum will be divvied up. The current framework would auction off priority access spectrum in small chunks, by census tract. Large wireless providers want the FCC to make those license areas larger, arguing it's a more efficient use of the spectrum, will reduce interference risk and be easier for the FCC to auction. Others — including rural wireless companies, industrial players, and Google — say enlarging the license areas would make them too expensive for smaller firms to buy. FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly, who has been managing the process, has submitted a recommendation to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to resolve the dispute, with a decision expected by the end of 2018. What's next: The FCC recently gave the green light to start initial CBRS deployment in part of airwaves, as soon as equipment lab testing is complete.

Largest US Wireless ISP Offers Its Take on Suburban Fixed 5G

Joan Engebretson  |  telecompetitor

An interview with Rise Broadband co-founder Jeff Kholer. Rise Broadband is the largest US wireless Internet service provider (ISP). 

As the industry continues to speculate on how widely fixed 5G will be deployed, we thought it would be interesting to find out what the nation’s largest wireless Internet service provider (ISP) thinks about the technology and the business case for suburban fixed 5G. Fixed 5G and “5G-like” equipment is already available from “a couple of vendors,” explained Kohler. As Kohler sees it, fixed 5G “is primarily for increasing capacity in densely populated areas. For our company and for a lot of the wireless ISP industry, it’s not something that so much applies to what we do because we’re primarily rural service providers. The problem we’re solving for in rural America is more coverage than capacity.” Nevertheless, Kohler sees a potential market for fixed 5G — and it would involve certain wireless ISPs (WISPs) “edging in” toward the more densely populated suburban portion of metro markets. “We’re seeing an increasing number of companies edging in to take advantage of the technology” said Kohler regarding fixed 5 wireless. “It’s the very early stage. The equipment is still a little expensive but shows a lot of promise.”

Boost, MetroPCS and Virgin to survive merger with Sprint, T-Mobile executives promise

Mike Dano  |  Fierce

In response to questions from commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, T-Mobile executives promised that, if the company successfully merges with Sprint, the combined company will not eliminate any of its prepaid brands. T-Mobile currently operates the MetroPCS prepaid brand while Sprint operates the Boost and Virgin prepaid brands. Further, the T-Mobile executives promised that a combined Sprint/T-Mobile, which executives have dubbed New T-Mobile, would also continue to encourage MVNOs to use its network. And, in another interesting tidbit, the T-Mobile executives boasted that a combined Sprint and T-Mobile would “have sufficient capacity to offer an in-home product at a lower price than current offerings in over half of U.S. zip codes, bringing broadband choice to many consumers for the first time.” 

The race to become "smart cities"

Kim Hart  |  Axios

Cities are increasingly marketing themselves as "smart cities" — hyper-connected, sensor-equipped communities — in their latest economic development pitch to attract workers and businesses. Metropolitan areas across the country are trying to take advantage of new technologies to become more efficient and sustainable — two qualities that appeal to younger generations of workers, as well as the startups and big corporations who want to employ them. If marketing materials are to be believed, smart cities will use gigabit-speed internet and future 5G networks to transform how citizens interact with schools, utilities, their neighbors and and local governments.  Major US cities tend to tackle smart city projects that solve their specific problems. Two common themes: increasing sustainability to meet environmental goals and improving transportation to reduce gridlock, according to Brooks Rainwater, Director of the Center for City Solutions at the National League of Cities. Additionally, cities are being pitched on a range of newfangled technologies and apps intended to provide free Wi-Fi at bus shelters, smart parking systems, or sensors to clear intersections faster. But there are privacy and security questions around who gets access to data generated by those tools, said Ginger Ambruster, Chief Privacy Officer for Seattle.

Platforms

Facebook and Twitter Have a Message for Lawmakers: We’re Trying

Cecilia Kang, Kate Conger  |  New York Times

For months, Facebook, Twitter and Google have grappled with criticism over the misuse of their services by foreign operatives and the disproportionate influence of their platforms on people’s thinking. On Sept 5, when Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, appear in Washington to testify on those issues, they plan to answer lawmakers’ questions using two main tactics: a conciliatory and apologetic approach, as well as a rundown of the growing number of efforts that the companies have taken to combat manipulation and disinformation problems. “We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act. That’s on us,” Sandberg said in prepared testimony. “We’re getting better at finding and combating our adversaries, from financially motivated troll farms to sophisticated military intelligence operations.” In testimony that was posted Sept 4, Dorsey said, “Twitter is approaching these challenges with a simple question: How do we earn more trust from the people using our service? We know the way to earn more trust around how we make decisions on our platform is to be as transparent as possible.”

