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March 2010

Google Wireless Study Identifies Smartphone Features Most Influential

Searches for smartphones rose 35% between January and march 2010, compared to the same time last year, according to Sara Kleinberg, head of marketing for technology for Goole's technology group, which studies how consumers use the Internet to search and shop. The internal data provided by Kleinberg confirms a joint study between Google and Compete released today, but conducted between July and October 2009. The study also makes it clear that consumer shopping habits have changed as a result of smartphone technology. Not only do people rely on search engines to research products they know about, but they also look for information on products from brands they have yet to discover. "We found that people are increasingly searching on Google for terms such as 'new phone' or 'cool phone,'" says Kleinberg. "We think of Google search as a bit of a barometer for trends."

Exploring the News Frontier

Carnegie Corporation partnered with the Paley Center in New York City to host "A Way Forward: Solving the Challenges of the News Frontier" for deans and students from the 12 journalism schools participating in the Carnegie-Knight Journalism Initiative. Presentations by leaders of AOL, CNN, Google, Politico, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other major media outlets made for an information-packed experience.

America's Great Escape Ticket

Consumers are spending more and more time consuming entertainment — Americans spend an average of four hours EACH DAY watching video. But how they're spending their entertainment dollars is shifting. The choices are nearly infinite, so now it's all about value and convenience. Instead of buying physical objects — DVDs, books and magazines — they're spending on access — cable and Internet — and for experiences like an immersive movie or a huge concert performance. Big budgets and 3-D technology make the trip to the movie theater worth it.

What's up with Riverside's citywide Wi-Fi network?

According to Steve Reneker, CIO of Riverside (CA), AT&T wants to give the citywide Wi-Fi network that AT&T and MetroFi deployed in May 2007 back to the city, but the city council must decide on 16 March 2010 whether to agree.

It is controversial: the city must pay for the cost of maintaining the network which provides free access in Riverside. The Inland Empire, as the region is called, has been hard hit by the economic crisis. Riverside's official unemployment rate is 14.3 percent. The unofficial rate is much higher. The city is under severe budget constraints, and so are its residents, resulting in a tug of war where many residents want to continue enjoying their free Wi-Fi service but others want the city to spend the money on other matters.

Iran hacks opposition Web sites, arrests cyber activists

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps hacked into 29 Web sites affiliated with U.S. espionage networks, Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency reported on Sunday.

"The hacked websites acted against Iran's national security under the cover of human rights activities," Fars reported. It did not disclose details of the attacks. The 29 Web sites were identified in a statement (in Farsi) released on a Web site operated by the Revolutionary Guards. The Internet has been used by Iranian opposition groups who contested the results of last year's elections there to organize demonstrations and share information about protests and arrests. The Revolutionary Guards is a military group that was founded after Iran's 1979 revolution. The group includes conventional army, navy, air force, and intelligence units, as well as the Basij paramilitary force and various business units.

New Appointments at Google, Apple, Show Depth of Enmity Between the Two

Tim Bray, legendary software developer and programmer, is off to Google. He announced his decision this morning, three weeks on from his resignation from Sun Microsystems, which came with a searing critique of Apple.

Meanwhile, a key player on the Mountain View campus, RJ Pittman, worked his final day last week and is off to Cupertino. Confused? So are we--but mostly over how Apple and Google, former BFFs, have fallen out. Bray, who was developer of Web Technologies at Sun, covered the reasons for his move on his blog. It was, he said, mainly about Android. The Google OS was open-source, developer friendly, and mobile Internet is, as he sees it, the future. Google was, he said "too big to be purely good or in fact purely anything," but he was down with the company philosophy. At the end of his list of reasons to move was a five-word sentence, "I'll enjoy competing with Apple." Bray elucidated his reasons in the next paragraph: "The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger. I hate it."

E-gov spending to continue declining in 2010

Agency spending on e-government and line of business initiatives has dropped by more than $35 million since 2008.

The Office of Management and Budget says agencies will spend $121 million to $124 million on e-government and LOB projects this year, down from $138 million in 2009 and $161 million in 2008. OMB issued its latest report to Congress on the benefits of e-government. Congress requires this annual report as part of the appropriations law in order to better understand where agencies are spending money and what they are getting from it. The 337-page report details funding by agency and bureau, funding by project, current status of all the initiatives and the risks for each effort. There are several reasons for the decrease in funding, including OMB's decision not to include fee-for-service spending, and the fact that many of the initiatives have "graduated" to agency run, government-wide programs.

New House chair oversees Dept of Defense cybersecurity

For the last several years, Rep Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) has been vice-chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, and chair of one of its key border security subcommittees. But recently, Rep Sanchez added a new gavel -- and new responsibility -- to her portfolio. She has assumed the chairmanship of another House subcommittee that focuses on cybersecurity, primarily at the Pentagon. The new panel that Sanchez chairs is part of the House Armed Services Committee, where Rep Sanchez, a seven term Democrat representing California's Orange County, is the highest ranking female member of the full panel. Recently, during the AFCEA Homeland Security Conference, Chairman Sanchez delivered a keynote address in which she discussed her new subcommittee chairmanship. "It's the TUTC subcommittee, and that stands for "Terrorism, Unconventional Threats, and Capabilities". I always want to say cybersecurity, because cyber is also in there. It deals with all the really scary things that we do under the defense label, that none of you really want to talk about and I'm a little scared to learn about."
Rep. Sanchez delivered her talk just hours before she was to chair her first hearing of the subcommittee on Capitol Hill.

