April 2008

An investigation has cleared Cyren Call, a for-profit adviser of any blame for tripping up U.S. government plans to create a wireless network that could be shared with emergency workers. The Federal Communications Commission's inspector general said on Friday the evidence did not support concerns that the company advising public safety groups had scared away bidders from meeting a $1.3 billion price for the airwaves. "Rather, the many layers of uncertainty and risk, and the growing prospect of high network costs... were responsible for potential bidders' decisions not to bid," said the report by FCC Inspector General Kent Nilsson. Lack of bidder interest in the public safety spectrum was the lone failure in an otherwise successful 700-megahertz auction that raised over $19 billion by the time it ended in March. The FCC is now studying plans to re-auction the public safety airwaves known as the D-block. Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, said, "[T]his narrow investigation showed that the D-block auction was fatally flawed by terms and conditions set both by the Commission and by the public safety community. The controversial $50 million lease payments suggested by the public-safety community to potential bidders were only one factor. While the Inspector General found that none of this was against the rules, the conclusion needs to be drawn that the auction was doomed to failure. The Commission should take a more active role in future auctions to make certain public safety receives the spectrum it deserves."
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN2537614020080425

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) may have been outspent, but she wasn't outgunned, according to some Pennsylvania advertising executives. While many said that separating advertising impact from other factors (such as debate performance and the "bitter" controversy) is impossible, they gave credit to Sen Clinton for doing a better job at targeting and using the resources she did have and ultimately rendering Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) ads largely ineffective. "As a creative director, I loved the look of Obama's ads and posters, but what Hillary got right is she got her message down to the most basic thought," said Steve Red, president and chief creative officer of Red Tettemer in Philadelphia. Mr. Red is an Obama supporter. He said the message she got across is "I am going to help the common man." He said Sen Obama's campaign was "definitely hurt" by the Illinois senator's performance in an ABC News debate last week, but added that Sen Obama's biggest problem was not adequately countering Sen Clinton's "one of the boys" message.
http://adage.com/article?article_id=126642

As the Bush Administration nears its end, so too is the FCC chairmanship of Kevin Martin. He seems determined to influence how cable operators and their program suppliers go about providing some 64.7 million homes with video channels dedicated to an assortment of news, sports and entertainment. Earlier this month, he floated a new idea he hopes will reverse the trend of rising cable prices: Allow cable operators to eject from expanded basic service — the most widely purchased cable programming tier — any channel that charges wholesale license-fee rates of 75 cents or more per subscriber, per month. Martin’s 75-cent plan is rooted in a rulemaking proposal the FCC adopted last September, which asked whether the agency has the authority to require programmers to allow pay TV distributors to purchase every channel at wholesale on an a la carte basis. The agency’s vote was the fruit of a five-year effort by small cable operators to get the FCC to focus on wholesale program tying and bundling practices. Small cable operators in particular want to break up expanded basic to provide consumers with more choice.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6555289.html?nid=4262

During a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, the FBI's Robert Mueller and Rep. Darrell Issa (D-CA) sketched out a far-reaching plan for warrantless surveillance of the Internet. Step 1 involves asking Internet service providers to open their networks to the FBI voluntarily; step 2 would be a federal law forcing companies to do just that. On Step 1, Rep Issa suggested that Internet providers could get "consent from every single person who signed up to operate under their auspices" for federal police to monitor network traffic for attempts to steal personal information and national secrets. Mueller said "legislation has to be developed" for "some omnibus search capability, utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to pre-empt" it. These are remarkable statements. The clearest reading of them points to deep packet inspection of network traffic--akin to the measures Comcast took against BitTorrent and to what Phorm in the United Kingdom has done, in terms of advertising--plus additional processing to detect and thwart any "illegal activity." (See the complete transcript here.) "That's very troubling," said Greg Nojeim, director of the project on freedom, security, and technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "It could be an effort to achieve, through unknowing consent, permission to monitor communications in a way that would otherwise be prohibited by law."
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9929085-38.html?tag=nefd.top