July 26, 2010 (Dept of Justice looks to improve disabled access to Internet)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, JULY 26, 2010
Health and the Internet at the FCC http://bit.ly/dvheDZ
ACCESSIBILITY
Obama looks to improve disabled access to Internet
$35 computer taps India's huge low-income market
INTERNET/BROADBAND
US Ranks 23rd in Broadband Development
FCC: Just Looking for a Little Jurisdiction
Congress Jumps The Shark To Protect Big Telecom Empires
WIRELESS
FCC, Public Safety At Odds Over Plan
Wireless industry group sues San Francisco over new cellphone radiation law
Why Not Mobile Peak Data Hours Rather Than Data Caps?
HEALTH
Ad Rules Stall, Keeping Cereal a Cartoon Staple
The Doctor Will Record Your Data Now
JOURNALISM
When Race Is the Issue, Misleading Coverage Sets Off an Uproar
Journalists, Provocateurs, Maybe Both
Enough right-wing propaganda
Are Hyperlocals Replacing Traditional Newspapers?
Congress' Old-Media Habit: $1.2 Million a Month on News and Research
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
At the White House, Losing a Game of Phone Tag
DIGITAL CONTENT
Why some media outfits still refuse to go online
Adding Punch to Influence Public Opinion
Bill to legalize Internet gambling: No dice
TELEVISION
Parents don't need the FCC to protect their children
TV editorials on a comeback
DirecTV on Comcast: whatever they might have liked to do, they won't be able to do anyway
CYBERSECURITY
Hackers With Enigmatic Motives Vex Companies
MORE ONLINE
Screenvision to Revamp Preshow Ads at Cinemas; Downtime in the Digital Age; Digital alarmists are wrong
ACCESSIBILITY
IMPROVING INTERNET ACCESS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Jeremy Pelofsky]
On July 23, the Obama Administration proposed trying to enhance access for people with disabilities to websites for hotels, retail stores and other public sites as well as improve access to movie theaters. Most of the proposals are aimed primarily at improved access for the deaf and the blind. With the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act on Monday, the Justice Department issued four proposals for public comment aimed at finding ways to keep up with advancing technologies so people with disabilities are not left behind. "Just as these quantum leaps can help all of us, they can also set us back -- if regulations are not updated or compliance codes become too confusing to implement," Attorney General Eric Holder said. However, the proposals could draw criticism from the business community, which already has a rocky relationship with the Obama administration over issues including new regulations on the financial industry. The Justice Department noted that the federal government has encouraged self regulation of the Internet, but said that in this case there was a potential need to intervene to improve access for those with disabilities. "It is clear that the system of voluntary compliance has proved inadequate in providing website accessibility to individuals with disabilities," the proposal said. The Justice Department set a six-month comment period and said it planned to hold a public hearing on the subject. The department said it was also considering requiring movie theaters to show movies with closed captions and video descriptions at least 50 percent of the time and sought comments on the benefits and potential costs.
benton.org/node/39838 | Reuters | Dept of Justice | Attorney General Eric Holder | Press release
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$35 COMPUTER
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Anuj Chopra]
The sleek handheld device includes an Internet browser, a multimedia player, a PDF reader, and video conferencing ability. But its biggest attraction is the price: $35. The price of the new computer is expected to fall to $10 in the coming years. Kapil Sibal, India's human resources development minister, unveiled the prototype of an unnamed Linux-based computing tool for students to be introduced in higher educational institutions by 2011. "The aim is to reach such devices to the students of colleges and universities, and to provide these institutions a host of choices of low-cost access devices around $35 or less in near future," the human resources ministry said at the launch of the computer. The latest gadget is a thrilling prospect for the future of global education, says Anand Nandkumar, a professor of business strategy in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business.