Twitter says President Trump not immune from getting kicked off

Nancy Scola, Ashley Gold  |  Politico

Twitter said that not even President Donald Trump is immune from being kicked off the platform if his tweets cross a line with abusive behavior. The social media company's rules against vitriolic tweets offer leeway for world leaders whose statements are newsworthy, but that "is not a blanket exception for the president or anyone else," said Twitter legal and policy chief Vijaya Gadde. President Trump regularly uses Twitter to heap abuse on his perceived enemies and at times raise the specter of violence, such as when he tweeted in 2017 that if North Korean leaders continued with their rhetoric at the time, "they won’t be around much longer!” Critics say the tweets violate Twitter’s terms of service and warrant punitive action. Dorsey, who's due to testify before two congressional committees Sept 5 about his company's content practices, said he receives notifications on his phone for Trump's Twitter account. But asked if he would weigh in personally to remove Trump from the platform, he declined to get into specifics.

House Majority Leader McCarthy: Twitter CEO should explain company's content monitoring practices

Juligrace Brufke  |  Hill, The

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says he hopes Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's testimony on Capitol Hill provides insights into his company's algorithms and content monitoring practices as the social media giant battles allegations that its operations are influenced by politics. Rep McCarthy, who has been one of the most vocal critics of Silicon Valley companies over alleged anti-conservative bias, said that he expects Dorsey's testimony before the House Commerce Committee to be the first of several for members of the tech community. "This won't be the last hearing. There will be more people coming in," he said. He called for increased transparency involving the social media site's practices, saying it was especially important given the number of people who consume their news using social media. 

What I Hope to Learn from the Tech Giants

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai  |  Editorial  |  Federal Communications Commision

Elected officials will have a chance to question those who run Silicon Valley tech giants. This public scrutiny comes at an important time, as Americans across the political spectrum debate the ever-increasing role of these massive companies in our economy and civic society. Here are a few things I hope to learn from these hearings:

  1. Transparency: We get our news from digital platforms. We interact with our family and friends on them. But how do these companies make decisions about what we see and what we don’t? And who makes those decisions? We still don’t know.
  2. Privacy: Tech giants have enormous and unprecedented insight into every part of our daily lives. Most consumers have no idea how this data is being used. Do we need greater transparency when it comes to these companies’ privacy practices? And should consumers have greater control over the use of their information?
  3. Online expression: The promise of digital platforms is that Americans can express themselves online in a way they couldn’t in the analog age. But recent developments suggest that this town square may not be as open as it seems. 

We need to seriously think about whether the time has come for these companies to abide by new transparency obligations.

Alex Jones Said Bans Would Strengthen Him. He Was Wrong.

Jack Nicas  |  New York Times

After Silicon Valley internet giants mostly barred Alex Jones from their services in Aug, traffic to his Infowars website and app soared on the blaze of publicity — and the notorious conspiracy theorist declared victory. “The more I’m persecuted, the stronger I get,” Jones said on his live internet broadcast three days later. “It backfired.” Yet a review of Infowars’s traffic several weeks after the bans shows that the tech companies drastically reduced Jones’s reach by cutting off his primary distribution channels: YouTube and Facebook.

In the three weeks before the Aug. 6 bans, Infowars had a daily average of nearly 1.4 million visits to its website and views of videos posted by its main YouTube and Facebook pages. In the three weeks afterward, its audience fell by roughly half, to about 715,000 site visits and video views.  The analysis did not include traffic to the two-month-old Infowars app or views of videos that Jones posted on Twitter, where his accounts remain active. That Facebook and Google, which owns YouTube, muffled one of the internet’s loudest voices so quickly illustrates the tremendous influence a few internet companies have over public discourse and the spread of information.

Tim Wu Thinks It's Time to Break Up Facebook

Nilay Patel  |  Vox

Tim Wu thinks it’s time to break up Facebook. Wu has a new book coming out in November 2018 called The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age. Breaking up Facebook (and other huge tech companies like Google and Amazon) could be simple under the current law, suggests Wu. But it could also lead to a major rethinking of how antitrust law should work in a world where the giant platform companies give their products away for free, and the ability for the government to restrict corporate power seems to be diminishing by the day. And it demands that we all think seriously about the conditions that create innovation.

The movement to break away from the consumer welfare standard is growing. Sometimes called the New Brandeis movement, the idea is that the law should prioritize competition. It’s the same sort of standard European Union regulators have been using to crack down on big tech companies; these standards were originally based on the American approach under Brandeis and Roosevelt. The 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act allows mergers to be studied for anticompetitive effects, and Wu thinks the case against Facebook is easy enough that it could be broken up without changing the consumer welfare standard.

