March 12, 2012 (Daylight Savings Edition)

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2012

The FCC’s two-day workshop on Spectrum Efficiency and Receiver Performance kicks off today http://benton.org/calendar/2012-03-11--P1W/

CONTENT
   Celebrating National Consumer Protection Week - analysis
   Steve Jobs, Price Fixer? - editorial
   Authors Guild: DOJ Investigation Is ‘Grim,’ ‘Tragic’ News For Book Lovers [links to web]
   E-Book Smackdown: Who Should Control Pricing—Publishers Or Amazon? - analysis [links to web]
   Penguin Says Kindle, Nook Users Must Accept AT&T-style Arbitration
   A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators - analysis
   FCC should clear Limbaugh from airwaves - op-ed
   Rush Limbaugh’s show targets jerks, judging from the latest ads [links to web]
   YouTube Subtracts Racy and Raucous to Add a Teaching Tool
   New Layer of Content Amid Chaos on YouTube [links to web]

PRIVACY
   How Frictionless Sharing Could Undermine Your Legal Right to Privacy - analysis [links to web]
   Identity Companies: Paid To Know About You [links to web]

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   Water, Internet Access and Swagger: These Guys Are Good - op-ed
   Search Engine Use 2012 - research
   National Consumer Protection Week: Spotlight on Fighting Botnets - press release [links to web]
   Level 3 protests Verizon, AT&T "lock-up" data connection deals

WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
   Improving Spectrum Efficiency Through Flexible Channel Spacing and Bandwidth Utilization
   Content providers and operators at peace
   Verizon Wireless Seen Getting More Benefit Than AT&T From Apple’s New IPad [links to web]
   Explaining the ‘4G’ on the iPhone 4S
   Tiny Transmitters Could Help Avert Data Throttling [links to web]

MEDIA & ELECTIONS
   Get Ready for the Attack of the Attack Ads - editorial
   Who Has the Most-Aired Ad of the Election So Far? President Obama [links to web]

TELEVISION
   Why Aren’t More People Cutting The Cord? Regional Sports Networks [links to web]
   TV Makers Ignore Apps at Their Own Peril [links to web]
   SXSW: Techies look to redo campaigns [links to web]

HEALTH
   Dr Farzad Mostashari Is A Man On A Digital Mission
   US pushes healthcare providers to share records electronically [links to web]

CYBERSECURITY
   The new face of corporate espionage - op-ed
   Sen Lieberman: Cybersecurity Bill Without Enforceable Standards 'Doesn't Get Job Done'
   AT&T reluctant to support FCC call to adopt new PC security measures [links to web]

POLICYMAKERS
   Todd Park Named New U.S. Chief Technology Officer - press release
   Dr Farzad Mostashari Is A Man On A Digital Mission
   Three Named to National Museum and Library Services Board - press release [links to web]

MORE ONLINE
   On open government: Time for sunshine - editorial [links to web]
   Google's moves raise questions about 'don't be evil' motto [links to web]
   Vint Cerf of Google on Internet rights [links to web]
   Inside the newly introduced Colorado telecom reform bill [links to web]