benton.org/node/39845 | Christian Science Monitor, The
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
US IS 23RD
[SOURCE: Strategy Analytics, AUTHOR: Press release]
The United States still trails much of the world in broadband development, ranking 23rd on the list of the top 57 countries, according to rankings released this week by analyst firm Strategy Analytics. South Korea holds on to the title of the world's most advanced broadband market. Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Japan round out the top five slots. The rankings are the result of a new broadband measurement tool just launched by Strategy Analytics. The "Broadband Composite Index" (BCI) examines and scores the broadband development of fifty-seven individual countries in five categories, including household penetration, speed, affordability, value for money, and urbanicity. The resulting score provides a more balanced and robust view of broadband development, according to the firm. The United States, which placed 23rd on the list, trailed the rankings in a number of the five index components. Piper says competition -- or the lack of it -- is to blame for the high prices and low average speeds in the US.
benton.org/node/39842 | Strategy Analytics
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FCC LOOKING FOR JURISDICTION
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Leslie Harris]
[Commentary] How do you use your Internet connection? Is it simply a way for you to get access to the news and entertainment handpicked by your Internet service provider and offered up on portals like comcast.net, verizon.net, or rr.com? Is all you see and read at the mercy of some unseen editor, like with cable TV or your local newspaper? Or is it more like the telephone -- a general-purpose connection granting access to everything else on the Internet, like other newspapers, Skype, the DMV, the Old Spice guy, or HuffPo? Last week was the deadline for comments on this very question as the Federal Communications Commission reconsiders its authority over broadband Internet providers. Today, Internet access services are marketed, purchased, and rated on features like speed, price, reliability, and oh yeah, speed. ISPs still offer extra "over-the-top" applications like e-mail and storage, and some people use them. But these add-on functions are easily available from an almost unlimited host of unaffiliated providers. For ISP subscribers the connection is the thing. It is critical for the FCC to recognize this and to adjust the way it classifies Internet access. A recent court case, relying on the agency's classification of broadband as an "information service," threw the FCC's jurisdiction into limbo by rejecting its authority to enforce a no-blocking principle against Comcast. At the same time, the National Broadband Plan laid out ambitious goals for universal service and disability access. To prevent future bad action by ISPs, and to achieve the National Broadband Plan's goals, the FCC needs some authority over the most important 21st century communications infrastructure. The proper source of that authority is its "Title II" charge to promote the rapid, efficient, nationwide availability of telecommunications services. This is not about "regulating the Internet." There must be clear limits on the authority the FCC asserts. Nothing the FCC does should give even the hint of rules governing the applications and services used over broadband connections. But the connections themselves are the sine qua non of all the benefits the Internet has come to offer, and to preserve and promote those benefits, the FCC should have the baseline authority to ensure those connections remain open and unrestricted.
benton.org/node/39837 | Huffington Post, The
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CONGRESS PROTECTING TELECOM EMPIRES
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Art Brodsky]
[Commentary] No matter how many times the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says he has no intention of "regulating the Internet," there will always be politicians using the talking points of the big telecommunications empires to attack him for wanting to "regulate the Internet." Even though the FCC reported that millions of people are left without broadband, the politicians keep mouthing the same old scare lines. No matter how many thousands of jobs the telecom industry cuts, industry front organizations are ready to spend millions of dollars to further the mistaken notion that jobs will be lost if the FCC institutes some modest rules of the road to protect the open Internet and further innovation. The big Internet companies have the best of all the worlds. They don't need any more help from their friendly legislators. It's the constituents of those legislators who need help to make sure the FCC has the authority to help bring broadband to rural areas, to act as a cop on the beat in case of corporate abuse and to make sure the Internet stays open for all of us to use. Let the FCC do its job and enact the modest changes they proposed to fix the Bush-era mistakes that did away with any consumer protection and oversight. It's the least the shark jumpers could do.