Communications and Democracy

Fake News

Michael Copps  |  Op-Ed  |  Benton Foundation

I’m alarmed at the state of our news. Fake news, “real” news, just about all news—the made-up stuff that comes without corroboration and from God knows where; the infotainment masquerading as news from media outlets that should know better; and the tweets and mistruths that spew forth daily from the White House that attempt, with considerable success, to determine what the rest us will talk about on that particular day. Over time, a society deprived of real news and information will begin to make decisions that work against its better interests. Many (including me) would argue this has already happened. Dumbed-down corporate media encourages (maybe guarantees) a dumbed-down civic dialogue. We can’t afford that. An uninformed electorate is democracy’s real enemy.

[Michael Copps served as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from May 2001 to December 2011 and was the FCC's Acting Chairman from January to June 2009.]

President Trump again calls for reexamining NBC’s TV license, despite the fact it doesn’t have one

Brian Fung  |  Washington Post

President Donald Trump suggested that NBC's television license should be “look[ed] at” in a tweet that called the network “FAKE NEWS.” But the Federal Communications Commission does not issue TV licenses to TV networks and cannot legally revoke an individual TV station's license based on the content of its programming. President Trump's tweet took aim at NBC's handling of journalist Ronan Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein.

NBC FAKE NEWS, which is under intense scrutiny over their killing the Harvey Weinstein story, is now fumbling around making excuses for their probably highly unethical conduc. Look at their license?

Legal experts have said the Federal Communications Commission, the agency in charge of issuing broadcast licenses, has no power to do what the president has proposed. The FCC does not issue licenses to TV networks; it issues licenses to individual TV stations. "One, networks are not licensed at all,” said Benton Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman. “And two, the FCC … is an independent agency."

Broadcasting

FCC Won't Pull Licenses From Hurricane-Affected 'Dark' Stations

John Eggerton  |  Broadcasting&Cable

The Federal Communications Commission says it won't cancel the licenses of TV and radio stations in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands that have not been able to get back on the air after the devastation of hurricane's Irma and Maria. "[T]he communications infrastructures of both Puerto Rico and the USVI were almost completely destroyed," the FCC said in a recent report about the impact on communications of the 2017 hurricane season.  Ordinarily, broadcast licenses expire if a station has been off the air for a consecutive 12-month period, but with the one-year anniversary of the storms approaching, the FCC's media bureau says it will give licensees another six months to recover, though any station that expects to be off the air more than a year has to file for a special temporary authority (STA) detailing the factors preventing their resumption of broadcasts. "We believe that the catastrophic nature of these events and the ongoing recovery in Puerto Rico and the U.S."

Privacy

Department of Commerce Launches Collaborative Privacy Framework Effort

Press Release  |  Department of Commerce

Innovative technologies such as the “internet of things” (IoT) and artificial intelligence enhance convenience, efficiency and economic growth. At the same time, these and other technologies increasingly require complex networking environments and use detailed data about individuals that can make protecting their privacy harder. To help meet this challenge, the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that it has launched a collaborative project to develop a voluntary privacy framework to help organizations manage risk.  The envisioned privacy framework will provide an enterprise-level approach that helps organizations prioritize strategies for flexible and effective privacy protection solutions so that individuals can enjoy the benefits of innovative technologies with greater confidence and trust. Parallel with this effort, Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration is developing a domestic legal and policy approach for consumer privacy in coordination with the department’s International Trade Administration to ensure consistency with international policy objectives. To collect input from stakeholders, NIST will kick off the effort with a public workshop on Oct. 16, 2018, in Austin (TX)—in conjunction with the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Privacy. Security. Risk. 2018 conference.

Policymakers

Chairman Pai Hails Guilty Plea Over Threats to His Family

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai thanked law enforcement for its work in securing a guilty plea from a man who threatened his family. Markara Man plead guilty Aug 31 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, saying he was angry over the rollback of net neutrality rules. Man, 33, of Norwalk (CA), allegedly sent three emails to Chairman Pai Dec. 19 and 20, 2017, the first claiming a child had committed suicide because of the repeal, the second threatening to kill Pai's family members, and the third including an image of Chairman Pai with a framed photo of his family.

“I would like to thank the US Department of Justice, the FBI, local law enforcement, and FCC security officials for their hard work protecting my family and me," Chairman Pai said. "I am deeply grateful for all they have done to keep us safe.” 

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Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.


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