July 2008

Consumers worry about their Internet privacy. Politicians vow to investigate. And two of the nation's biggest tech companies, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., support federal legislation for data collection. So why isn't much happening? One reason is that legislators find the subject kind of confusing. For years, websites have assembled profiles of users consisting of personal preferences and activities. But as websites have increasingly been united in vast ad networks, the various profiles maintained by separate sites have combined to create more detailed and far-ranging portraits of users. Over the last year, moreover, some Internet service providers have begun experimenting with a practice that would offer even more detailed portraits of individuals. The technology, known as "deep packet inspection," allows ISPs to peer into the stream of data coming from a person's Internet line, a practice critics liken to wiretapping.

A recommendation to punish Comcast for blocking subscribers' Internet traffic should serve as a warning to other service providers, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said Friday. He hopes his action will make network operators sensitive about putting "arbitrary limits on the way consumers can access information on the Internet." Chairman Martin wants Comcast to stop using its current practice, to tell commissioners where it has used it in the past, and to disclose to the agency and consumers what limitations will be placed on customers under its new traffic management plan, which it hopes to have in place by the end of the year. He said he is not recommending a fine against Comcast because he wants to use the case as a means of laying out FCC policy. "It doesn't make the enforcement action less important," he said. "Oftentimes (what is) most important is to try to clarify what is allowed and what isn't." Chairman Martin circulated an order recommending the enforcement action among his fellow commissioners on Friday. The measure is scheduled for a vote at the agency's next open meeting, scheduled for August 1. "We believe the order, which we think will be favored by an FCC majority, will be negative for Comcast and set some precedents that could trouble other cable and even telecom broadband providers," analysts Blair Levin and Rebecca Arbogast wrote in a report for investment banking firm Stifel Nicolaus.

On July 13, 2007, Chicago Media Action (CMA) and the Milwaukee Public Interest Media Coalition (MPIMC) filed a joint Petition for Reconsideration of a June 13, 2007, staff decision denying petitions to deny filed against the license renewal applications of eight broadcast television stations serving the Chicago area and 11 broadcast television stations serving the Milwaukee metropolitan area. In the petition to deny, CMA and MPIMC had argued that the television stations serving the Chicago and Milwaukee markets failed to present adequate programming relating to state and local elections during the last four weeks of the 2004 election campaign. In denying the petitions, the staff found that the CMA and MPIMC petitions did not raise a prima facie [good and sufficient on its face] issue as to whether the stations served the public interest since they failed to provide evidence that "the named licensees exercised their editorial discretion in bad faith." The staff stated, in particular, that the quantity of one type of programming does not necessarily indicate that the television programming in Chicago and Milwaukee has generally been unresponsive. In their respective Petitions for Reconsideration, CMA and MPIMC assert that the staff, by claiming it did not have the authority to review the broadcasters' programming decisions, applied the wrong legal standard to its allegations, and that the staff failed to consider or evaluate the numerical data contained in the study attached to the petitions. On July 11, the FCC's Media Bureau denied the groups petition for reconsideration.

The Federal Communications Commission has gone all out in its efforts against cable television operators, two speakers close to the cable industry said at the Alliance for Community Media annual conference. The unprecedented power accumulated by the FCC “should strike fear on all of us,” said Libby Beaty, executive director of the National Association of Telecommunication Officers and Advisors. The agency “has gone after local government and cable TV.” NATOA represents local officials that supervise cable television franchises, and has been critical of FCC moves to bypass local franchise authorities. “The worst thing in the world is to get the government involved” in the cable television business, said Dan Brenner, senior vice president for law and regulatory policy with the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which represents leading cable operators. “It’s micromanaging that we want [to] avoid,” he said.