benton.org/node/39836 | Public Knowledge
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WIRELESS
FCC, PUBLIC SAFETY AT ODDS OVER PLAN
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Joelle Tessler]
Two years ago, the Federal Communications Commission stumbled as it tried to create a nationwide wireless broadband network for police officers, firefighters and emergency medical workers, delaying the construction of what everyone agrees is an urgently needed system. Now the agency is hoping to rework the plan, which relies on a prime slice of airwaves called the D Block. But the FCC proposal has run into fierce resistance from public safety leaders who warn that their current spectrum holdings are not big enough to meet their needs. They are wary of relying on commercial networks to fill the gap, particularly in emergencies, and are calling on the government to give the D Block to them so they can combine it with the adjacent airwaves and double the amount of spectrum dedicated to public safety broadband. "If they auction this spectrum, we've lost it forever," says Rob Davis, head of the San Jose Police Department and president of the Major Cities Chiefs of Police Association. "We need to control this network ourselves." Public safety officials have powerful allies in Congress.
benton.org/node/39843 | Associated Press
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CTIA SUES SAN FRANCISCO
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Nathan Olivarez-Giles]
CTIA, the lobbying arm of the wireless industry, is taking the city of San Francisco to court over a controversial new cellphone law. In a lawsuit filed July 23, CTIA is trying to block law that requires cellphone retailers in San Francisco to post in their stores each phone's "specific absorption rate," a measure of radiation absorbed by a user's body tissue that each manufacturer is required to register with the Federal Communications Commission. The CTIA said in a statement that it filed its suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco because the law could mislead the public into believing that one phone is safer than another because of lower radiation levels.
benton.org/node/39839 | Los Angeles Times | court
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DATA CAPS OR PEAK HOURS?
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Ryan Singel]
[Commentary] The cost for sending and receiving data from AT&T's facility is cheap and still falling. The T1 line running to the tower, like the tower itself, is already paid for. The problem is just the scarcity of the airwaves — there are times when too many people want to use their devices at the same time. It's oddly not unlike what happens with pricing on using phones to make calls. We've all gotten used to the idea of peak hours with our phone minutes — and understand they idea of nights and weekends, where calls are cheaper or free because fewer people are making calls at that time. So why not offer data pricing that offers (say) 1GB per month of peak data, with extra gigs priced at peak and off-peak rates? This way consumers would be able to make better decision about how much content to consume.
benton.org/node/39831 | Wired
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HEALTH
AD RULES STALLED
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: William Neuman]
Lucky Charms. Froot Loops. Cocoa Pebbles. A ConAgra frozen dinner with corn dog and fries. McDonald's Happy Meals. These foods might make a nutritionist cringe, but all of them have been identified by food companies as healthy choices they can advertise to children under a three-year-old initiative by the food industry to fight childhood obesity. Now a hard-nosed effort by the federal government to forge tougher advertising standards that favor more healthful products has become stalled amid industry opposition and deep divisions among regulators. A report to Congress from several federal agencies — expected to include strict nutritional definitions for the sorts of foods that could be advertised to children -- is overdue, and officials say it could be months before it is ready. Some advocates fear the delay could result in the measure being stripped of its toughest provisions.
benton.org/node/39841 | New York Times
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DIGITAL HEALTH DATA
[SOURCE: Technology Review, AUTHOR: David Talbot]
Seventeen months after the U.S. stimulus law authorized billions to subsidize electronic health records (EHRs), 864 pages of rules for how physicians and hospitals must show "meaningful use" of the technology are finally set. Now comes the hard part: implementing the technology in a country where, by one estimate, only 17 percent of doctors use EHRs at all. "This is a turning point for electronic health records in America, and for improved quality and effectiveness in health care," Dr. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology, said. Ideally, EHRs can warn doctors against prescribing a drug that would interact badly with something a patient is already taking. Or the technology could reveal that a patient has already had a diagnostic x-ray and doesn't need another one, saving money and reducing radiation exposure. In 2006, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine said medication errors injure 1.5 million Americans each year--and that computer systems could prevent many of these mistakes. Such technology can also make it far easier to systematically keep track of patients with chronic conditions. For example, it could identify diabetics who have missed lab tests and appointments and
benton.org/node/39835 | Technology Review
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JOURNALISM
RACE AND MEDIA COVERAGE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brian Stelter]
In the last couple of days, Andrew Breitbart, a conservative Web site operator, has been called a liar, a provocateur, a propagandist — and even a race-baiter. But he says he knows who the true race-baiters are: some Democratic activists. He says there is an election-year strategy under way to "falsely malign opponents of the Democratic party as racist" and that he will continue to fight it. "It's warfare out there," he said in an interview. The "warfare" is happening partly in the conservative media, where Mr. Breitbart has shown an uncanny ability to play on the issue of race and have it amplified on news shows, talk shows and blogs. The Sherrod episode is hardly the first charge of reverse racism that has been raised by conservative media figures, nor the first that Mr. Breitbart has had a hand in. But it is an open question whether conservative media outlets risk damage to their credibility when obscure or misleading stories are blown out of proportion and when what amounts to political opposition research is presented as news.
