May 9, 2012 (A New FCC: What Should We Expect?)

POLICYMAKERS

A NEW FCC: WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT?
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Michael Copps]
[Commentary] At last: a full Federal Communications Commission! After months of seemingly interminable delay (due to a confirmation process high-jacked for non-related purposes) a full complement of five Commissioners is now available to pursue the people’s business in communications. And serious business it is. The two new Commissioners, Jessica Rosenworcel and Agit Pai, bring a wealth of experience, expertise and collegiality to their posts. I know Jessica best because she worked in my office as Senior Legal Advisor during part of my tenure there. She brings a depth and breadth of telecommunications knowledge perhaps unprecedented in scope for a new Commissioner. Both new Members hold great promise for distinguished service at the FCC. Someone asked me a few months ago, what should we expect of an incoming Commissioner? “Four things,” I replied.
First and foremost, a real “feel” for the public interest.
Second, a realization that the issues the Commission deals with are as important as any that the country confronts.
Third, an ability to work together as a team.
Fourth, an understanding of who the Commission works for.
http://benton.org/node/122558

SPECTRUM/WIRELESS

VERIZON DEAL RAISES CONCERNS
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Jeff Bliss, Sara Forden]
Verizon Wireless’s $3.6 billion plan to buy airwaves from cable providers has raised concerns with US regulators that the purchase may harm competition in the wireless market, three people familiar with the matter said. The Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department are examining whether the acquisition would make it harder for Verizon’s rivals to expand wireless networks, said Steven K. Berry, chief executive officer of the Rural Cellular Association, an opponent of the deal, and two other people who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The government concerns may prolong reviews of a purchase that analysts initially predicted would be approved easily, said Paul Gallant, a Washington-based analyst with Guggenheim Partners. Verizon, the largest U.S. mobile provider, may have to sell off airwaves to satisfy the government, he said. “The deal is more likely than not to get approved with some additional concessions,” he said. The regulators are examining whether competition will be hurt by Verizon acquiring airwaves that it doesn’t plan to immediately use, said Berry and the two people who spoke on condition of anonymity.
benton.org/node/122660 | Bloomberg
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DOYLE RAISES VERIZON CONCERNS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Andrew Feinberg]
Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) is concerned Verizon’s proposed spectrum-for-marketing deal with Cable consortium SpectrumCo could hurt Internet quality for his constituents. He sent a letter to Verizon filled with a number of pointed questions about the company's intentions toward its traditional telephone service and its FiOS TV and Internet service — which competes with the cable companies like Comcast from which Verizon wants to buy spectrum. Rep Doyle notes that in his district, FiOS service is unavailable in many townships he describes as “predominantly lower income communities,” and he questioned what percentage of Verizon’s service are in Pennsylvania would be served by FiOS in the future. Rep Doyle also asks if Verizon will continue to deploy FiOS in areas planned for coverage before the SpectrumCo deal became a possibility. He asks how much build-out Verizon still needs to do to meet its local franchise obligations. Rep if Verizon plans to continue to seek new customers and gain market share where FiOS is currently deployed and competes with cable companies involved in the deal. He also asks if Verizon plans to maintain its DSL network, where similar overlap with cable occurs. Rep Doyle also seems to echo cries of “foul” by some who see Verizon abandoning less-profitable DSL and copper phone service by disallowing “naked” DSL, or the ability to pay for Internet service without paying for a phone line. He specifically asks for customer rates for “naked” DSL, DSL + voice, and FiOS “triple play” deals of phone, TV and Internet service.
benton.org/node/122658 | Hill, The | B&C
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CWA OPPOSES VERIZON-CABLE SPECTRUM DEAL
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Jasmin Melvin]
Allowing proposed multibillion-dollar airwave deals between Verizon Wireless and several cable operators could mean the end of a competitive telecommunications landscape, saddling consumers with higher prices and diminished choice, the Communications Workers of America told the Federal Communications Commission. Debbie Goldman, CWA's telecommunications policy director, said that the alliance between the nation's largest wireless carrier and the top cable companies would essentially end competition in the telecommunications arena. "The detail of how it will do that is in these commercial agreements that are behind a firewall that the public cannot see," Goldman said of the largely redacted documents submitted to the FCC for review by Verizon Wireless and the cable operators.
benton.org/node/122604 | Reuters
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KABUKI THEATER
[SOURCE: Phoenix Center, AUTHOR: Larry Spiwak]
[Commentary] Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) -- the ranking members of the House Commerce Committee and its Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, respectively -- wrote a letter to Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) calling for a hearing to examine the proposed sale of wireless spectrum to Verizon by a consortium of cable companies. Without question, Congress has the authority to hold a hearing on anything they deem relevant at any time they want. That said, and with all due respect to the powers of the legislative branch, it is unclear what a politically-charged hearing would contribute at this late stage of the review process. Indeed, the analyses by the reviewing agencies are well underway, and there is no evidence to indicate that either the Federal Communications Commission or the Department of Justice is conducting their review of the transaction in an incompetent or otherwise improper fashion. In fact, holding a hearing at this stage of the review process may actually do more harm than good.