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CONTENT

CELEBRATING NATIONAL CONSUMER PROTECTION WEEK
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
[Commentary] As we’re sure you know, March 4-10 is officially National Consumer Protection Week. President Barack Obama asked that government officials, industry leaders, and advocates across the Nation to share information about consumer protection and provide our citizens with information about their rights as consumers. The biggest consumer news of the week, obviously, was the revelation of a bright, new, shiny precious from Apple. Apparently, the iPad’s screen got a major upgrade, a new camera now enables the iPad to shoot video in 1080p full HD resolution, the device now connects to Verizon and AT&T LTE/4G networks and – despite the significant upgrades -- is still on sale at a starting price of $499 for the 16GB model, stretching up to $699 for the 64GB model -- the same price as it's always had. Wow, what a victory for consumers. See you in line at the local Apple retail store and in the Headlines next week – that’s a wrap. But – cue the sound for scratched vinyl – there is one iPad-related consumer issue. And it has to do with the content you might enjoy on it.
http://benton.org/node/116963
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PRICE FIXER?
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: L Gordon Crovitz]
[Commentary] Book authors wonder about long-form writing in an attention-deprived world, publishers fret about revenue models as bookstores disappear, and consumers develop new reading habits that include both electronic and printed books. No one knows the next chapter in the future of books, but lawyers in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department claim to know precisely how this industry in transition must be structured and operated, down to the correct price for an e-book. The government's certainty is the basis of a threatened price-fixing lawsuit against Apple and top book publishers. But Jobs's proposal was not about price fixing. It was about treating book publishers like every other industry. This is the same 30% revenue share that Apple takes for selling newspapers, magazines and games on the iPad. Publishers didn't have to collude to accept it. While publishers ended up earning less per book because of the revenue share to e-reader companies, they regained control over their property. Jobs was called many things when he was alive, good and bad. We can only imagine what he would say in response to "price fixer" being added to the list by an overreaching, innovation-suppressing government.
benton.org/node/117092 | Wall Street Journal
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PENGUIN AGREEMENT
[SOURCE: paidContent.org, AUTHOR: Jeff Roberts]
Penguin Group, one of the “Big 5” publishers caught up in a lawsuit over e-book pricing, says customers agreed not to sue them when they turned on their Nook and Kindle devices. The publisher, in a memo filed last week, claims that the device owners signed an agreement -- much like a phone contract -- in which they accepted that any disputes will go to an arbitrator, not to court. These “no lawsuit” contracts gained traction last year after a divided Supreme Court agreed that phone giant AT&T could force consumers to waive their rights to sue. The contracts help companies stamp out expensive class action lawsuits and instead force consumers to take up grievances on a one-to-one basis.
benton.org/node/116983 | paidContent.org
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CONTENT AGGREGATORS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr]
[Commentary] As custody of content becomes more tenuous, there’s a risk that we may end up passing around and putting topspin on fewer and fewer original works. This has created a growing sense of unease among both digital immigrants and natives that the end of “ownership” could eventually diminish the Web’s value. Two approaches to giving credit where credit belongs were announced at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin. In one instance, an ad hoc group is using a kind of trade association approach to articulate common standards. In the second, someone who makes a living by mining the Web is deploying symbols to create a common shorthand for attribution.
benton.org/node/117095 | New York Times
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LIMBAUGH AND THE FCC
[SOURCE: CNN, AUTHOR: Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem]
[Commentary] Ironically, the misogyny Rush Limbaugh spewed for three days over Sandra Fluke was not much worse than his regular broadcast of sexist, racist and homophobic hate speech. There’s an arsenal of degrading language Limbaugh deploys on women, people of color, lesbians and gays, immigrants, the disabled, the elderly, Muslims, Jews, veterans, environmentalists and so forth. Limbaugh doesn't just call people names. He promotes language that deliberately dehumanizes his targets. Like the sophisticated propagandist Josef Goebbels, he creates rhetorical frames -- and the bigger the lie the more effective -- inciting listeners to view people they disagree with as sub-humans. His longtime favorite term for women, "femi-nazi," doesn't even raise eyebrows anymore, an example of how rhetoric spreads when unchallenged by coarsened cultural norms.
If Clear Channel won't clean up its airways, then surely it's time for the public to ask the Federal Communications Commission a basic question: Are the stations carrying Limbaugh's show in fact using their licenses "in the public interest?" It's time for the public to take back our broadcast resources. Limbaugh has had decades to fix his show. Now it's up to us.
benton.org/node/117070 | CNN
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YOUTUBE FOR THE CLASSROOM
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Stephanie Strom]
Educators are giving YouTube — long dismissed as a storehouse of whimsical, time-wasting and occasionally distasteful videos — another look. As Google, YouTube’s parent company, fine-tunes a portal that lets schools limit students’ access to selected content, the video-sharing Web site is gaining popularity as a trove of free educational materials. Schools across the country commonly block access to YouTube, shielding students from the irresistible distractions of, say, the cat in a T-shirt playing a piano, or worse. So in December, Google started YouTube for Schools, offering schools the ability to pluck only the videos they want, scrubbed of all comments and linked only to other related educational videos. The program gives schools the ability to allow access to the YouTube EDU educational library, and to specific videos within its own network — while blocking the general site. That has enabled teachers to bring popular educational videos from YouTube into classrooms.
benton.org/node/117077 | New York Times
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