benton.org/node/39854 | New York Times
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JOURNALISTS AND PROVOCATEURS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr]
Where once there was a pretty bright line between journalist and political operative, there is now a kind of a continuum, with politicians becoming media providers in their own right, and pundits, entertainers and journalists often driving political discussions. There have been times when it seemed that Rush Limbaugh was acting as de facto head of the Republican Party, as the Democrats picked up talking points from Rachel Maddow. And Sarah Palin, through Facebook and Twitter accounts, has become an important source of political wisdom for many Americans. Bill Adair, who is the editor of PolitiFact.com, a fact-checking Web site run by The St. Petersburg Times, said that, at the beginning, his Pulitzer Prize-winning site vetted only pronouncements of government and party officials. But that soon proved to be out of step with how politics actually works. "We realized that we had created an artificial wall, and that talk show hosts, Web sites and pundits were as much a part of the discourse as politicians," he said. So now the site also truth-squads talking heads from Glenn Beck to Ms. Maddow. Even the most tradition-bound journalists would concede that while watching the world spin, they like to nudge it every once in a while. Why, after all, would someone spend their professional life enmeshed in the civic conversation unless they had a stake in it somewhere? But what is emerging is more of a permanent crusade, where information is not only power, but a means to a specific end. As content providers increasingly hack their own route to an audience, it's becoming clear that many are less interested in covering the game than tilting the field.
benton.org/node/39853 | New York Times
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ENOUGH RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: E.J. Dionne Jr]
[Commentary] The smearing of Shirley Sherrod ought to be a turning point in American politics. This is not, as the now-trivialized phrase has it, a "teachable moment." It is a time for action. The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that "fairness" requires treating extremist rants as "one side of the story." And there can be no more shilly-shallying about the fact that racial backlash politics is becoming an important component of the campaign against President Obama and against progressives in this year's election. The traditional media are so petrified of being called "liberal" that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors. Mainstream journalists regularly criticize themselves for not jumping fast enough or high enough when the Fox crowd demands coverage of one of their attack lines. The Sherrod case should be the end of the line. If Obama hates the current media climate, he should stop overreacting to it. And the mainstream media should stop being afraid of insisting on the difference between news and propaganda.
benton.org/node/39848 | Washington Post
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HYPERLOCAL NEWS
[SOURCE: Time, AUTHOR: Gary Moskowitz]
All politics may be local, but apparently not enough journalism is. As newspapers keep cutting back on staff and printing skimpier editions, journalists, entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens have responded by creating websites to cover the local news they feel is going underreported — like the serious windstorm that hit Tracy Record's Seattle neighborhood in 2006. "Every day we break stories," says Record, the editor and primary reporter for West Seattle Blog, a site she and her husband created as an information hub after the storm. "In the past hour, I learned a major parks project is being delayed because of drainage trouble and just broke that on our site." She also covers car crashes, crime, council meetings, bake sales and walkathons for the 70,000 or so Seattle residents who live west of the Duwamish River. "If they were able to get the local news they needed elsewhere, we wouldn't have wound up doing this," says Record. Hyperlocal has become a buzzword as familiar to news junkies as eat local is to foodies. The idea is to get residents involved in the reporting not just by sending in tips but by writing content about important local issues such as school boards and transportation. In professional newsrooms, "we spend too much time on craft and not enough time on community," says Michele McLellan, a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri who spent the past year studying nearly 70 of the best hyperlocal sites. "Many of the new sites, even if they don't have the most polished reports, are flipping that: community first."