March 15, 2010 (NBP update)

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2010

For upcoming media policy events, see http://www.benton.org/calendar


NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN
   Will The National Broadband Plan Come Up Short?
    See also: Japan May Separate NTT's Fiber-Optic Businesses, Yomiuri Says
   AT&T, Verizon, Google May Be Winners in U.S. Broadband Plan
   Broadband Trojan Horse
   FCC says some broadcasters like spectrum plan
   FCC to unveil sweeping proposal for broadband
   FCC prepares for broadband shake-up
   FCC's National Broadband Plan: What's in it?
   Broadband and the Future for Educational Technology
   Addressing the Digital Divide in Indian Country

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   The Internet and Political Freedom
   Google Is Poised to Close China Site
   China Issues Warning to Major Partners of Google
   Google Advertisers Urged to Defect on Speculation of China Exit
   China broadcaster transforms under pressure
   FOIA-request audit shows response to Obama transparency pledge is uneven
   Obama Rated as Bad as Bush on Government Secrecy, Poll Finds
   Duplicating Federal Videos for an Online Archive

PRIVACY
   Boyd Calls Out Google and Facebook for Abusing Users' Privacy
   Is Privacy on the Social Web a Technical Problem?
   Telling Friends Where You Are (or Not)

JOURNALISM
   2010 State of the News Media
   The Beck Factor at Fox: Staffers say comments taint their work
   Panic in Georgia After a Mock News Broadcast
   Trade Papers Struggling in Hollywood

WIRELESS
   Apple's Spat With Google Is Getting Personal
   AT&T smartens up cheaper phones
   UK Mobile operators hope to thwart 4G plans

MORE ON THE INTERNET
   Who Will Reap the Rewards of the Internet's Hardware Upgrade?
   A Plan in Britain to Block Sites Offering Pirated Music
   Cost of Internet fraud on steep rise
   Talking Back to Your TV, Incessantly

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NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN

WILL THE NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN COME UP SHORT?
[SOURCE: National Public Radio, AUTHOR: Joel Rose]
The Federal Communications Commission says its much anticipated national broadband plan, which will be unveiled Tuesday, will help make Internet access faster, cheaper and more pervasive. To help deliver on that promise, FCC officials commissioned a study from Yochai Benkler at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. They wanted to know more about how people in other countries connect to the Internet. Benkler says broadband in other developed countries is generally faster and cheaper than it is in the US. "You're looking at prices in the leading countries that are a third or a fifth of the prices that we're paying — and they're getting better speeds for it. So the differences are not subtle based on what we found," Benkler says. When it comes to speed and price of Internet connections, Benkler found that American cities trail far behind their counterparts in South Korea, Sweden — even eastern Slovakia. The big reason, Benkler says, is competition. You need lots of different companies competing for your Internet business, hustling to provide better service at a lower cost than their rivals. The way other countries do this is by essentially forcing the big companies to share their wires with the smaller ones. Benkler admits that won't be an easy sell in the US. "There will be enormous political resistance. But at the same time, the FCC has to get the next generation market structure right. This is the moment to do it," Benkler asserts. "Either you are willing to take the step to get to more competition, or you are engaged in cosmetics." The FCC got Benkler's report and basically said, "Thanks, but no thanks." Blair Levin, executive director of the FCC's broadband initiative, says forcing companies to open their circuits to competitors — what's called "open access" — just won't work in the US. "Other countries tend to have broadband dominated by a single telecom carrier: the phone company. The U.S. is very different. The majority of broadband subscribers [there] actually subscribe through cable. So it's not always an apples-to-apples comparison," Levin says.
benton.org/node/33212 | National Public Radio
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AT&T, VERIZON, GOOGLE MAY BE WINNERS IN US BROADBAND PLAN
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Todd Shields]
Mobile-phone companies led by AT&T and Verizon Wireless may be the biggest winners from a U.S. plan for more high-speed Internet service. The two largest wireless companies, as well as No. 3 and No. 4 providers Sprint Nextel and Deutsche-Telekom AG's T- Mobile unit, would benefit from proposals to make more airwaves available, analysts said. Builders of communications towers, those laying lines to the new towers, and Internet companies reaping more traffic also may profit. The Federal Communications Commission's plan to expand high-speed Internet service, or broadband, is due to Congress by March 17. The agency will publicly preview its proposals in Washington tomorrow. More airways for mobile use of the Web will be "a core goal," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a Feb. 24 speech. "More spectrum from the FCC can only be good" for wireless carriers, said Paul Gallant, a Washington-based analyst with Concept Capital's Washington Research Group, in an interview. "It's hard to tell which mobile phone companies will benefit most, since it's hard to predict the outcome of auctions that will be used to allocate newly available airwaves." The broadband plan will set broad policy rather than imposing new regulations, Chairman Genachowski said in an interview March 2. He said the document will spawn "a significant number of rulemakings," the months-long proceedings the FCC uses to make policy.
benton.org/node/33211 | Bloomberg
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BROADBAND TROJAN HORSE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Health care isn't the only policy arena in which the Obama Administration aims to ram through controversial new rules. The Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil a "national broadband plan" opposed by industry and without any of the five commissioners voting on it. Last year, Congress directed the FCC to develop a plan to make high-speed Internet available to more people. But given that 95% of Americans already have access to some form of broadband—and 94% can choose from at least four wireless carriers -- rapid broadband deployment is already occurring without new government mandates. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to increase the reach of his agency and expand government control of the Web. Among other things, he wants broadband services reclassified so the FCC can more heavily regulate them. The national broadband plan, to be unveiled tomorrow, will call for using the federal Universal Service Fund to subsidize broadband deployment. The USF currently subsidizes phone service in rural areas, and Mr. Genachowski knows that current law prevents it from being used to subsidize broadband unless broadband is reclassified as a telecom service. Congress ought to be wary of letting the FCC expand its jurisdiction through back doors like this. Chairman Genachowski wants more control over broadband providers so that he can implement "net neutrality" rules that would dictate how AT&T, Verizon and other Internet service providers manage their networks. To date, Congress has given the FCC no such authority. Nor has the agency had success in court.
benton.org/node/33210 | Wall Street Journal
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FCC SAYS SOME BROADCASTERS LIKE SPECTRUM PLAN
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Sinead Carew, John Poirier]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski says some US television broadcasters have indicated they support a proposal to give up their airwaves to help resolve a shortage of spectrum for advanced mobile phone services. Some analysts have been skeptical about whether the plan would appeal to broadcasters unless the FCC offers them a very big percentage of the auction proceeds. "We've certainly heard from a number of broadcasters who have told us that this is a promising direction and (they) are getting ready to roll up their sleeves with us," Chairman Genachowski said in an interview on Friday. He did not name specific broadcasters, nor would he comment on the percentage of proceeds that would go to broadcasters under the plan. Analysts say there could be a public outcry if the FCC gives broadcasters too big a share, since wireless auction proceeds typically go to the U.S. Treasury. The country's broadcasters -- including General Electric's NBC, News Corp's Fox, Walt Disney's ABC and CBS Corp -- hold spectrum licenses estimated to be worth $50 billion.
benton.org/node/33209 | Reuters
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FCC TO UNVEIL SEEPING PROPOSAL FOR BROADBAND
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Mike Zapler]
Recognizing that high-speed Internet has joined telephone service and electricity as essential tools of modern life, the federal government will unveil an ambitious blueprint this week to extend broadband to virtually all Americans. Crafted by the Federal Communications Commission over the past year, the national broadband plan is expected to set the federal government's high-tech agenda on a variety of fronts, with far-reaching implications for Silicon Valley. At its core, the plan, which will be released Tuesday, will propose ways to close the long-standing digital divide by bringing broadband into 90 percent of American homes by 2020. For those with broadband already, the plan will target vastly increased speeds for wired and wireless service, fostering the already-booming market for Web-based video and other high-bandwidth applications. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the plan could spur advancements in telemedicine, education and energy efficiency through a Web-enabled smart grid.
benton.org/node/33208 | San Jose Mercury News
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FCC PREPARES FOR BROADBAND SHAKE-UP
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Richard Waters, Kenneth Li, Stephanie Kirchgaessner]
The Federal Communications Commission is due to unveil plans on Tuesday aimed at improving the country's mediocre performance in the global broadband race. But they are already learning the hard way that change will not be easy. The Obama administration came to power with ambitious plans to boost the nation's flagging communications infrastructure. Having been at the forefront of broadband deployment a decade ago, the US has slipped back to a middling position among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, according to a Harvard University study commissioned by the Federal Communications Commission last year. One idea has already been floated by the FCC to help remedy this: enticing TV broadcasters to give up part of their spectrum in return for some of the estimated $50bn (€36bn, £33bn) in proceeds from re-auctioning it for use in wireless broadband networks. But that has gone down badly with many broadcasters, who claim they are being railroaded into giving up airwaves they could still use.
benton.org/node/33207 | Financial Times
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FCC'S NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN: WHAT'S IN IT?
[SOURCE: CIO, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]
The Federal Communications Commission plans to release a national broadband plan next week that will lay out an ambitious set of goals for broadband deployment and adoption. The official version of the plan will be released at a commission meeting Tuesday, but FCC followers have seen the agency unveil several major thrusts of the plan in a series of speeches and briefings in recent weeks. In a mid-February speech, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski kicked off the announcements by saying it was the agency's goal to bring 100M bps (bits per second) broadband service to 100 million U.S. homes by about 2020. Many members of the US tech community have called for a national broadband policy for years, and Congress, in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in early 2009, required the FCC to develop the plan. Several tech groups have expressed general support for the announcements so far, but others have questioned how the FCC will accomplish what appears to be a wide-ranging and expensive plan. FCC officials have talked about a cost of $12 billion to $25 billion to implement parts of the plan, with wireless spectrum auction proceeds offsetting the costs, but some critics have suggested the FCC's cost estimates are far too low. In a time of huge U.S. government budget deficits, there will also be pressure in Congress to use any auction proceeds in other ways.
benton.org/node/33186 | CIO
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BROADBAND AND THE FUTURE FOR EDUCATION
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Janice Morrison]
Educators got a preview of the enhanced role educational technology is expected to play in the future of K-12 education during a webcast aired March 10, 2010. The webcast, titled The Future for Educational Technology in K-12 Education Policy and Practice, was hosted by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). The webcast combined an overview the U.S. Department of Education's National Educational Technology Plan (NETP), released March 5, with a preview of the educational portion of the Federal Communication Commission's National Broadband Plan (NBP), scheduled to be released March 17. Similar themes ran through the two presentations, and it was clear that the two plans are well coordinated to achieve the goal of using the power of technology to transform teaching and learning to enable anywhere, anytime learning. The NBP will recommend upgrading the E-rate program, which provides discounted telecommunications and Internet services to schools and libraries. The plan will also make recommendations to improve and expand online learning as well as help unlock the power of data to personalize learning and improve decision-making. The recommended upgrades to E-rate will include streamlining the application process, giving school districts more flexibility in using the lowest cost option when developing infrastructure, indexing the E-rate funding cap to inflation, and allowing schools the option of permitting after-hours use of school connectivity for adult education, job training and other community uses. The plan will also recommend support for pilot programs of wireless connectivity on and off-campus, and will include a competitive funding program to encourage the development of networks that will serve as models for the future of the nation's schools.
benton.org/node/33188 | Federal Communications Commission
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ADDRESSING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN INDIAN COUNTRY
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Michael Connelly]
Last week marked a significant chapter in Federal Communications Commission-Tribal relations, which included Chairman Genachowski's remarks to the Executive Council of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) on March 2, 2010, followed by the 7th Annual FCC-NCAI Dialogue on Improving Telecommunications Access in Indian Country at the FCC on March 4. The Dialogue included Tribal leaders, Commissioners Copps, Clyburn, Baker and McDowell, Chairman Genachowski's Chief of Staff, the Chiefs of the Consumer & Governmental Affairs and Wireless Telecommunications Bureaus, Public Safety Bureau, and other Commission staff.
The National Broadband Plan includes a number of Tribal-specific recommendations to benefit Indian Country. To enhance communications and consultation with Tribal governments, the Plan proposes three new mechanisms, including a government-wide Federal-Tribal Broadband Strategic Initiative; an FCC Office of Tribal Affairs; and an FCC-Tribal Task Force consisting of senior FCC Staff and Tribal leaders that will focus specifically on broadband deployment and adoption on Tribal lands. Other recommendations include:
A "once-in-a-generation" transformation of the $8 billion Universal Service Fund to build 21st century communications networks, including on Tribal lands;
Allowing more members of the Tribal community to share connectivity funded by the E-rate and Rural Health Care programs, helping more Tribal libraries qualify for E-rate funding, and creating a Tribal seat on both the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service and the USAC Board of Directors;
Creating a Tribal Broadband Fund to support sustainable deployment and adoption programs in Tribal lands;
Providing funding to upgrade connectivity for federal facilities on Tribal lands;
Expanding the FCC's Indian Telecommunications Initiative and allowing Tribal representatives to participate in our FCC University training programs at no cost.
Improving data collection on Tribal lands;
Exploring ways of improving Tribal access to and use of spectrum, including extending the new Tribal priority in broadcast radio services to the process for licensing fixed and mobile wireless licenses covering Tribal lands.
benton.org/node/33187 | Federal Communications Commission
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