benton.org/node/122582 | Phoenix Center
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FCC’S GENACHOWSKI FIRES BACK AT AT&T
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission fired back at AT&T and T-Mobile, saying the agency’s decision to block the mobile giants’ merger won’t push up consumer prices. In a speech at the CTIA wireless industry conference in New Orleans, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the FCC has approved many wireless deals in the past year. But AT&T and T-Mobile’s proposal for a $39 billion merger “simply proves that there is a line.” He said that the FCC decision — and the Justice Department’s rejection of the deal — won’t change the amount of broadband spectrum available to wireless carriers. “Some have argued that transactions, let’s be frank — one transaction — is somehow causing a shortage and causing a price change,” Chairman Genachowski said. “But the overall amount of spectrum hasn’t changed, except for the amount we've added to it.”
After the speech, AT&T’s Jim Cicconi said, “The need for more spectrum is an industry-wide issue and problem. The merger AT&T proposed last year was all about creating more capacity by combining the spectrum holdings and networks of two companies. The FCC was within its rights to withhold its approval. But it is incorrect when it denies the impact such decisions have on the price of wireless services. Basic economics, and the law of supply and demand, apply to the wireless industry as to all others. In the case of wireless, without additional capacity, which would have been created by our transaction, prices rise.”
benton.org/node/122614 | Washington Post | Chairman Genachowski | Wall Street Journal | AT&T | GigaOm | IDG News Service | The Hill
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REAL MEANING OF GSA SCANDAL
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: JH Snider]
[Commentary] On April 2, 2012, the inspector general of the General Services Administration released a report highly critical of GSA management for spending $822,751 on a convention at a Las Vegas hotel for approximately 300 GSA employees. The report's release led to the resignation of the GSA's administrator and a bipartisan outpouring of rage by the American people and members of Congress. Front page media coverage of the rage was extensive. Four Congressional oversight hearings were held. On April 25, the House of Representatives passed legislation to address the scandal. It is supposed to save taxpayers $65 million a year. What does this scandal teach us? Despite the GSA's critics, it may teach us more about the failures of America's citizenry than its government. The two largest Federal agencies responsible for managing intangible public property on behalf of the American public are the FCC and NTIA. The FCC manages public airwaves, also known as "spectrum," used by commercial providers; the NTIA manages public airwaves used by Federal agencies such as the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Transportation. The FCC and NTIA together manage public assets worth about $1 trillion -- about twice as much as GSA manages. Which has wasted more taxpayer assets: the GSA or FCC-NTIA? In my judgment, the FCC-NTIA wins hands down.
benton.org/node/122589 | Huffington Post, The
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GOOGLE AND ANDROID
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Kevin Tofel]
Google’s “open” approach to Android has certainly helped build the platform’s user base: Android powers more than half of the world’s smartphones. Whether you love Android or hate it, it’s difficult to argue that this level of adoption is anything less than a success. Android debuted as a clunky operating system with few apps in October 2008, but since then has improved and grown. But Google’s openness — allowing anyone to use the platform — might not be the best strategy for keeping its lead. Without a doubt, Google’s open approach has helped it build the Android user base. It gave consumers and software developers a viable choice as compared to Apple’s walled garden and it provided dozens of hardware makers a chance to stay in the smartphone game. But as Android’s “wild west show” continues — or even the perception of it — consumers are likely to turn their back on Android over time. For that reason, Google should consider a change and control its mobile destiny directly. And the longer it waits, the less likely such a move will pay off.
benton.org/node/122645 | GigaOm
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T-MOBILE PRICING
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Anton Troianovski]
T-Mobile plans to expand video content offered to its smartphone users and is rethinking how it would charge for that video. The carrier is looking at deals in which access to some content wouldn't count against a customer's monthly data plan, Brad Duea, a T-Mobile senior vice president, said in an interview at a wireless trade show in New Orleans. The data plans now under consideration by T-Mobile and rivals like Verizon Wireless and AT&T underscore how pressure on carriers to make more money on video, games and other content could soon run afoul of the convention that Internet traffic should be treated equally. T-Mobile's Duea said the goal of new video offerings that don't count against data plans would be to get customers interested in consuming more data, and set T-Mobile's plans apart from those of other carriers.
benton.org/node/122696 | Wall Street Journal
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