COMCAST’S INTERNET ESSENTIALS
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Susan Crawford]
[Commentary] Until August 2014, a family with a child receiving a free (and, in the future, a reduced-price) lunch at school can call a number and ask for an application for Comcast’s Internet Essentials service. Childless and elderly people aren’t eligible. Neither is anyone who has been a Comcast customer within the last 90 days. The application will be mailed back to them. Then the family will send in its eligibility information. And then the family waits, again. Sometimes the forms take months to arrive. After all this, the family gets 1.5 Mbps download speeds (Comcast says this will be going up at some point to 3 Mbps), and up to 384 (in the future, 768) Kbps upload, with free installation, for $10 a month. Plus “the opportunity to purchase a netbook-style laptop computer [that] supports wired and Wi-Fi Internet connectivity [and] includes Windows 7 Starter operating system and internet browser software” for $149.99, along with Norton Security Suite and “parental controls.” Comcast also provides free Internet training — online, in print and in person. There are obviously a bunch of good things about this program. It gets people online for the first time (albeit slowly) and it recognizes the importance of digital literacy to adoption of internet access. But think about it: It’s hard to apply for these paltry speeds, and, so far, only about 160,000 people have signed up — or just two percent of the eligible school lunch population in Comcast’s territories, by the company’s own estimate. In Philadelphia, where Comcast estimates there were 150,000 eligible families, only 463 have enrolled — an underwhelming 0.3 percent adoption rate. When the program ends, families have to choose between dropping the service or signing up for whatever Comcast wants to charge them. If customers walk away they will have nowhere else to go for truly high-speed internet access. Most importantly, because it’s a voluntary program, the company can (again, implicitly) ensure that the Federal Communications Commission won’t even try to do anything that might make it unhappy. Threaten to regulate? Goodbye program. The prospects Comcast are targeting with Internet Essentials aren’t customers it wants in the long run; the program, in a sense, filters out people who can’t pay by readying them to pay later. And in the meantime the regulator’s hands are tied. That’s the state of the net in America today.
benton.org/node/117067 | Wired
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SEARCH ENGINE USE
[SOURCE: Pew Internet and American Life Project, AUTHOR: Kristen Purcell, Joanna Brenner, Lee Rainie]
Search engines remain popular—and users are more satisfied than ever with the quality of search results—but many are anxious about the collection of personal information by search engines and other websites and say they do not like the idea of personalized search results or targeted advertising.
On personalized search:
73% of search users supported a statement that they would not be okay with a search engine keeping track of their searches and using that information to personalize future search results because they feel it is an invasion of privacy;
65% of search users supported a statement that it’s a bad thing if a search engine collected information about their searches and then used it to rank future search results.
On targeted advertising:
68% of internet users agree with a statement that they are not okay with targeted advertising because they don’t like having their online behavior tracked and analyzed.
91% of online adults use search engines to find information on the web, including 59% of those who do so on any given day.
Though they generally do not support targeted search or ads, these users report very positive outcomes when it comes to the quality of information search provides, and more positive than negative experiences using search:
91% of search engine users say they always or most of the time find the information they are seeking when they use search engines
86% of search engines users learned something new or important that really helped them or increased their knowledge
73% of search engine users say that most or all the information they find as they use search engines is accurate and trustworthy
66% of search engine users say search engines are a fair and unbiased source of information
50% of search engines users found a really obscure fact or piece of information they thought they would not be able to find
benton.org/node/116974 | Pew Internet and American Life Project
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LEVEL 3 DISPUTE
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
Level 3 wants the Federal Communications Commission to do something about what it calls "demand lock-up" contracts forced upon the company in exchange for high speed data interconnection contracts with Verizon, AT&T, and CenturyLink. These deals, as described by the filing, require purchasers of "special access" services from the incumbent telcos to buy from 85 percent to all of the amount of data connectivity they bought in the previous year to get desirable price discounts on the "rack rates" the big telcos offer. Companies like Level 3 "begrudgingly agree" to these lock-up arrangements, the firm charges, because "it is uneconomic to refuse them when competitors receive substantial price breaks for agreeing to such terms." And of course the incumbents in question dominate many parts of the United States where no other carrier is available.
benton.org/node/117086 | Ars Technica
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