THE INTERNET AND POLITICAL FREEDOM
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: L. Gordon Crovitz]
[Commentary] We're all just beginning to understand the importance of the modern-day version of Radio Liberty—the Web and services available online. It's time to get serious about protecting the freedom of servers. Technology helps dissidents around the world share information, communicate and organize through services such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. These companies have done more thinking about the implications of their technologies than have the government agencies charged with defending the Internet. As of last week, at least the Treasury Department now makes clear it does not prohibit companies from helping dissidents. Still, we're a long way from having a clear policy in support of the liberating power of digital technologies. The potential is unmistakable. The Cold War was won by spreading information about the Free World. Information was backed up by hard power. In a world of tyrants scared of their own citizens, the new tools of the Web should be even more terrifying if the outside world makes sure that people have access to its tools.
benton.org/node/33205 | Wall Street Journal
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GOOGLE IS POISED TO CLOSE CHINA SITE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Loretta Chao, Ben Worthen]
Google appears increasingly likely to shutter its Chinese-language search engine, a step that would remove one of the last major foreign players from the world's most populous and fastest-growing Internet market. A person familiar with the situation said on Saturday that Google is likely to take action within weeks. Separately, Chinese authorities on Friday told local news Web sites that Google's Chinese site is likely to close and that, if it does, the news sites will be required to use only official accounts of the situation, rather than publish stories from anywhere else, according to a person familiar with the order. Google and Chinese authorities have been in talks about the extent to which the U.S. Internet giant will be able to operate a business in China if it follows through on its pledge two months ago to stop following government censorship requirements on its Chinese site, Google.cn. Those talks increasingly appear deadlocked, and Google's hopes for being able to operate Google.cn without filtering results—which were always thin—have all but disappeared. On Friday, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong, asked by a reporter about Google's plan to stop filtering results, said doing so would be "irresponsible" and warned that the company would "have to bear the consequences" if it violates China's rules. His comments reinforced expectations that the authorities will force Google.cn to close if the company stops censoring it.
benton.org/node/33204 | Wall Street Journal
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CHINA ISSUES WARNING
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Sharon LaFraniere]
The Chinese authorities have warned major partners of Google's China-based search engine that they must comply with censorship laws even if Google does not. The Chinese government information authorities warned some of Google's biggest Web partners on Friday that they should prepare backup plans in case Google ceases censoring the results of searches on its local Chinese-language search engine. The warning was the latest indication that two months of negotiations between Chinese officials and Google over government censorship have reached an impasse, making it more likely that Google will end up shutting down its Chinese search engine. The two sides have been at a standoff since Google announced in January that it planned to stop self-censoring the results of searches on its Chinese site, google.cn, in reaction to what it described as China-based cyberattacks on its databases and e-mail accounts. The warning was intended to head off a wave of frustrated users should their Internet searches be stymied because of Google's conflict with the government. Google controls nearly 30 percent of China's Internet search market.
benton.org/node/33203 | New York Times
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GOOGLE ADVERTISERS URGED TO DEFECT
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Mark Lee, Brian Womack]
Google advertisers in China are being advised to switch to rivals such as Baidu and business partners are exploring alternatives as speculation grows the U.S. company will shut its Web site in the country. "When we talk to clients, we have been pushing them in the direction of Baidu more," said Vincent Kobler, managing director at EmporioAsia Leo Burnett in Shanghai, which buys advertising on behalf of customers. "The Chinese government has taken a firm stance, and Google, they have their own principles, and are going to shut down." Google clients and partners may be turning more pessimistic about the company's prospects of operating in China after the government last week said a plan to end censorship at the Google.cn site was "irresponsible." Failure to end the dispute may lift sales at Baidu and Sohu.com Inc., and force partners such as China Mobile Ltd. and Sina Corp. to review co-operation.
benton.org/node/33202 | Bloomberg
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CHINA BROADCASTER PRESSURE
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Kathrin Hille]
Mainland China's television industry, one of the ruling Communist party's bastions for information control, is being gradually transformed from within amid growing pressure for commercial success, according to the head of one of the few privately owned broadcasters operating in the market. "The rise of the Internet and the upcoming convergence between broadcasting and telecom networks in China will turn our industry upside down," said Liu Changle, chairman and chief executive of Hong Kong-listed Phoenix Satellite Television. Liu said he did not believe that the Chinese government would loosen rules banning private and foreign investment in broadcasting and cross-provincial consolidation among domestic state-owned broadcasters in the near term. However, he said Beijing was tolerating deals that went against the spirit of its own restrictions. "There are more and more grey areas [in broadcasting]," he said.
benton.org/node/33201 | Financial Times
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OBAMA TRANSPARENCY
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ed O'Keefe]
The Obama administration's first year of efforts to improve access to government information has yielded mixed results, according to an audit of Freedom of Information Act requests set to be released Monday. The report by the National Security Archive at George Washington University comes at the start of Sunshine Week, the annual attempt by federal groups and news organizations to promote better access to government information. President Obama issued new guidelines on government transparency on his first full day of office, ordering agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor" of FOIA requests and laying the groundwork for the eventual release of reams of previously undisclosed government information on the Internet. But less than a third of the 90 federal agencies that process requests for information have significantly changed their practices since that initial order, the report said. The departments of Agriculture and Justice, the Office of Management and Budget and the Small Business Administration earned especially high marks for completely or partly fulfilling more requests and denying fewer of them during fiscal 2009. The departments of State, Transportation and Treasury, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have fulfilled fewer requests and denied more of them in the same time period.
benton.org/node/33196 | Washington Post | USAToday
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OBAMA RATED AS BAD AS BUSH ON GOVERNMENT SECRECY, POLL FINDS
[SOURCE: Scripps Howard News Service, AUTHOR: Thomas Hargrove]
Public cynicism that the federal government operates in an atmosphere of secrecy is as strong as ever, despite President Barack Obama's promises to make government information more easily available to the public. A new survey of 1,001 adult residents of the United States found that 70% believe that the federal government is either "very secretive" or "somewhat secretive." The largest portion of respondents, 44%, said it is "very secretive." That matches the worst rating the federal government received during the final year of George W. Bush's presidency. The poll is part of a five-year series of studies into public attitudes toward government openness commissioned by The American Society of News Editors. It was conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University. The latest survey was released Sunday, the beginning of National Sunshine Week.
benton.org/node/33181 | Scripps Howard News Service
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DUPLICATING FEDERAL VIDEOS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brian Stelter]
A look at an effort to unlock the thousands of videos tucked away in the National Archives by making it available over the Internet. The International Amateur Scanning League is an invention of the longtime public information advocate Carl Malamud. The league plans to upload the archives' collection of 3,000 DVDs in what Mr. Malamud calls an "experiment in crowd-sourced digitization." Armed with nothing but a DVD duplicator and a YouTube account, the volunteers have copied and uploaded, among other video clips, an address by John F. Kennedy; a silent film about the Communist "red scare"; a training video on farming; and a Disney film for World War II soldiers about how to avoid malaria, in Spanish. So far, nothing elusive has emerged — but the project is in its infancy.
benton.org/node/33197 | New York Times
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PRIVACY