benton.org/node/39834 | Time
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CONGRESS AND OLD MEDIA
[SOURCE: AOL News, AUTHOR: Ernie Smith]
One group of people not contributing to the erosion of paid newspaper subscriptions: our duly elected representatives and their staffs. The hundreds of line items for old-media purchases are among the many clues to Congress' news habits that AOL News spotted in its close reading of the House's last three Statement of Disbursements. Collecting all the invoices generated by Congress every three months, it was made available in digital form for the first time in December. Following the most recent update in June, the House's expenditures for the last six months of 2009 and the first three months of 2010 are now online, where they've been collected in a searchable database created by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation.
benton.org/node/39833 | AOL News
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
WHITE HOUSE SWITCHBOARD
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Ashley Parker]
The White House switchboard -- able to conjure up Santa Claus at a moment's notice for a young Caroline Kennedy -- is famous for its ability to track down anyone, anywhere, anytime. But last week, both the White House and the secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, were unable to muster that switchboard magic to reach Shirley Sherrod, the Department of Agriculture official who was forced to resign based on an edited video clip that made it look as if she had discriminated against a white farmer. "The White House operator tried on at least two occasions last night and was both unable to reach her and unable to leave a voice mail," the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said in a briefing Thursday. Some presidential historians said they were shocked at how long it took a White House that prides itself on being tech savvy to get through. Other historians and political strategists said they found it hard to believe that though the Agriculture Department managed to call Ms. Sherrod (three times, she says) on Monday to ask her to tender her resignation via BlackBerry, the White House could not reach her until Thursday. At that point it finally got through with a text message saying that the president had been trying to reach her since Wednesday night. She called him back at the White House. Critics suggest that the administration may have been shading the truth to buy more time, as it raced to belatedly gather more information about Ms. Sherrod and figure out how to handle the situation.
benton.org/node/39855 | New York Times
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DIGITAL CONTENT
ANALOG HOLDOUTS
[SOURCE: The Economist, AUTHOR: ]
Whereas most media firms scramble to create iPad applications or fret about whether to chase online advertisers or build paywalls, a few digital resisters refuse to distribute over the Internet at all. They have some good reasons. Online advertising is worth much less than television or print advertising. It is hard to persuade people to pay much (if anything) for digital content. Technology firms such as Amazon and Apple can often set retail prices. Digital products can be less beautiful than physical ones. But such gripes are widespread in the media industry. They must be set against the fact that digital distribution is a low-cost way of reaching huge audiences. What is more, refusing to go online is a sure way to alienate many potential customers. So why do the analog holdouts hold out? Simple technophobia is not usually the reason. One thing many of the analog holdouts have in common is that they sell few subsidiary products. The great thing about the Internet is that it makes content universally available. But many of the holdouts are already ubiquitous. The band of analog holdouts is gradually dwindling. Because they are so few and so large, the holdouts are valuable: any technology firm that can persuade the Beatles to go digital will reap fat rewards. Theft provides another stimulus. All the analog holdouts are widely available online -- just not legally.
benton.org/node/39832 | Economist, The
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ADDING PUNCH TO INFLUENCE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michael Cieply]
The Harmony Institute wants to change your mind -- at the movies. In the last few weeks, a little-noticed nonprofit with big ideas about the persuasive power of movies and television shows quietly began an initiative aimed at getting filmmakers and others to use the insights and techniques of behavioral psychology in delivering social and political messages through their work. Harmony, based in New York, was organized by John S. Johnson III, a co-founder of the Buzzfeed.com viral media site and a descendant of a Johnson & Johnson founder, Robert Wood Johnson, and by Adam Wolfensohn, an investment banker who was a producer of the climate change documentary "Everything's Cool." It was a favorite at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. Johnson said the institute was born from his own perception that environmental and social messages in films and television shows were often ineffective.