KEEPING THE INTERNET NEUTRAL
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Eduardo Porter]
Imagine a network of private highways that reserved a special lane for Fords to zip through, unencumbered by all the other brands of cars trundling along the clogged, shared lanes. Think of the prices Ford could charge. Think of what would happen to innovation when building the best car mattered less than cutting a deal with the highway’s owners. A few years ago, Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and a leading thinker about the evolution of the “information economy,” warned members of the House judiciary committee that this could be the fate of the Internet. Companies offering broadband access, he said, should not be allowed to discriminate among services online. If they did, the best service would not always win the day. “It’s not who has a better product,” he explained. “It’s who can make a deal with AT&T, Verizon, Comcast or Time Warner.” That world may be right around the corner. Last month, the online video powerhouse Netflix started a political action committee to complement a budding lobbying effort in support of the idea that all content must be allowed to travel through the Internet on equal terms. Netflix is trying to build a coalition of businesses to make the case for this open access, also called network neutrality.
benton.org/node/122697 | New York Times
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BTOP, BIP HEARING
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The House Subcommittee on Communications & Technology has scheduled a hearing May 16 on "broadband loans and grants." Republican House leaders have expressed concerns about how the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and the Broadband Initiatives Program loans and grants created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are being spent, including to what degree they are being used to subsidize competition to existing service, and how the spending is being monitored by the government for waste fraud and abuse. Those are the same issues that have concerned cable operators facing potential overbuilding with government dollars. "This hearing will continue the subcommittee's ongoing oversight of how taxpayer dollars are being spent on broadband loans and grants created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and other subsidy programs." said the office of House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI).
benton.org/node/122694 | Broadcasting&Cable
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HOW WE’RE HOLDING BACK BROADBAND
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Holman Jenkins Jr]
[Commentary] Broadband history may be short, but it's already starting to rhyme. In the early days, what were still known as the Baby Bells were treated as DSL monopolists, forced to resell access to their broadband lines to competitors at cost. Undermined, naturally, was their incentive to invest, especially to push network switches closer to residential neighborhoods, the secret to getting cable-like speeds from the old copper phone network. The result is the world we have today: Cable operators increasingly are the only choice for high-speed fixed broadband in many neighborhoods. Then it was the cry of "Ma Bell monopoly" that justified political capture of the Bells' broadband offerings. Today the cry of "spectrum crisis" is being used to regulate wireless. But there is no shortage of spectrum; as much spectrum exists as ever has existed. Rather, there is spectrum starvation—a new and fast-growing user, the wireless industry, is being starved of spectrum its customers would willingly pay for because of an archaic government allocation system in which economic logic does not penetrate.
benton.org/node/122693 | Wall Street Journal
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INTERNET FREEDOM PROGRAMS
[SOURCE: Department of State, AUTHOR: ]
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) announce a Joint Request for Statements of Interest (SOI) from organizations interested in submitting proposals for projects that support Internet freedom under the “Governing Justly and Democratically” Foreign Assistance program objective. This solicitation does not constitute a formal Request for Proposals: DRL and/or NEA will invite select organizations that submit SOIs to expand on their ideas via full proposal at a later date. Applicants must submit proposals by 11:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on May 31, 2012.
benton.org/node/122585 | Department of State
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RUS GRANT PROGRAM
[SOURCE: Department of Agriculture, AUTHOR: Jonathan Adelstein]
The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) is providing notice of Fiscal Year 2012 awards for its Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) Grant Program. For Fiscal Year 2012, $15 million in grants will be awarded to the top scoring applications in rank order for the national competition. Therefore, applications for DLT grant funds will not be solicited in FY 2012. Many of the applications submitted under the aforementioned Notice, which have been evaluated and scored, represent exemplary projects in their use of telecommunications, computer networks, and related advanced technologies to encourage and improve telemedicine services and distance learning services in rural areas. Only a limited number of these projects, however, could be funded with appropriated FY 2011 funds. The $15 million appropriated in Fiscal Year 2012 will be awarded to fund the highest scoring of these remaining projects according to their ranking position in the 2011 competition. RUS will notify the public when it will be taking new applications.
benton.org/node/122580 | Department of Agriculture
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PRIVACY