BOYD CALLS OUT GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK FOR ABUSING USERS' PRIVACY
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Liz Gannes]
Researcher Danah Boyd brought fighting words to SXSW, where she delivered a well-received keynote Saturday on the interplay between private and public information online. She called out Google and Facebook for being cavalier with their users' personal information by repurposing that which users intended for a smaller audience, implementing opt-out services that are public by default and changing settings without adequately informing users. Boyd, who works with Microsoft Research and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, based much of her assessments on interviews with social media users, many of them teens. She took the stance that "Just because something is publicly accessible doesn't mean people want to be publicized." Probably the most radical accusation she levied against technology companies was to declare that "Making something more public that is public is a violation of privacy." By "making more public," she meant aggregating users' updates and making them searchable, as well as repurposing users' information in a way they didn't originally intend.
benton.org/node/33184 | GigaOm
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IS PRIVACY ON THE SOCIAL WEB A TECHNICAL PROBLEM?
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Liz Gannes]
How to deal with user privacy on social networks as they grow, mature and become more sophisticated has been a frequent topic of conversation at this year's SXSW — and not just in researcher Danah Boyd's keynote address that argued aggregating public information can be a privacy breach, and slammed Google and Facebook for their missteps with users' expectations. Is privacy just a technical problem? That's what Google engineer Brett Slatkin, co-creator of the PubSubHubbub real-time syndication protocol, proposed on a Saturday morning panel. WebFinger, a cross-platform standard that conveys user preferences, which could include explicit privacy settings from one social network to another, could take care of understanding the relationships between users and the information they want to control, Slatkin said. He added that he felt that the reason users are confused about privacy is because of inconsistency among the social sites they use.
benton.org/node/33183 | GigaOm
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TELLING FRIENDS WHERE YOU ARE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jenna Wortham]
Mobile services like Loopt and Google's Latitude have promoted the notion of constantly beaming your location to a map that is visible to a network of friends — an idea that is not for everybody. But now there is a different approach, one that is being popularized by Foursquare. After firing up the Foursquare application on their phones, users see a list of nearby bars, restaurants and other places, select their location and "check in," sending an alert to friends using the service. This model, which may be more attractive than tracking because it gives people more choice in revealing their locations, is gathering speed in the Internet industry. Yelp, the popular site that compiles reviews of restaurants and other businesses, recently added a check-in feature to its cellphone application. And Facebook is expected to take a similar approach when it introduces location features to its 400 million users in coming months. If checking in goes mainstream, it could give a lift to mobile advertising, which is now just a tiny percentage of overall spending on online ads.
benton.org/node/33200 | New York Times
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JOURNALISM