NOTICE ON SPECTRUM EFFICIENCY
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
In an effort to reduce barriers to innovation and investment in new technologies and to promote greater spectrum efficiency, the Federal Communications Commission proposes to eliminate a legacy channel spacing and bandwidth limitation for Economic Area market (EA)-based1 800 MHz Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR) licensees in the 813.5-824/858.5-869 MHz band.2 Subject to certain protections to safeguard 800 MHz public safety licensees, elimination of the legacy channel spacing and bandwidth limitation should provide greater flexibility to EA-based 800 MHz SMR licensees to deploy competitive wireless services over contiguous channels. Discuss.
benton.org/node/116987 | Federal Communications Commission
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CONTENT PROVIDERS, MOBILE OPERATORS AT PEACE
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Paul Taylor, Daniel Thomas]
This year alone, mobile network operators will invest a total of $204 billion in capital to build, update and maintain their networks and generate $1.9 trillion in industry revenue, of which about $1.1 trillion will be mobile operator revenues, according to the GSMA trade association. Mobile operators would like to capture a higher percentage of industry revenues but they increasingly emphasize a desire to co-operate with content providers rather than confront them. It marks a subtle but important shift in the way the two traditionally hostile groups view each other. In part, the shift reflects the failure of earlier attempts by the operators to control and capitalize upon consumer data downloads.
benton.org/node/117090 | Financial Times
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AT&T’S 4G
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Hayley Tsukayama]
AT&T iPhone customers who’ve downloaded the latest update to iOS may have been surprised to see that their phones were displaying the strength of the “4G” network. Apple has been criticized in the past for not offering any devices that run on the nation’s fastest networks, a criticism that it answered with the 4G LTE-capable iPad. But many people may not know that the iPhone 4S is capable of running on AT&T’s HSPA+ network — a technology that AT&T and T-Mobile both use to advertise their “4G” devices. HSPA+ is essentially 3G technology that’s been enhanced to run speeds close to those of 4G networks, but still runs slower than either LTE or WiMax. The new label likely raised questions for AT&T customers who were affected by the carrier’s latest tweaks to its unlimited plan. The changes stipulate that 4G LTE customers will have their data speeds slowed down after they hit a 5 GB limit for the month; all other customers will see slower speeds after 3GB per month. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel confirmed that the iPhone 4S falls into the second category.
benton.org/node/116992 | Washington Post
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MEDIA & ELECTIONS

GET READY FOR THE ATTACK ADS
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Harry Jessell]
[Commentary] While some of the political advertisements that will appear test the limits of both truth and taste, broadcast television and radio stations shouldn’t turn them down. Stations serve best as neutral forums for political discourse, even when it's in the form of attack ads. But stations airing news and public affairs do have responsibilities — to their viewers and their companies. TV newsrooms should target ads that are over the top in their disregard for the truth and do stories pointing it out to voters. And station managers have to weed out of the worst of them before they hit the air.
benton.org/node/117040 | TVNewsCheck
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HEALTH