MYSPACE SETTLEMENT
[SOURCE: Federal Trade Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Social networking service Myspace has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it misrepresented its protection of users' personal information. The settlement, part of the FTC's ongoing efforts make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to consumers, bars Myspace from future privacy misrepresentations, requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy assessments for the next 20 years. The Myspace social network has millions of users who create and customize online profiles containing substantial personalized content. Myspace assigns a persistent unique identifier, called a "Friend ID," to each profile created on Myspace. A user's profile publicly discloses his or her age, gender, profile picture (if the user chooses to include one), display name, and, by default, the user's full name. User profiles also may contain additional information such as pictures, hobbies, interests, and lists of users' friends. Myspace's privacy policy promised it would not share users personally identifiable information, or use such information in a way that was inconsistent with the purpose for which it was submitted, without first giving notice to users and receiving their permission to do so. The privacy policy also promised that the information used to customize ads would not individually identify users to third parties and would not share non-anonymized browsing activity.
The proposed settlement order bars Myspace from misrepresenting the extent to which it
protects the privacy of users' personal information or the extent to which it belongs to or complies with any privacy, security or other compliance program, including the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework. The order also requires that Myspace establish a comprehensive privacy program designed to protect consumers' information, and to obtain biennial assessments of its privacy program by independent, third-party auditors for 20 years.
benton.org/node/122601 | Federal Trade Commission | The Hill | B&C | USAToday | Politico
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WHAT MYSPACE MEANS FOR YOU
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Michelle Maltais]
[Commentary] So what does the Myspace-Federal Trade Commission settlement mean to you? Well, the impact may register on both ends of the spectrum of good news and bad news. On the positive end, the news of the settlement highlights the importance of privacy commitments, Century City-based attorney Victor Jih told The Times. On the other end of that spectrum, "The real impact is rewritten privacy policies," he said. Jih, who handles consumer privacy class-action cases for O'Melveny & Myers, noted that as services and technologies shift, "it becomes legally important for them to keep their policies up to date."
benton.org/node/122654 | Los Angeles Times
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CONTENT

BRAIN CANDY
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Deborah Netburn]
Researchers at Harvard have gotten to the bottom of why so many of us are compelled to share our every thought, movement, like and want through mediums like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Pinterest. In a series of experiments, the researchers found that the act of disclosing information about oneself activates the same sensation of pleasure in the brain that we get from eating food, getting money or having sex. It's all a matter of degrees of course, (talking about yourself isn't quite as pleasurable as sex for most of us), but the science makes it clear that our brain considers self-disclosure to be a rewarding experience. This may help explain recent surveys of Internet use that show that roughly 80% of posts to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook consist simply of announcements about one's own immediate experience. Lead researcher Diana Tamir and her co-author Jason P. Mitchell devised a series of experiments to measure the reward response that people get when they talk about themselves.
benton.org/node/122652 | Los Angeles Times
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OWNERSHIP