2010 STATE OF THE MEDIA
[SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: ]
Inside news companies, the most immediate concern is how much revenue lost in recession the industry will regain as the economy improves.
Whatever the answers, the future of news ultimately rests on more long-term concerns: What are the prospects for alternative journalism organizations that are forming around the country? Will traditional media adapt and innovate amid continuing pressures to thin their ranks? And with growing evidence that conventional advertising online will never sustain the industry, what progress is being made to find new revenue for financing the gathering and reporting of news? The numbers for 2009 reveal just how urgent these questions are becoming. Newspapers, including online, saw ad revenue fall 26% during the year, which brings the total loss over the last three years to 43%. Local television ad revenue fell 22% in 2009; triple the decline the year before. Radio also was off 22%. Magazine ad revenue dropped 17%, network TV 8% (and news alone probably more). Online ad revenue over all fell about 5%, and revenue to news sites most likely also fared much worse. Only cable news among the commercial news sectors did not suffer declining revenue last year. The estimates for what happens after the economy rebounds vary and even then are only guesses. The market research and investment banking firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson projects that by 2013, after the economic recovery, three elements of old media —newspapers, radio and magazines — will take in 41% less in ad revenues than they did in 2006.
benton.org/node/33189 | Project for Excellence in Journalism | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project | New York Times | Associated Press | B&C
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BECK UNDERMINING FOX NEWS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz]
In just over a year, Glenn Beck's blinding burst of stardom has often seemed to overshadow the rest of Fox News. And that may not be a good thing for the top-rated cable news channel, as many of its staffers are acutely aware. With his celebrity fueled by a Time cover story, best-selling books, cheerleading role at protest rallies and steady stream of divisive remarks, Beck is drawing big ratings. But there is a deep split within Fox between those -- led by Chairman Roger Ailes -- who are supportive, and many journalists who are worried about the prospect that Beck is becoming the face of the network. By calling President Obama a racist and branding progressivism a "cancer," Beck has achieved a lightning-rod status that is unusual even for the network owned by Rupert Murdoch. And that, in turn, has complicated the channel's efforts to neutralize White House criticism that Fox is not really a news organization. Beck has become a constant topic of conversation among Fox journalists, some of whom say they believe he uses distorted or inflammatory rhetoric that undermines their credibility.
benton.org/node/33192 | Washington Post
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PANIC IN GEORGIA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Kramer]
Some people placed emergency calls reporting heart attacks, others rushed in a panic to buy bread and residents of one border village staggered from their homes and dashed for safety — all after a television station in Georgia broadcast a mock newscast on Saturday night that pretended to report on a Russian invasion of the country. The program was evidently intended as political satire, but the depiction was sufficiently realistic -- and memories of the brief war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 still sufficiently vivid — that viewers headed for the doors before they could absorb the point. Producers at the Imedi television station taped the episode in the studio normally used for the evening news broadcast, using an anchor familiar to the audience, and then broadcast the show at 8 p.m. Saturday with an initial disclaimer that many viewers apparently missed. Looking nervous and fumbling with papers as if juggling the chaos of a breaking news story, the anchor announced that sporadic fighting had begun on the streets of Tbilisi, the capital, that Russian bombers were airborne and heading for Georgia, that troops were skirmishing to the west and that a tank battalion was reported to be on the move. The broadcast showed tanks rumbling down a road, billowing exhaust, along with jerky images of a fighter jet racing out of the sky and dropping bombs. "People went into a panic," Bidzina Baratashvili, a former director of Imedi, said in a telephone interview from Tbilisi. He compared the mock news broadcast and its effect on the population to the radio depiction of an invasion from Mars in Orson Welles's adaptation of "War of the Worlds."
benton.org/node/33191 | New York Times
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TRADE PAPERS STRUGGLE IN HOLLYWOOD
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michael Cieply, Brooks Barnes]
Variety's cost-cutting decision to lay off two of its most prominent critics and others last Monday sent shock waves through Hollywood. For generations, Variety's critics had a clout that far outweighed their number of readers, providing early readings on coming films and Broadway shows to an audience of powerful industry insiders. Then, on Tuesday, it faced a lawsuit that accused the paper of having lured a film producer into the Oscar race with promises of wide-ranging support through a $400,000 promotional package — only to wreck his movie's prospects with a negative review. The review, of the film "Iron Cross," was removed from the Internet when the producer complained in December. But it was restored more than two months later, after the dust-up had become a public embarrassment. The double punch became the latest in a series of blows that have people who live and die by entertainment news wondering if classic trade publishing, as practiced by Variety and its younger rival, The Hollywood Reporter, can even survive.
benton.org/node/33190 | New York Times
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WIRELESS

