November 2009

News Corp., Time Warner Said Interested in MGM Studio

Apparently, News Corp, Time Warner, and Qualia Capital are interested in buying the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio. The companies haven't examined the studio's finances and their level of interest will depend on price. Burdened by about $4 billion in debt, Los Angeles-based MGM said last week it is weighing options, including a possible sale of the company. Creditors are hoping to get at least $2 billion, from a single buyer or by selling the assets separately, the people said. Matthew Harrigan, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities, says MGM is worth $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion.

Verizon Chief: Hulu Will Be Over In Two Years

Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg said Hulu is a six month wonder and that technology will ultimately bypass the current fascination with the online video service. "When you think of the change, look at Hulu and the dialogue and debate, and you say, O.K. this is in for the next eight to twelve months and in two years it won't matter because the world will have moved on." Speaking at the Paley Center as part of an event hosted by CNBC's David Faber, Seidenberg referenced a project called Sixth Sense which links a mini-projector with a cellphone and allows consumers to watch TV on any surface as an example of how fast technology changes the game. When asked about the evolution of the TV business - Verizon operates relatively new entrant FiosTV - Seidenberg said he had no problem paying retransmission fees because it is, "The cost of entry and we have to absorb it. You don't enter an industry and not play by the rules." However long term, the Verizon chief said it was an avoidable cost. "It's all transitional, all the games the media guys play."

MPAA Letter Regarding Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sent a letter to Capitol Hill asking for more transparency for deliberations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Of the letter, Gigi Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, said, "We are pleased to join MPAA in asking for more transparency in the deliberations over the anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). That request is long overdue. We hope the MPAA sends its message to the U.S. Trade Representative in addition to its letters to Congress. However, we do not agree that the dispute over the backroom deliberations of this agreement are a 'distraction.' The disagreement about public involvement goes to the heart of an open and responsible government. Allowing a select few non-industry observers, including Public Knowledge, to view the contents of the ACTA proposal under strict non-disclosure terms is not a substitute for full public participation. An open and transparent government was one of the first promises made by the Obama Administration. We also take issue with the assertion that opponents of the treaty are 'indifferent' or 'actively hostile,' to use MPAA's terms, to improving worldwide copyright enforcement."

AT&T's top lobbyists tell FCC to punish Google Voice

It's been a few weeks since Google told the Federal Communications Commission that its voice application is still blocking calls, just fewer of them. So what does the FCC plan to do? That's what AT&T wants to know and the company sent its top lobbyists to the agency this week to talk to Edward Lazarus, chief of staff to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski about the apparent violation of phone calling rules. At the meeting, Cicconi also reiterated several objections from AT&T to an agency proposal for net neutrality rules that would prohibit the discrimination of content over the Web. Specifically, Cicconi said one portion of the proposed open-Internet rules was too strict. By "imposing a non-discrimination standard that does not contain some form of reasonableness limitation would be more restrictive than the prohibition against "unreasonable discrimination" adopted for monopoly-era telephone companies in the Communications Act of 1934.

The means exist to rupture Internet censorship -- if the State Department will cooperate

[Commentary] President Barack Obama may not be aware that his State Department not only is doing next to nothing to support Internet freedom in countries such as China, but that it also has been slow-walking congressional initiatives to do so. For two years Congress has appropriated funds to support groups that are developing ways to circumvent the Chinese firewall and those erected in Iran, Burma, Cuba and other repressive countries. No money is going to the one organization with a proven record of overcoming firewalls. The group's advocates suspect that that's because the Global Internet Freedom Consortium is identified with China's banned Falun Gong movement -- and State is fearful of Beijing's reaction to any U.S. support for it. The Obama administration has already done plenty to appease the Chinese regime. The least it can do is act on the president's own words about the value of free information -- and help give Chinese their chance to Twitter.