DR MOSTASHARI
[SOURCE: Kaiser Health News, AUTHOR: Russ Mitchell]
New York hookers spreading HIV. Killer mosquitos. An anthrax-toting terrorist. An urban-scape rife with the sick and poor. These are just some of the challenges tackled by Farzad Mostashari, a Yale-educated physician, epidemiologist and self-confessed computer nerd. His current mission: moving doctors from the Age of Gutenberg into the 21st century. For starters, he’d like them to use e-mail at the office. It's a tough nut. The U.S. leads the world in advanced medical technologies, but when it comes to electronic communication, American medicine remains a backward culture. The percentage of private-practice doctors with "fully functional" electronic health record systems was in the low double digits in 2010, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Less than half of solo practitioners keep computer records for anything other than billing. An eBay merchant who sells funny barbecue aprons out of his living room is better equipped for computer communication than many physicians. For real.
benton.org/node/116975 | Kaiser Health News
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CYBERSECURITY

CORPORATE ESPIONAGE
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Commerce Sec John Bryson]
[Commentary] Over the past five years, a highly sophisticated team of operatives have stealthily infiltrated more than 70 U.S. corporations and organizations to steal priceless company secrets. They did it without ever setting foot in any victim’s office. Sitting at undisclosed computers, they could be anywhere in the world. This is the new face of corporate espionage. Thieves whose identities are safely obscured by digital tradecraft rather than a ski mask, are robbing companies of the ideas that are the source of American ingenuity. We now rely on the Internet to do business, supply communities with power and water, communicate with loved ones and support our troops on the battlefield. Our digital infrastructure is part of our country’s lifeblood. Individual consumers, government agencies and small and large businesses are all increasingly vulnerable to growing threats. However, there is another reason to care about Internet security that is less known: protecting U.S. competitiveness and jobs in the global economy. We need congressional leaders to follow through without delay to address this issue of national consequence. The administration has provided Congress with its vision for how to protect U.S. ingenuity from cyber theft. But only Congress can grant the government new authorities to help companies with that task. The Senate is expected to take up the issue in the coming weeks. We hope the House acts soon, as well. Each day, more property is stolen from American businesses, eroding our competitiveness and putting workers at risk. It’s now time to modernize our laws and save American jobs.
benton.org/node/116991 | Politico
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CYBERSECURITY BILL
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Speaking on C-SPAN's The Communicators, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that government network protection requirements on critical infrastructure providers were a necessary part of crucial cybersecurity legislation. There were 3 billion cyber attacks on government and industry, said Sen Collins, which is why legislation, and private sector standards, are needed. She said the bill was carefully crafted and pointed out industry will be involved in coming up with the performance-based standards that would have to be met. She also pointed out that industries already meeting those standards would be exempt from the legislation. Sen Lieberman said current law does not do much to protect Web sites, and that passing this bill is the most important thing Congress can do this year to protect the nation's security, economic and otherwise. He called the Web a "Wild West" before the sheriff came to town, and said the director of the FBI had told him that cyberattack would soon supplant terrorism as his and the country's most serious threat to homeland security. "At some point, the federal government has got to be able to say to a private business that owns critical infrastructure that we all depend on, that an enemy might attack: 'You've got to meet this standard of defending yourself and defending our country."
benton.org/node/116990 | Broadcasting&Cable
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POLICYMAKERS

PARK NAMES NEW US CTO
[SOURCE: The White House, AUTHOR: John Holdren]
President Obama is appointing Todd Park as the new U.S. Chief Technology Officer, with the important task of applying the newest technology and latest advances to make the Federal government work better for the American people. For nearly three years, Todd has served as CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he was a hugely energetic force for positive change. He led the successful execution of an array of breakthrough initiatives, including the creation of HealthCare.gov, the first website to provide consumers with a comprehensive inventory of public and private health insurance plans available across the Nation by zip code in a single, easy-to-use tool. The U.S. CTO’s office is situated here within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where Todd will work closely with U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Telecommunications Tom Power. Tom will perform the duties of OSTP’s Associate Director for Technology—a position previously held by Chopra in conjunction with his role as U.S. CTO—while a search is conducted for a permanent replacement.
benton.org/node/116997 | White House, The | more from White House
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