APPLE'S SPAT WITH GOOGLE IS GETTING PERSONAL
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brad Stone, Miguel Helft]
Apple and Google are engaged in a gritty battle royale over the future and shape of mobile computing and cellphones, with implications that are reverberating across the digital landscape. In the last six months, Apple and Google have jousted over acquisitions, patents, directors, advisers and iPhone applications. Apple believes that devices like smartphones and tablets should have tightly controlled, proprietary standards and that customers should take advantage of services on those gadgets with applications downloaded from Apple's own App Store. Google, on the other hand, wants smartphones to have open, nonproprietary platforms so users can freely roam the Web for apps that work on many devices. Google has long feared that rivals like Microsoft or Apple or wireless carriers like Verizon could block access to its services on devices like smartphones, which could soon eclipse computers as the primary gateway to the Web. Google's promotion of Android is, essentially, an effort to control its destiny in the mobile world. While the discord between Apple and Google is in part philosophical and involves enormous financial stakes, the battle also has deeply personal overtones and echoes the ego-fueled fisticuffs that have long characterized technology industry feuds.
benton.org/node/33182 | New York Times
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AT&T SMARTENS UP CHEAPER PHONES
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: David Lieberman]
AT&T will unveil today a suite of mostly Web-based services that it says will make it possible for consumers to use inexpensive new cellphones to handle tasks mostly associated with higher-price smartphones. The suite includes an address book that will store information remotely. There's a messaging service that enables users to reply to a single person or as many as 10 contacts. AT&T also will make it easy for subscribers to transfer photos and videos from their phones to a home PC, other people's phones and social-networking sites such as Facebook. The changes are part of "a slow, subtle, but tectonic shift (in wireless phones) that AT&T is driving," says analyst John Jackson of market research firm CCS Insight. "It's an experiment in creating stickiness and brand loyalty around AT&T instead of iPhone or Google. It's questionable whether it's a viable long-term strategy. But it's an appropriate thing for AT&T to try." The company hopes to drive a new category of phone that it calls the Quick Messaging Device.
benton.org/node/33194 | USAToday
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UK MOBILE OPERATORS AND 4G
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Parker]
Telecommunications companies are threatening to launch a legal challenge to the government's plans to increase the availability of Internet access on mobile phones. O2 and Vodafone are considering legal action after ministers finalized their proposals to end a bitter and long-standing dispute between mobile phone operators over radio spectrum. The government is hoping that parliament will approve a law before the end of the month that will enshrine the plans for a large auction of spectrum in the first half of 2011. But O2 and Vodafone are threatening to launch a judicial review of the plans that might delay the auction. If the auction timetable slips, it could delay the start of mobile services based on fourth generation mobile technology that will enable faster web surfing on handsets compared to 3G. Mobile operators in the US and Japan are starting 4G services this year. Legal action by O2 and Vodafone could also hamper government efforts to ensure that all homes have Internet access - some households in remote areas will have to rely on wireless access because of cost.
benton.org/node/33193 | Financial Times
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MORE ON THE INTERNET

