July 2010

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication. But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.

Rep Dingell tells FCC to drop move for broadband regulations

Rep John Dingell (D-MI), former head of the House Commerce Committee, said July 28 that the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission should drop his push to re-regulate broadband service.

In a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Rep Dingell said he felt the controversial effort was being done in haste. He came up with that conclusion after receiving a "paucity" of answers from Chairman Genachowski on the move. "Unfortunately, the Commission could not respond to my questions in sufficient detail," said Rep Dingell. "This substantiates my fear that the Commission is proceeding along a precarious path that will lead to bad policy and result in protracted litigation." He suggested the FCC should "work with Congress to enact law that resolves the matter."

Congress Rethinks Its Ban on Internet Gambling

With pressure mounting on the federal government to find new revenues, Congress is considering legalizing, and taxing, an activity it banned just four years ago: Internet gambling.

On July 28, the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill that would effectively legalize online poker and other nonsports betting, overturning a 2006 federal ban that critics say merely drove Web-based casinos offshore. The bill would direct the Treasury Department to license and regulate Internet gambling operations, while a companion measure, pending before another committee, would allow the Internal Revenue Service to tax such businesses. Winnings by individuals would also be taxed, as regular gambling winnings are now. The taxes could yield as much as $42 billion for the government over 10 years, supporters said. The two measures -- which are backed by banks and credit unions but have divided casinos and American Indian tribes -- are far from becoming law. A bill to legalize online poker sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, has not yet had a hearing. The Congressional timetable has little spare room before the midterm elections, and the Obama administration has not taken a position. But the vote suggests a willingness by Congress to look for unconventional ways of plugging holes in the budget and comes as struggling states have also been looking to extract revenue from the gambling industry, which took a hit as consumers cut back on travel and entertainment during the recession but continues to reap billions of dollars in annual profits.

The committee vote Wednesday was 41 to 22, with seven Republicans joining most Democrats on the panel in favor of the measure.

How to Fill a Stadium? Offer Video Better Than TV

How do you keep football fans as regular visitors to stadiums when the television coverage of every play is so good? For the Giants and the Jets, the answer, perhaps surprisingly, is more and better video than people can get at home.

This season, the New Meadowlands Stadium will offer fans free smart-phone applications that they can glance at to see video replays, updated statistics and live video from other games -- and that will work only inside a stadium. Over the next few years, stadium officials say, the applications will provide fans with statistics on the speed of players and the ball, and fantasy games that will allow them to pick players and compete against other fans. A real-life game no longer seems to be enough. In recent years, television coverage of the National Football League has become so rich and detailed that teams and stadiums have no choice but to respond with their own technology plays. Last spring the league's commissioner, Roger Goodell, said the experience for fans in stadiums needed to be elevated to compete with television broadcasts, to keep fans engaged -- and to keep them buying tickets -- in a challenging economic climate. To do that, stadium officials here have taken steps few other NFL stadiums have. About $100 million has been spent on the stadium's technology, and a former television production executive was hired to oversee the fan experience to offer more than fans can get sitting at home on their couches in front of their high-definition television sets.

E-Books Fly Beyond Mere Text

E-books of the latest generation are so brand new that publishers can't agree on what to call them.

In the spring Hachette Book Group called its version, by David Baldacci, an "enriched" book. Penguin Group released an "amplified" version of a novel by Ken Follett last week. And on Thursday Simon & Schuster will come out with one of its own, an "enhanced" e-book version of "Nixonland" by Rick Perlstein. All of them go beyond the simple black-and-white e-book that digitally mirrors its ink-and-paper predecessor. The new multimedia books use video that is integrated with text, and they are best read -- and watched -- on an iPad, the tablet device that has created vast possibilities for book publishers. The start-up company Vook pioneered the concept as a mobile application and for the Web in 2009, but with the iPad, traditional publishers are taking the multimedia book much more seriously.

Wikileaks busts myth about the irrelevance of mainstream media

[Commentary] By releasing 92,000 pages of intelligence documents relating to the Afghanistan war onto the laptops of an unsuspecting public, the proprietor of WikiLeaks has made an iron-clad case for the mainstream media.

