Today's Events https://www.benton.org/events
INCOMPAS: FCC Ignored Key Info in Net Neutrality Decision
INCOMPAS, whose members including streaming services, edge providers, and competitive carriers, has officially filed suit against the Restoring Internet Freedom order. Part of their argument is the Federal Communications Commission did not include important information in the comment record for the decision. CEO Chip Pickering used the filing as an opportunity not only to slam the FCC, but take a shot at the AT&T-Time Warner deal. “Critical merger information was blocked and withheld from the FCC’s net neutrality proceeding," he asserted. "As we watch the AT&T-Time Warner antitrust trial unfolding, it’s clear large ISPs fear a competitive streaming marketplace. Their desire to gobble up content, rather than creating it from scratch, is a sign that anti-competitive interconnection practices and paid prioritization schemes are on the horizon unless strong net neutrality protections are preserved."
Chairman Pai hasn’t finalized net neutrality repeal—here’s a theory on why
More than four months after the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal network neutrality rules, the rules are technically still on the books, and we still don't know when they will die their final death. Why are the rules still in place? There's a technical answer related to how Pai structured the repeal, and there is speculation on why Pai structured it that way. The technical answer is that the repeal is contingent on US Office of Management and Budget [OMB] approval of modified information collection requirements. Chairman Ajit Pai's FCC got around to submitting the information collection changes to the OMB on March 28. The OMB will stop accepting public comments on the changes after April 27, but we don't know when the OMB will issue a final decision. But, Public Knowledge senior vice president Harold Feld has some guesses as to why the FCC followed the slower process. "The kindest interpretation is that since the majority have made their (weakened) disclosure rule the centerpiece of why they can relax the rules, they don't want the repeal to go into effect without the new transparency rule," Feld said. But Feld thinks it's more likely that Chairman Pai chose a slower repeal process to give Congressional Republicans time to implement a weaker set of net neutrality rules without the distraction of Internet providers operating in a rule-free environment. If the rules were eliminated this week and ISPs began violating net neutrality while Congress is negotiating a permanent net neutrality law, it would be harder for Republicans to force Democrats to compromise, Feld said. "This has all been about trying to push Democrats to compromise and adopt weak legislation."
The day net neutrality died, Colorado lawmakers put an extra nail in the coffin
A Republican-led Colorado state Senate panel rejected a net neutrality bill April 24. The state-level measure attempted to disqualify internet service providers from receiving grants from a broadband program if they manipulated access and speed based on content. The measure also would have required governments contracting for service to give preference to providers who certified allegiance to open-internet standards. “It uses the nexus of state support to protect the idea … of free internet,” said CO state Sen Kerry Donovan, (D-Vail). The 3-2 party-line vote to kill House Bill 1312 came after representatives for cable companies and major technology companies voiced opposition to the measure because it was over-regulation.
Simmons College, Open Technology Institute, Internet2 Awarded Grant from Institute of Museum and Library Services
Simmons College’s School of Library & Information Science, along with New America's Open Technology Institute and Internet2, have received an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) FY2018 National Leadership Grants for Libraries award. Their 24-month research project, “Measuring Library Broadband Networks for the National Digital Platform” will examine how advanced broadband measurement capabilities can support the infrastructure and services needed to respond to the digital demands of public library users across the US. The project will gather quantitative and qualitative data from public libraries across the country about broadband speeds, quality of service, infrastructure, network usage and capacity and connectivity needs, among other factors. Findings from the research will be used to create the project’s three deliverables: an open-source and replicable broadband measurement platform; a broadband measurement platform training manual for public librarians; and a final report on the project.
Sinclair to Sell TV Stations in Bid to Secure Tribune Deal Approval
Sinclair Broadcast Group has reached deals to sell nearly two dozen television stations as it works to get regulators to sign off on its purchase of Tribune Media. Sinclair said that the move to sell the 23 stations in 18 markets, some of which are owned by Sinclair and some by Tribune, was needed to obtain government approval for the $3.9 billion purchase of fellow television-station owner Tribune. Sinclair said the stations are being sold to various parties, includingStandard Media Group LLC, Meredith Corp., Howard Stirk and Cunningham Broadcasting Corp., as well as another party yet to be disclosed. Once the stations are divested, Sinclair will still have agreements to operate many of the stations for their new owners. After the purchase of Tribune stations and deals, Sinclair said it would have 215 stations in 102 markets in its fold.