CALL FOR NEWS CORP HEARING
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Andrew Feinberg]
Consumer groups and watchdogs are pressing Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to hold hearings into potential violations of privacy laws by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. CREDO Action, the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, and Public Citizen sent letters to Rockefeller and House Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) asking for hearings into the News Corp. phone hacking scandal, which has been the subject of a long-running investigation in the United Kingdom. Consumer advocacy group Free Press sent Rockefeller a similar letter, along with a petition signed by 30,000 people calling for hearings on News Corp.’s businesses practices.
benton.org/node/122609 | Hill, The | Free Press
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MURDOCH REPONDS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Andrew Feinberg]
News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch isn't pleased about a campaign to have the Federal Communications Commission review his broadcast licenses. Numerous public advocacy groups have called on Congress to investigate whether News Corp. employees' involvement in the growing hacking scandal, which originated in the United Kingdom, also violated US law. In response to a Twitter campaign orchestrated in part by activist group CREDO Action, Murdoch tweeted “One or two tweets on FCC okay, but hundreds identical Just phoney and abuses twitter. By the way, what law?” CREDO Action political director Becky Bond fired back at Murdoch in a statement, saying "The deplorable actions [Murdoch] has condoned in News Corp. call his character into question and go to the very heart of whether or not we can trust his company to act in the public interest. The FCC should enforce the law and revoke the broadcast licenses held by Rupert Murdoch's media empire."
benton.org/node/122651 | Hill, The
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TELEVISION/RADIO

WHERE ARE THE CORD-CUTTERS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Peter Kafka]
Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett, a longtime skeptic that “cord-cutting” is a real and pervasive problem for the cable guys (at least for now), says the number of pay-TV subscribers increased in just the last three months. His numbers conflict with other reports that show evidence of cord-cutting. The easiest way to reconcile Moffett’s numbers with other reports is to note that almost all of the analyst’s data comes from the publicly traded pay-TV providers themselves — like Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon — in the reports they offer up to shareholders. Most of the other stuff you’re seeing comes from polls and surveys.
benton.org/node/122611 | Wall Street Journal
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CHARITY AND PUBLIC TV
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski]
[Commentary] After the tragic, September 11, 2001 attacks, religious broadcasters and other noncommercial stations asked the Federal Communications Commission for waivers on our longstanding ban on third-party fundraising. The FCC doesn’t allow these stations to fundraise for any group other than the station itself, but after 9/11, broadcasters wanted to launch on-air campaigns for victims and their families. The FCC granted the waivers, and the broadcasters raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. We at the FCC have now moved to make this process a matter of course – another step in our ongoing efforts to modernize the FCC and eliminate unnecessary regulations. Allowing noncommercial stations to partner with charities, churches and other religious organizations, schools, and other non-profits to raise money for worthy causes would enable these stations to help meet the needs of their local communities. On-air fundraising by these stations can also help raise awareness about important local and international topics, such as poverty, health care, and humanitarian issues, thereby deepening the station’s connection to their communities. Specifically, the FCC has proposed relaxing the ban by allow noncommercial stations to spend a modest amount of their total annual broadcast time – up to 1 percent or about 88 hours per year – conducting fundraising activities on behalf of non-profit organizations.
benton.org/node/122681 | Christian Science Monitor, The
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BOYCOTT COST MILLIONS
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Dylan Byers]
Cumulus Media CEO Lew Dickey said that the advertiser boycott against Rush Limbaugh cost his company millions of dollars in revenue for the first two quarters of the year. "It hit us pretty hard," Dickey said during a call with financial analysts. "A couple of million bucks in the first quarter and a couple of million bucks in quarter two." Dickey would not give exact figures, but said the "millions" accounted for "about one percent" of the roughly $245 million in first quarter revenues, and said he expected revenue to return to normal in June. Cumulus owns just 38 of the 600 stations that air the Rush Limbaugh Show, which is nationally syndicated by Cumulus's competitor, Clear Channel Media. For its part, Clear Channel saw total revenues increase 6 percent the first quarter of 2011 to $671.5 million in the first quarter of 2012, according to MediaPost.
benton.org/node/122678 | Politico
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GAY ON TV
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brian Stelter]
The cultural battlefield of television has changed markedly since the 1990s, when conservative groups and religious figures objected to Ellen DeGeneres coming out and “Will & Grace” coming on. Today, it’s rare to hear a complaint about shows like “Modern Family” or the drama “Smash,” which has five openly gay characters, or the sitcom “Happy Endings,” which, against stereotype, has a husky and lazy gay male character. To the contrary. Mitt Romney is known to be a fan of “Modern Family,” and a Catholic group gave it a media award this month.
benton.org/node/122674 | New York Times
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA

OBAMA ADS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jeremy Peters]
After months of planning, President Obama’s media team has prepared an aggressive strategy to portray Mitt Romney as insensitive to the plight of working people and beholden to powerful interests. They have researched possible lines of attack and drafted language that can be dropped into an advertisement at a moment’s notice. Campaign advisers said they were willing to commit a considerable chunk of their advertising budget — expected to be the largest any presidential campaign has ever seen — to broadcasting these attacks. The work of the Obama message machine, a half-dozen outside advertising firms and in-house campaign strategists, is already on vivid display. In their ads, Web videos and online features, the president wants to thwart the influence of “big oil”; Mr. Romney cashes their campaign checks. The president saved hundreds of thousands of jobs by rescuing the auto industry; Mr. Romney shipped jobs overseas. “It’s just what you expect from a guy who had a Swiss bank account,” one ad says. At the center of this effort is Jim Margolis, and his job is to make you think of call centers in India every time you hear Romney’s name.
benton.org/node/122691 | New York Times
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REGULATION

REGULATION AND INVESTMENT
[SOURCE: Phoenix Center, AUTHOR: George Ford]
[Commentary] With high unemployment, politicians certainly want to claim their policies promote investment and, consequently, jobs. Take, for example, a recent statement by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, who claimed that investment in the U.S. wireless sector “is responsible for creating 1.5 million U.S. jobs in recent years.” While the Chairman no doubt wants to share in the credit, assessing the FCC’s influence on investment, or any administration’s influence for that matter, requires a counterfactual analysis. It is not enough to say that investment is up, or down, or that such-and-such investment created such-and-such jobs. The relevant issue is what influence a particular regulatory agenda has on investment incentives relative to a different and perhaps less-regulatory agenda. In what direction is regulation trending? In that regard, the relevant question is whether firms expect future regulation to be more or less favorable to making profits from large-scale, sunk investments.
benton.org/node/122584 | Phoenix Center
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CYBERSECURITY

DEBATE SLOWS NEW US CYBER RULES
[SOURCE: DefenseNews, AUTHOR: Zachary Fryer-Biggs]
Despite the ongoing concern about the escalating pace of cyber attacks, a new set of standing rules of engagement for cyber operations — policy guidelines that would specify how the Pentagon would respond to different types of cyber attacks — is being delayed by a debate over the role of the U.S. military in defending non-military networks, sources said. The new policy, in the works for years and set to be completed in the next several months, according to Defense Department officials, is meant to update rules put in place in 2005. Those rules were of a limited scope, specifying a response to attacks against only military and government networks. This time, the department is looking for more latitude as it considers how to defend critical infrastructure and private corporations, with the division of responsibility between DoD and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contested. “This is a turf war,” said James Cartwright, the retired U.S. Marine Corps general who stepped down as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in August.
benton.org/node/122579 | DefenseNews
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TELECOM