No hospital savings with electronic records

New electronic record systems installed in thousands of U.S. hospitals have done little to rein in skyrocketing healthcare costs, Harvard University researchers said in a study released on Friday. A review of roughly 4,000 hospitals from 2003 to 2007 found that while many had moved away from the paper files that still dominate the U.S. healthcare system, administrative costs actually rose, even among the most high-tech institutions. Advocates of such technology have been pushing for greater use of computerized health records to prevent costly errors and allow greater coordination among caregivers and patients. But adoption has been slow, prompting Congress to offer $19 billion in incentives as part of an economic stimulus bill. The results, published in The American Journal of Medicine, come as the Senate presses ahead with legislation to expand access to healthcare. While the bill does not provide funds to buy necessary equipment, it does aim to facilitate their use and boost standards.

Electronic health records could be a deadly target during a cyberwar

Most health officials worry about hackers stealing sensitive information such as an AIDS diagnosis from someone's electronic medical record, but a technology manager for a health care system in the Pacific Northwest said it's just as likely the digital files could be a target of terrorists or a nation state during war. Countries have invested millions of dollars in computer systems to conduct a cyberwar against the United States "and the best way to do that is to destabilize the population," said Chad Skidmore, director of network services for Inland Northwest Health Services, a network of 34 hospitals in Spokane, Wash. To do that, hackers could infiltrate health systems to change patient records so misinformation will lead to deadly consequences. Skidmore, speaking on Friday before a health IT standards committee organized by the Health and Human Services Department, said what "keeps me up night and fairly scared" is that an attacker could get into a system and, for example, change data fields that indicate patients who have an allergy to penicillin do not have an allergic reaction to the antibiotic. About 400 patients in the United States die each year from penicillin allergies, according to the Web site Wrong Diagnosis.

Senators stress cybersecurity as a top priority for OSTP nominee

Defending US networks from cyberattacks was one of the chief concerns that the nominee for the top security post at the Office of Science and Technology Policy heard during his Senate nomination hearing on Wednesday. Cybersecurity "is the greatest national security threat," Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV) -- chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee -- told Philip E. Coyle III, President Obama's choice to be associate director for national security and international affairs at OSTP. Information security "was unfamiliar to people for a long time and now all of sudden it's the top national security threat because people can undo you gradually and dangerously, lethally in so many ways, so easily, and never be detected in many cases." Coyle, who would become the first person to fill the vacant position in almost a decade if confirmed, assured senators that he would devote a considerable amount of attention and effort to cyber defense and global climate change. He currently is senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information at the World Security Institute, an independent research organization. A Rockefeller aide said on Thursday the committee intends to vote on the nomination by the end of the year.

Chinese cyber-spying seen growing against US

China's government appears increasingly to be piercing US government and defense industry computer networks to gather useful data for its military, a congressional advisory panel said on Thursday. "A large body of both circumstantial and forensic evidence strongly indicates Chinese state involvement in such activities," the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its 2009 report to Congress. The 12-member, bipartisan commission was set up in 2000 to analyze the implications of growing trade with China. Beijing has begun to broaden its national security concerns beyond a potential clash across the Taiwan Strait and issues around its periphery, the 367-page report said. China is the most aggressive country conducting espionage against the United States, focused on obtaining data and know-how to help military modernization and economic development, it added.

Cyberattacks on U.S. military jump sharply in 2009

Cyberattacks on the US Department of Defense -- many of them coming from China -- have jumped sharply in 2009, a congressional committee reported Thursday. Citing data provided by the U.S. Strategic Command, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said that there were 43,785 malicious cyber incidents targeting Defense systems in the first half of the year. That's a big jump. In all of 2008, there were 54,640 such incidents. If cyber attacks maintain this pace, they will jump 60 percent this year. The committee is looking into the security implications of the U.S.' trade relationship with China. It released its annual report to Congress Thursday, concluding that a "large body of both circumstantial and forensic evidence strongly indicates Chinese state involvement in such activities."

Benton

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