- Standard Media, a New York-based limited liability company, said it was purchasing nine stations for $441.7 million.
- Meredith said it would buy KPLR in St Louis for $65 million.
- One of the buyers of the divested stations is Armstrong Williams, a prominent conservative commentator. Sinclair would sell Williams stations located in Seattle, Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City.
- The buyer of stations in Houston and Dallas is Cunningham Broadcasting Co., which is named after the mother of Sinclair's executive chairman, David Smith. Those stations will also be operated by Sinclair.
- Sinclair also said it will unload seven other stations in Seattle, Cleveland, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Denver and Miami, but did not name a buyer. It's likely that 21st Century Fox will have an interest in acquiring those stations, as they are all Fox network affiliates.
- WPIX-TV in New York will remain with Sinclair following the close of the transaction.
- The buyer of Tribune flagship station WGN in Chicago was not named; the station will be operated by Sinclair.
Key government witness admits error in AT&T-Time Warner case
The AT&T-Time Warner merger could end up costing consumers less money than what some earlier estimates suggest, the government's star witness admitted in federal court as he clashed repeatedly with company lawyers over key figures in his economic analysis of the deal. Instead of paying a minimum of 27 cents more per month on their bills as a result of the deal, TV subscribers could conceivably pay a smaller premium of at least 13 cents a month more — a downward revision in the projections of Carl Shapiro, an economist at the University of California–Berkeley. Toward the other end of the range, the government has said consumers could pay as much as 45 cents more per month on their bills, or collectively hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Shapiro's concession could weaken the government's case to block the $85 billion merger, which seeks to meld AT&T's wireless distribution capability with Time Warner's massive library of TV and film content. AT&T has sought to demonstrate that the deal will not lead to price increases and has argued that, in fact, it will lead to price decreases for consumers. Contributing to the revised numbers were newer profit-margin data from AT&T that Shapiro said were not available to him when he completed his initial report. He also said he had "made a mistake" in using an outdated figure from Boston-based consulting firm Altman Vilandrie & Co. pertaining to the number of video subscribers who would likely switch TV providers in the event of a protracted programming dispute involving Time Warner and those distributors.
Altaba, Formerly Known as Yahoo!, Charged With Failing to Disclose Massive Cybersecurity Breach; Agrees To Pay $35 Million
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that the entity formerly known as Yahoo! Inc. has agreed to pay a $35 million penalty to settle charges that it misled investors by failing to disclose one of the world’s largest data breaches in which hackers stole personal data relating to hundreds of millions of user accounts. According to the SEC’s order, within days of the December 2014 intrusion, Yahoo’s information security team learned that Russian hackers had stolen what the security team referred to internally as the company’s “crown jewels”: usernames, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, encrypted passwords, and security questions and answers for hundreds of millions of user accounts. Although information relating to the breach was reported to members of Yahoo’s senior management and legal department, Yahoo failed to properly investigate the circumstances of the breach and to adequately consider whether the breach needed to be disclosed to investors. The fact of the breach was not disclosed to the investing public until more than two years later, when in 2016 Yahoo was in the process of closing the acquisition of its operating business by Verizon.
Sens Klobuchar, Kennedy Introduce Bipartisan Privacy Legislation to Protect Consumers’ Online Data
[Press release] Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Kennedy (R-LA) announced privacy legislation that will protect consumers’ online data. The bipartisan legislation would require companies to make privacy disclosures clearer and more transparent, give consumers the right to control their own data by allowing people to opt-out of having their data collected, and require companies to notify consumers of a privacy violation within 72 hours. Specifically, the legislation:
- Requires terms of service agreements to be in plain language,
- Ensures users have the ability to see what information about them has already been collected and shared,
- Provides users greater access to and control over their data,
- Gives consumers the right to opt-out and keep their information private by disabling data tracking and collection,
- Mandates that users be notified of a privacy violation within 72 hours,
- Offers remedies for users when a privacy violation occurs,
- Requires that online platforms have a privacy program in place.