CRAMMING CHARGES
[SOURCE: Federal Trade Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
The Federal Trade Commission is seeking a civil contempt ruling against the nation's largest third-party billing company, alleging that it placed more than $70 million in bogus "cramming" charges on consumers' phone bills in violation of a previous court order. The FTC is asking a federal court to make the company pay more than $52.6 million, the total amount that the company billed consumers and failed to refund. The FTC alleged that Billing Services Group (BSG) placed charges on nearly 1.2 million telephone lines on behalf of a serial phone crammer. The charges were supposedly for "enhanced services," such as voicemail and streaming video, that consumers never authorized or even knew about. "BSG made it possible for con artists to steal people's hard-earned money by placing charges on phone bills for services they never ordered or used," said David Vladeck, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "Under previous federal court orders, BSG cannot profit from the fraud of others and then deny responsibility for the harm they made possible." Billing aggregators act as intermediaries between third-party vendors and the local phone companies by contracting to have the local telephone companies collect charges for the vendors' services from consumers. "Cramming" is the placement of unauthorized charges on phone bills. In its contempt motion, the FTC said BSG failed to investigate either the highly deceptive marketing for the services or whether consumers even used them. BSG kept billing for these services despite voluminous complaints from consumers and even after major telephone companies refused to do so, the FTC's motion stated.
benton.org/node/122597 | Federal Trade Commission
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SEE YA IN COURT

MICROSOFT-MOTOROLA
[SOURCE: Seattle Times, AUTHOR: Janet Tu]
A Seattle courtroom hearing in a patent case fought between Microsoft and Motorola may have involved lots of technical and legal jargon, but a few times the two companies' arguments sounded more like a playground dispute. "They started this," Motorola's attorney, Jesse Jenner, said at one point about one of many rounds of litigation waged between the two companies. "We didn't start this." And U.S. District Judge James Robart, who said he was reserving his ruling until later, ended up scolding both companies. "The court is well aware it is being used as a pawn in a global, industrywide business negotiation," Robart said at the end of the three-hour hearing. The conduct of both Microsoft and Motorola, he added, "has been driven by an attempt to secure commercial advantage. To an outsider looking at it, it has been arbitrary, it has been arrogant and, frankly, it has been based on hubris."
benton.org/node/122642 | Seattle Times
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APPLE-SAMSUNG UPDATE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: John Paczkowski]
Apple and Samsung have drastically reduced the number of patent-infringement claims against each other in California. Dutifully following judge’s orders, Apple said it will narrow its claims against Samsung, essentially cutting them in half. Meanwhile, Samsung agreed to pull from its case five of the 12 patents it has asserted against Apple. By cutting their claims down like this, the companies hope to retain a proposed July 30 trial date. The moves significantly reduce the scope of the case.
benton.org/node/122613 | Wall Street Journal
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

TWITTER AND THE POLICE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Twitter asked a state court to reject a motion by prosecutors to hand over the personal information of one its users. New York City prosecutors had served Twitter with a subpoena for its data on Malcolm Harris, who was arrested for disorderly conduct during an Occupy Wall Street protest. The prosecutors asked Twitter for Harris's email address and all of his tweets in a three-month period. But Twitter argued that police would need a search warrant to access the communications. The social media company pointed to the Supreme Court's recent decision in U.S. v. Jones, which found that using a GPS device to track a person's car qualifies as a search under the Fourth Amendment.
benton.org/node/122649 | Hill, The | GigaOm
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

BROADBAND IN THE UK
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Juliette Garside]
The Internet is a bigger part of the British economy than education, healthcare or construction. Britons generate more money online than any other G20 nation. But when it comes to high-speed broadband, the country is falling behind. The UK's average download speed is ranked 16th in Europe, according to IT company Akamai, and experts warn that the country is beginning to miss out as a result. "Britain is being frozen out of the next industrial revolution," Peter Cochrane, a former BT chief technology officer, has warned. "In terms of broadband, the UK is at the back of the pack. We're beaten by almost every other European country and Asia leaves us for dust." While other countries are racing to replace the old copper telephone networks with fiber optic cables running right to household doorsteps, and capable of almost unlimited speeds, the UK has settled for a compromise.
benton.org/node/122637 | Guardian, The
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