WHO WILL REAP THE REWARDS OF THE INTERNET'S HARDWARE UPGRADE?
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Derrick Harris]
Although software is the most important ingredient of the next-generation Internet -- from web applications to cloud-computing platforms -- hardware vendors are not shy about marketing their wares as integral parts of the equation. This week, Cisco claimed it will revolutionize the Internet -- the cloud included -- with its forthcoming CRS-3 router, and startups like Tilera are shilling new chips designed with large-scale web applications in mind. If we accept the premise that hardware upgrades are necessary (they certainly can't hurt), the question remains as to who will sell us this new gear. The numbers suggest we'll see hardware evolutions to match the software advances that are driving Internet traffic, and service providers and web companies could be lining up to buy these new products. Whether they'll be buying from their current vendors might depend on what they need.
benton.org/node/33185 | GigaOm
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UK PLAN OR PIRATED MUSIC
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Eric Pfanner]
To the consternation of Internet companies and civil liberties groups, lawmakers in Britain are seeking to punish those who illegally copy music. The British proposal is set to be taken up by the House of Commons on Monday. Under an amendment to the bill in the House of Lords this month, courts would be empowered to order Internet service providers to block access to Web sites that provide pirated movies, music and other media content. Supporters of the amendment say it would finally give copyright holders the tools to tackle the piracy problem at the supply and demand levels, after more than a decade of largely futile efforts. But critics of the bill say it raises the threat of censorship on the Internet, and could undermine the development of Britain's digital economy. Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, which campaigns against restrictions on the Internet, said the bill contained unusually broad scope for abuse. Individuals or companies, he said, may try to use it to suppress any Web content they find objectionable, under the pretext of protecting their copyright.
benton.org/node/33198 | New York Times
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INTERNET FRAUD COSTS
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: ]
US citizens reported losing more than $550 million in 2009 in Internet fraud, falling prey to a variety of increasingly sophisticated scams, according to a report by the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The loss was more than twice that reported in 2008, according to the agency, a partnership of the FBI and the privately funded National White Collar Crime Center. The center, based in West Virginia, tracks Internet crime around the world. "Criminals are continuing to take full advantage of the anonymity afforded them by the Internet. They are also developing increasingly sophisticated means of defrauding unsuspecting consumers," said Donald Brackman, the center's director. Part of the increase can be attributed to a change that allowed more cases to be included, but another possible factor was the increased use of the Internet, which has broadened the pool of perpetrators and victims, said Charles Pavelites, an FBI special agent.
benton.org/node/33195 | Los Angeles Times
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TALKING BACK TO TV
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Davis Carr]
[Commentary] Television, historically an extremely passive way of consuming media, could become something else, a hybrid form of professionally produced content and crowd-sourced comments. Right now, a crawl sometimes shows up at the bottom of the news, but in the not too distant future, it could be your friends' comments that are streaming by, or a curated feed of commentary from a third party, or algorithmically popular Twitter messages that bubble up in real time. "I think that television has changed a lot in the last 18 months," said Robin Sloan, who works in media partnership development at Twitter. "Shows are all in English, but now there is this kind of subtitling going on." And media companies can't ignore the new level of collaboration. "I think it is accelerating Darwinism in the media business," said Bryan Wiener, chief executive of 360i, a digital marketing agency. "If people aren't talking about you, you are dead. And brands have to attach themselves to things that are permeating the culture and fuel the water cooler."
benton.org/node/33199 | New York Times
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Will The National Broadband Plan Come Up Short?

The Federal Communications Commission says its much anticipated national broadband plan, which will be unveiled Tuesday, will help make Internet access faster, cheaper and more pervasive.

To help deliver on that promise, FCC officials commissioned a study from Yochai Benkler at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. They wanted to know more about how people in other countries connect to the Internet. Benkler says broadband in other developed countries is generally faster and cheaper than it is in the US. "You're looking at prices in the leading countries that are a third or a fifth of the prices that we're paying — and they're getting better speeds for it. So the differences are not subtle based on what we found," Benkler says. When it comes to speed and price of Internet connections, Benkler found that American cities trail far behind their counterparts in South Korea, Sweden — even eastern Slovakia. The big reason, Benkler says, is competition. You need lots of different companies competing for your Internet business, hustling to provide better service at a lower cost than their rivals. The way other countries do this is by essentially forcing the big companies to share their wires with the smaller ones. Benkler admits that won't be an easy sell in the US. "There will be enormous political resistance. But at the same time, the FCC has to get the next generation market structure right. This is the moment to do it," Benkler asserts. "Either you are willing to take the step to get to more competition, or you are engaged in cosmetics."

The FCC got Benkler's report and basically said, "Thanks, but no thanks." Blair Levin, executive director of the FCC's broadband initiative, says forcing companies to open their circuits to competitors — what's called "open access" — just won't work in the US. "Other countries tend to have broadband dominated by a single telecom carrier: the phone company. The U.S. is very different. The majority of broadband subscribers [there] actually subscribe through cable. So it's not always an apples-to-apples comparison," Levin says.

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