Competition is at the Heart of Facebook's Privacy Problem
[Commentary] Americans should have rights to and control over their data. If we don’t like a service, we should be free to move our data to another. The same network effect that creates value for people on Facebook can also lock them into Facebook’s walled garden by creating barriers to competition. People who may want to leave Facebook are less likely to do so if they aren’t able to seamlessly rebuild their network of contacts, photos, and other social graph data on a competing service or communicate across services. Data portability would reduce barriers to entry online by giving people tools to export their network—rather than merely downloading their data—to competing platforms with the appropriate privacy safeguards in place. Interoperability would facilitate competition by enabling communication across networks in the way the Open Internet was designed to work. The bottom line: Unless consumers gain meaningful control over their personal information, there will be continue to be persistent barriers to competition and choice online.
[Rep David Cicilline is the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary's Antitrust Subcommittee. Terrell McSweeny is an outgoing Democratic commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. McSweeny's views are her own and do not represent an official FTC position.]
Calling Facebook a Utility Would Only Make Things Worse
[Commentary] One phrase that keeps being tossed around: "Facebook should be treated like a utility." The idea is that the use of Facebook has become effectively essential to modern life, and therefore it should be regulated just like water or electricity. Let's get this right: Facebook is not a utility. It is an app. It may be a dominant app. It may even be exercising monopoly power unfairly. But it is not a utility, and muddying the definitional waters this way will only help the real utilities—like Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink—avoid genuine oversight. The real evil here would be to put Facebook on the same regulatory plane as Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink. Those five companies would like nothing more than for everyone on Capitol Hill to confuse the two spheres of "application" and "carrier" and try to pass some special broadly worded legislation ineffectively covering "net neutrality" and "privacy" for both worlds. Why? Because then the carriers could stave off the greater risk (from their perspective) of being regulated as utilities under existing communications law. That labeling was what the Obama Federal Communications Commission called for in 2015, and what the Trump FCC has reversed; but the law is still there and ready to be used by the next administration. We need to hang on to the power to use that statute when the pendulum swings back toward reasonableness. Go ahead, fulminate about Facebook. But don't consider "utility" regulation as a fix. You'll only be helping those other guys.
[Susan Crawford a professor at Harvard Law School]
The Facebook Fallacy: Privacy Is Up to You
Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told Congress under oath that by providing its users with greater and more transparent controls over the personal data they share and how it is used for targeted advertising, he insisted, Facebook could empower them to make their own call and decide how much privacy they were willing to put on the block. As he surely knows, providing a greater sense of control over their personal data won’t make Facebook users more cautious. It will instead encourage them to share more. This, of course, will produce more data for Facebook to mine to its own financial advantage. “Disingenuous is the adjective I had in my mind,” said Alessandro Acquisti, a leading expert on privacy-related behavior at Carnegie Mellon University. “Fifteen years ago it would have been legitimate to propose this argument,” he added. “But it is no longer legitimate to ignore the behavioral problems and propose simply more transparency and controls.” “Providing users of modern information-sharing technologies with more granular privacy controls may lead them to share more sensitive information with larger, and possibly riskier, audiences,” researchers concluded. The phenomenon even has a name: the “control paradox.” “Privacy control settings give people more rope to hang themselves,” said behavioral economist Professor George Loewenstein. “Facebook has figured this out, so they give you incredibly granular controls.”
Facebook willingly handed over data to the man it now blames for the Cambridge Analytica scandal
Facebook handed over data, with no strings attached, to the man it now blames for the Cambridge Analytica scandal. That was the testimony Aleksandr Kogan — the data scientist behind the app that harvested information from 87 million Facebook accounts — gave to a committee of lawmakers in Britain on April 24. In evidence to the parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee, Kogan described the somewhat cosy relationship he had with Facebook as part of the company's academic partnerships. Prior to launching the personality quiz, which ultimately scraped the Facebook data Kogan's company Global Science Research sold to Cambridge Analytica for $800,000 (£573,000), Kogan said he worked with Facebook on a number of studies to "understand how people connect and express emotions around the world." He said Facebook gave him "several macro-level datasets on friendship connections and emoticon usage" to assist with his work, which took place in 2013. This was supplemented by an app created by his University of Cambridge lab, named the CPW Lab app, which surveyed up to 15,000 people and collected data from them and their friends. Private message data was also gathered, Kogan added. He told UK parliamentarians that the information Facebook gave him came with no strings attached. "There was no signed agreement initially. They were just 'here's the email, here's the data set,'" he said, adding that he intended to hold on to the data "indefinitely" for use in other studies.