If you were under the impression that we no longer need news organizations, editors or reporters with more than 10 minutes' experience, think again. The notion that the Internet can replace traditional newsgathering has been revealed as a myth. Without more investigation, more work, more journalism, these documents just don't matter that much. To argue that they are significant because they will inform an ignorant public is ludicrous: If you don't know by now that the Pakistani secret service helped create the Taliban, or that civilian casualties are generally a problem for NATO, or that special forces units are hunting for al-Qaeda fighters, all that means is that you don't read the mainstream media. Which means that you don't really want to know.

Online privacy and building reputations

A Q&A with Joseph Turow, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in online privacy.

He thinks Internet users are woefully unaware of what information is being collected about them and how marketers are using that data. Worse, Turow told Senate lawmakers those advertisers and Web sites may be wrong in their assumptions about users. The consequences go beyond poorly placed ads, he said. Our reputations are at stake, and users don't have enough say to control how we're being viewed online, he said.

Tech Firms Lobby EU on Privacy

Microsoft, Google and other US tech giants are pushing to streamline Europe's privacy rules in order to offer more remote computing and data-storage services.

These companies, which are investing billions of dollars to build big data centers in Europe, are seeking a single set of rules across the 27-nation bloc for so-called cloud-computing services. They want to sell computer capacity to businesses and governments -- as well as storage space for everything from pictures of grandma to the medical records of diabetics, to 500 million consumers. The EU's fractured rules may prove "real hurdles or speed bumps to sales" said Mike Hintze, Microsoft's associate general counsel. "That's the case for us, as well as other cloud-services providers." At the moment, there is a patchwork of sometimes contradictory regulations for cloud computing. That could change as part of what the European Commission, the EU's executive, calls its Digital Agenda, a plan to draft 31 legislative initiatives governing areas such as broadband infrastructure as well as pirated music and software. But work on that only began in May; a preliminary text is due in the fall. "It's way too early to say whether the EU directive will create a pan-European authority" to oversee cloud computing and privacy issues, said Matthew Newman, an EU spokesman.

Amazon writes new chapter in its strategy

Last November, Amazon, the online retailer, flew a dozen of the top US literary agents to a day-long meeting at the company's Seattle headquarters to try to tone down its image as the 800-pound gorilla of bookselling. The meeting, called "Agents Summit", focused on discussing the timing of e-book releases and on compensation structure. Executives from Amazon, which makes the popular Kindle e-reader, did not discuss striking deals directly with authors, which they are doing on a limited basis, or about becoming a publisher itself, said one agent familiar with the proceedings: "They had no interest in being a publisher."

But, a month later, "that all changed," the person said. John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, smallest of the big six US publishers, in January delivered an ultimatum to Amazon that led to Macmillan's books being removed from Amazon's virtual shelves. Sargent had been pushing to shift Macmillan's contract with Amazon to the so-called "agency model", by which publishers set the retail price and take 70 per cent of the revenues. That is similar to deals offered by Apple that would return less to publishers - but would give them more control over retail pricing of e-books. Since then, in spite of playing the role of friendly facilitator, Amazon has tried to cement its position as an unconventional player in the publishing world that intends to exploit opportunities at the edge of the industry. It has brought the retailer closer to the center of the publishing business, agents said.

Justifiable 'jailbreaks' on the Apple iPhone

[Commentary] Want an iPhone? Hate AT&T? Used to be, the only way to remedy this common problem was to clandestinely "jailbreak" your phone, so that you could switch to a more reliable network. Tech nuts also did the jailbreak so that they could load applications or programs on their phones that Apple didn't offer. Thanks to the Library of Congress, which can define exceptions to copyright law, it's now legal for consumers to break out. The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation asked for an exception, and it won.

Apple needs to accept that its consumers are as smart as it is. The company's attempt to control the "user experience" after it had sold the product was an affront to consumers everywhere - imagine if Chevy told buyers that after they bought cars, they weren't allowed to customize them with after-market speakers, engine performance boosters or fancy wheels. Apple is still likely to void the warranties of people who jailbreak their phones, and that isn't right either. Consumers who choose iPhone freedom will have to think carefully about this risk, but it's unlikely that most of them will jailbreak their phones anyway.

Benton

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