December 2009

AT&T Stunt Miffs FCC

The satirical blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" raised eyebrows at the Federal Communications Commission this week when the blog encouraged mobile users to "overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees" by banding together in a network-halting stunt today. Labeling the project Operation Chokehold, Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons--who blogs for the site under the name "Steve"--told iPhone users to run data-intensive apps simultaneously on Friday. The aim is to slow the network to a standstill. Lyons said in his post that he wanted to send AT&T the message that "we are sick of their substandard network," and to register ire over signals from the network that pricing plans based on bandwidth use may be on the horizon.

Public Interest and the Media in the Digital Age

In a Public Notice released earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission asked, What are the benefits of free, over-the-air television broadcasting, in particular with respect to public awareness of emergency information, local news, political discourse, and education? These are good questions at a time when the media landscape is changing dramatically. Some innovations -- from both traditional media companies and new players -- are not only just as good as the status quo, they're considerable improvements, and universal broadband will clearly help facilitate further innovation. In some ways, this is a very exciting time in the evolution of media as we are seeing new delivery systems and types of content come on-line almost every day. At the same time, we must recognize that the business model challenges now faced by the traditional media may diminish its ability to provide one its most critical functions: full time, local, professional journalism.

The FCC hopes a full range of players will weigh in on these questions in comments in response to the Public Notice, which are due by December 21.

Broadband Lessons Beyond Our Borders

[Commentary] It is a good time to remember that other countries have much higher rates of broadband use than the United States. How have they succeeded where we have lagged, especially in bringing broadband in rural areas? There are plenty of international examples this country can draw on as we design a broadband system for rural America. We ought to use them. We are at a critical juncture where we can acknowledge our recent laissez-faire missteps and learn from the policy-oriented successes of our neighbors abroad, or we can choose to continue down our present path, embracing a system which privileges immediate private profits over the long-term competitiveness of its citizenry.

More Open Internet Workshops

The Federal Communications Commission announced the dates, times, and locations of the January public workshops for the FCC's open Internet proceeding. These workshops will explore the impact of the Internet's openness on consumers, innovation, and investment.

The next public workshop will occur on Jan. 13, 2010 at 5 p.m. at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. and will address innovation, investment, and the open Internet.

It will be followed by a workshop on consumers, transparency, and the open Internet on Jan. 19, 2010 starting at 1 p.m. in the Commission meeting room.

Agendas for the Jan. 13 and Jan. 19 workshops will be made available in early January. All workshops will be open to the public.

The dates, locations, and topics for additional spring workshops for the open Internet proceeding will be announced in early 2010.

Philadelphia to buy municipal WiFi network for city business

The City of Philadelphia will pay $2 million to buy the much-hyped but underperforming municipal WiFi network built by Earthlink and more recently owned by the local Network Acquisition Co. Although free Internet access will still be available to the public in some areas, the city intends to use the network principally for official business, such as expanding its web of surveillance cameras and giving city workers the ability to file reports and access data from the field. The network will require significant additional investment to handle that kind of traffic: $17 million between fiscal 2011 and 2015. But the cost of building that kind of broadband citywide wireless network would be far higher, $30 million or more, and take many more years to construct if the city had to start from scratch, said the city's chief technology officer, Allan Frank.

Senate Commerce Committee approves two Obama nominees for FTC

The Senate Commerce Committee approved President Barack Obama's picks to fill out the Federal Trade Commission, Julie Brill and Edith Ramirez, sending their nominations to the Senate floor.

Brill, North Carolina's top consumer watchdog, and Ramirez, who knew Obama in law school, were chosen to fill two slots on the five-member FTC, which divides its work between antitrust and consumer protection. Brill became the senior deputy attorney general and chief of consumer protection and antitrust for the North Carolina Department of Justice in February 2009. She previously worked in Vermont in the attorney general's office and is considered a privacy expert.

Ramirez, a virtual unknown in the Washington antitrust world, has represented corporations like Mattel Inc and Northrop Grumman Corp. She would be moving to the FTC from a Los Angeles law firm. An expert in copyright and trademark infringement, antitrust and unfair competition claims, Ramirez graduated from Harvard Law School in 1992. She worked for the Harvard law review in 1990 at the same time Obama was the first black president of the review. She later worked on Obama's campaign as Latino outreach director in California.

If confirmed, they will replace Republican Deborah Majoras, who stepped down in March 2008, and independent Pamela Jones Harbour, whose term ended in September.

Libraries ask for oversight of Google books product

The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries have asked the Justice Department to oversee Google's plans to create a massive digital library to prevent an excessively high price for institutional subscriptions. The groups don't expect there to be an effective effective competitor to Google's massive project in the near term. They asked the government to urge the court to use its oversight authority to prevent abusive pricing of the online book project.

Congress Keeps Up Pressure on Arbitron

Rep Edolphus "Ed" Towns (D-NY), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is keeping the pressure on Arbitron to address problems with its portable people meter rating system. The chairman, who held hearings Dec. 2 on the PPM's effect on minority broadcasters, once again threatened to introduce legislation unless Arbitron, the Media Rating Council and the members of the PPM Coalition come up with a workable plan in 30 days. "It took decades of hard-fought battles to finally create diversity on the airwaves. I will not let this diversity perish overnight because of inaccurate ratings," Chairman Towns wrote in a letter dated Dec. 10.

Privacy Groups Target Facebook

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and nine other privacy and consumer groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to open an investigation against Facebook, saying its new privacy settings violate consumer protection law. Facebook last week formally rolled out what it described as "easy-to-use" tools to help users gain better control of content on their Facebook pages and allow users to control who sees each piece of content they add. EPIC, joined by the Consumer Federation of America, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and others, claimed the changes Facebook made such as requiring users to go through a "transition tool" before accessing their account allow for far more user information to become publicly available, including to third-party application developers. Facebook issued a statement defending its privacy tools.

Facebook's Growing Ethnic Diversity Mirrors U.S. Population

Facebook's Data Team has just published a report called "How Diverse is Facebook?" in which the company analyzed the surnames of U.S. users in order to estimate a breakdown of US Facebook users by ethnicity. The conclusions? While Whites and Asian/Pacific Islanders have historically been more represented on Facebook compared to the US population, Facebook's user diversity is increasingly mirroring that of the overall US populace. The report also examined "saturation" by ethnic and racial groups, defined by Facebook as a fraction of its users as compared to a fraction of Internet users by ethnicity. Facebook found that Asian/Pacific Islanders have been much more likely to be on the site than Whites over time. Hispanics are currently 80 percent as likely as Whites to use Facebook and Black users are about as likely to be users as Whites.