DOJ and FBI member crash digital ad conference circuit
A member of the Justice Department's criminal division and a special agent with the FBI attended Rubicon Project's digital advertising conference, Executive Exchange to speak about the future of ad fraud and crime. FBI Special Agent Evelina Aslanyan spoke at the off-the-record event to high-level executives in the advertising industry about how ad fraud represents a whole new world of crime for publishers and consumers. Alexander Mindlin, an assistant U.S. Attorney General at the DOJ's criminal division, was also in attendance. Special agent Aslanyan is a special agent from New York who works broadly in digital ad fraud and crime.
Telecom standards group puts new technology on hold in wake of US probe
A telecommunications standards organization - GSMA - said it is delaying implementation of a new cellphone technology due to a US government probe of alleged coordination between the group, AT&T and Verizon to hinder consumers from easily switching wireless carriers. At issue is a technology that could make carriers’ business more volatile. ESIM allows consumers to switch wireless providers without having to insert a new physical SIM card, an identifying microchip. That makes it easier to compare wireless networks and easily select a new service when desired.
Facebook reveals its censorship guidelines for the first time — 27 pages of them
Facebook for the first time published its 27 page of guidelines it calls Community Standards which gives to its workforce of thousands of human censors. It encompasses dozens of topics including hate speech, violent imagery, misrepresentation, terrorist propaganda and disinformation. Facebook said it would offer users the opportunity to appeal Facebook's decisions. Facebook’s vice president of global policy management, Monika Bickert, explained that the company decided to make the standards public for two reasons. “First, the guidelines will help people understand where we draw the line on nuanced issues. Second, providing these details makes it easier for everyone, including experts in different fields, to give us feedback so that we can improve the guidelines — and the decisions we make — over time,” she wrote.
President Trump Dumps on White House Correspondent Association Dinner
President Donald Trump is using his planned absence from the White House Correspondents Association dinner Saturday, April 28, to try and raise money for his next election. The President didn't show up for 2017's dinner, either, where the press and the President customarily get together to trade barbs and toasts, a temporary glove-dropping that had become a regular stop for President's of both parties before the current one. In an e-mail to supporters April 23, the President said that when his staff asked if he would go to the dinner this year, his response was: “Why would I want to be stuck in a room with a bunch of fake news liberals who hate me?”
Inside the Intense, Combative World of Covering the Trump White House
Most reporters share a sense that covering President Donald Trump is a challenge like no other, at a time when political journalists and the First Amendment are under siege. With the easy accessibility of social media, some political reporters find themselves getting death threats. President Trump’s relationship with the media is a bit confounding — different in public than in private. He bashes “fake news” and individual outlets and reporters but has at times called journalists from The New York Times, out of the blue, to clarify a point. He has held only one formal press conference, in February 2017, but takes questions during pool sprays, on Air Force One and on the White House lawn more than previous presidents did.
Senate confirms Trump's pick for NSA, Cyber Command
The Senate quietly confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command. US Army Cyber Command chief Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone was unanimously confirmed by voice vote to serve as the "dual-hat" leader of both organizations. The two have shared a leader since the Pentagon established Cyber Command in 2009. He will replace retiring Navy Adm. Mike Rogers after a nearly four-year term.
Google Parent Posts Surge in Profit, but Expenses Also Jump
Google parent Alphabet posted surging profits as advertisers kept swarming to the search giant amid a global debate about internet privacy that threatens to affect its main revenue generator. Alphabet’s earnings also got a multibillion-dollar boost from the company’s stakes in startups including Uber but were tempered by the costliest spending spree in its 14-year history as a public company. Net profit jumped 73% to $9.4 billion in the first quarter, up from $5.4 billion in the same period in 2017, a performance that highlights the firm’s huge lead in the global market for online ads. The earnings growth was Alphabet’s strongest since the fourth quarter of 2009. Advertising revenue, which accounts for nearly all of the company’s top line, soared 24% to $26.6 billion. Revenue from “Other Bets,” a segment which includes Waymo self-driving cars, totaled $150 million, an increase of 14% from the same period last year.
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.
(c)Benton Foundation 2018. Redistribution of this email publication -- both internally and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this message. For subscribe/unsubscribe info email: headlines AT benton DOT org
Benton experts make knowledge and analysis accessible to include more people in communications policymaking.
Kevin Taglang
Executive Editor, Communications-related Headlines
Benton Foundation
727 Chicago Avenue
Evanston, IL 60202
847-328-3049
headlines AT benton DOT org