benton.org/node/39852 | New York Times
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NO TO INTERNET GAMBLING BILL
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Congress begins work July 27 on a bill to overturn a 2006 law banning Internet gambling in the US. The measure is being rushed through the House Financial Services Committee on a promise that it would create 30,000 jobs and billions in tax revenue. President Obama hinted at his support for online gambling last year by delaying regulations under the 2006 law in order to give Congress time to change it. The regulations force American credit firms to block payments to offshore gambling operators. What's exactly behind this drive to expand gambling in the US, especially a type done privately in the home rather than in a casino? Obviously there is the lure of money for both the government and the campaign coffers of politicians supporting this bill. (The same lure drives efforts to legalize marijuana.) But as former federal prosecutor Michael Fagan told the House panel marking up the bill: "Any parent who's puzzled or despaired over their child's trancelike playing of video games during the past 20 years can readily see why Internet gambling operators are drooling over the chance to legally expand their market base into the United States." The House Financial Services chairman, Rep. Barney Frank, needs to drop this bill and find other ways to raise revenue and create jobs than open the door to redistributing wealth from mainly poor Americans to mainly foreign gambling interests.
benton.org/node/39844 | Christian Science Monitor, The
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TELEVISION
PARENTS DON'T NEED FCC
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: L. Gordon Crovitz]
[Commentary] Where are you likelier to encounter dirty language and coarse culture -- in unregulated newspapers or regulated broadcast television? Standards have only fallen since the federal government started monitoring broadcasting for indecency in the 1970s. This month a federal appeals court invalidated a generation's worth of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on indecency (a distinct legal category from obscenity, which is outside of First Amendment protection). The court stressed that technology had changed so much there was no longer a rationale for regulating programming -- that broadcasting, like print, is also entitled to be free of government control. If other courts follow this ruling and the FCC reduces its monitoring of decency standards, what will be the result? The Hollywood Reporter's headline on the opinion predicted, "Primetime to get racier after FCC ruling," but it's already plenty racy. This fall CBS plans a show called "$#*! My Dad Says," based on a Twitter feed whose name includes a word unsuitable for a family newspaper -- and, apparently, still for CBS. The better argument is that the FCC unintentionally contributed to the coarsening of the culture by claiming the ability to parse which words used when are decent or indecent. If there are seven dirty words, does that make all the others decent -- and indeed government-approved? Broadcasters now shirk responsibility for a family environment by saying they try to abide inherently vague federal standards. And parents may wrongly assume that FCC monitoring will prevent indecency such as the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. No medium is likely ever to be as pervasive as broadcasting once was. Technology makes it easier to block seven or any number of dirty words. It helps parents who prefer that children instead watch Thomas and the other trains for life lessons from W.V. Awdry. Taking the FCC out of regulating indecency might just lead to more decency by refocusing responsibility where it belongs: on broadcasters and parents.
benton.org/node/39849 | Wall Street Journal
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CYBERSECURITY
HACKERS VEX COMPANIES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Nick Bilton]
The world of hackers can be roughly divided into three groups. "Black hats" break into corporate computer systems for fun and profit, taking credit card numbers and e-mail addresses to sell and trade with other hackers, while the "white hats" help companies stop their disruptive counterparts. But it is the third group, the "gray hats," that are the most vexing for companies. These hackers play it any number of ways, which can leave a company vulnerable to lost assets as well as a tarnished reputation as security breaches are exposed. These gray-hat hackers surreptitiously break into corporate computers to find security weaknesses. They then choose whether to notify the company and stay silent until the hole has been patched or embarrass the company by exposing the problem. The debate among all of these groups over the best course of action has never been settled and will be an undercurrent at the Def Con 18 hackers conference starting Friday in Las Vegas.
benton.org/node/39850 | New York Times
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