September 2010

Texting bans may add risk to roads

Laws banning texting while driving actually may prompt a slight increase in road crashes, research out today shows. The findings, to be unveiled at a meeting here of 550 traffic safety professionals from around the USA, come amid a heightened national debate over distracted driving.

"Texting bans haven't reduced crashes at all," says Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, whose research arm studied the effectiveness of the laws. Thirty states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving; 11 of the laws were passed this year. The assertion that those efforts are futile will be a major issue at this week's annual meeting here of the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA). Researchers at the Highway Loss Data Institute compared rates of collision insurance claims in four states — California, Louisiana, Minnesota and Washington — before and after they enacted texting bans. Crash rates rose in three of the states after bans were enacted. The Highway Loss group theorizes that drivers try to evade police by lowering their phones when texting, increasing the risk by taking their eyes even further from the road and for a longer time.

Republicans who regulate the Internet may get cover from telecom groups, but not the Tea Party

House Republicans who support network neutrality legislation could face political consequences for "regulating the Internet" from Tea Party activists who may not provide the political cover that telecommunications groups with industry connections already seem prepared to serve up.

House Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is expected to introduce the bill this week, possibly as soon as Sept 28, with backing from industry stakeholders likely including phone and cable companies. Supporting a bill that creates unprecedented Internet rules will not be an easy vote for Republican members who have historically opposed a policy they view as an unnecessary regulation of the Internet. Tea party groups who have taken an interest in net neutrality may focus on the fact that the bill creates new rules and not that it prevents stricter ones at the FCC, according to Seton Motley, a Tea Party supporter who runs the group Less Government. Though supporters will portray the bill as a narrow fix to an intractable problem, that argument might not appease Tea Party groups who are wary of new government regulation, according to Motley.

Fair Use Groups Want To Put Brakes On Leahy Bill

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, a bill that would give the Justice Department more power to shut down Web sites that illegally stream or sell TV shows and movies, may have bipartisan backing, but it has divided the studio and fair use lobbies into their traditional camps.

The Consumer Electronics Association, Public Knowledge, and other fair use groups in a years-long tug of war over copyright protections vs. protections for pubic access to content, want to put the brakes on the bill until they can weigh in officially. CEA, Public Knowledge and others fear it could already have enough teeth to take a bite out of their respective constituencies, which include academics and equipment manufacturers. They sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee saying they didn't think there was enough time remaining in the legislative session to vet the numerous "global entanglements and serious questions" it raises. They said there should be a hearing and testimony from affected parties before the bill went any farther. That would push it to the lame duck session after the November elections.

Independent filmmakers feel the squeeze of piracy

The Hollywood studios have for years warned that piracy harms their business, especially when copies of big summer movies leak out on the Internet and undercut ticket sales. But the alarms haven't elicited much sympathy among the public. Movie piracy is undermining the small fry of Hollywood: the independent filmmakers, who have also been squeezed by tightening credit and fewer outlets for their work as the studios have retrenched from making specialty films.

The spread of high-speed Internet services and streaming software has made it easy for consumers to watch movies and TV shows without paying the people who create them. Filmmakers who typically can't afford the battery of lawyers to go after purveyors of unauthorized content have been hit especially hard. Most independent filmmakers don't rely on ticket sales to recoup their investment because the majority of their films never make it into theaters. Instead, independent films rely on DVD sales when their movies head directly into the home video market. But consumers have substantially cut back on their purchases of DVDs as legitimate online viewing options become readily available. Some filmmakers and distributors are fighting back, hiring lawyers to file copyright infringement cases against websites that offer free movies, as well as against individuals suspected of illegally downloading from file-sharing services.

Midterm Election Coverage Kicks into High Gear

The 2010 midterms dominated the news agenda for the second week in a row and seemed poised to emerge as the major mainstream media story of the fall season.

From September 20-26, the elections accounted for 25% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. That is down modestly from the previous week (30%), when Christine O'Donnell's September 14 upset win in Delaware's GOP Senate primary drove the narrative. That was still almost twice as much coverage as the next biggest story, the economy (13%). The significant political narratives of the week included continuing coverage of the tea party's influence and the Republicans' unveiling their Pledge to America policy blueprint. The midterm elections are unlikely to approach the kind of sustained attention paid to the last presidential race—which filled a whopping 36% of the newshole in 2008. But with their potential to switch party majorities in the House, and possibly even the Senate, they have been the top story for the last two months (edging out the economy 14% to 12%) and are likely to generate more attention in the countdown to the Nov. 2 balloting. The subject on which the outcome of the midterms may well pivot, the troubled U.S. economy, was the No. 2 story last week. One of the significant events was the news that the recession was officially over—and had indeed ended in June 2009. But that report had to compete with a widely disseminated video of an Obama supporter who, addressing the president at an economy-oriented town hall meeting, declared, "I'm exhausted... defending you."

23 New MacArthur Fellows Announced

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today named 23 new MacArthur Fellows for 2010.

Working across a broad spectrum of endeavors, the Fellows include a stone carver, a quantum astrophysicist, a jazz pianist, a high school physics teacher, a marine biologist, a theater director, an American historian, a fiction writer, an economist, and a computer security scientist. All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future. The recipients just learned, through a phone call out of the blue from the Foundation, that they will each receive $500,000 in "no strings attached" support over the next five years. MacArthur Fellowships come without stipulations and reporting requirements and offer Fellows unprecedented freedom and opportunity to reflect, create, and explore. The unusual level of independence afforded to Fellows underscores the spirit of freedom intrinsic to creative endeavors. The work of MacArthur Fellows knows neither boundaries nor the constraints of age, place, and endeavor.

YouView under attack for stifling competition

YouView -- the UK, Internet-connected TV venture formerly known as Project Canvas -- has come under attack from entrepreneurs and early-stage investors who claim that the consortium could stifle competition.

Many people in the UK's technology start-up community see YouView as an opportunity to put their content and applications before a wider audience, because it shifts the best of the Internet from the PC to the living-room TV set. But several local television companies, a set-top box manufacturer and Virgin Media have written to Ofcom asking the media regulator to investigate YouView, which is backed by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five, BT, TalkTalk and Arqiva. Now Electra Entertainment, a provider of software for interactive TV equipment that competes head-on with YouView, is blaming the venture for its failure to attract investment. Electra, which provides its software to companies including Tesco for Internet-TV equipment, told Ofcom on Friday that YouView was cited by several venture-capital firms as reason not to participate in its recent funding round.

FCC likely to approve of wireless tiered pricing: analysts

Federal regulators aren't expected to stand in the way as wireless service providers move away from flat rate Internet plans and moving toward tiered pricing schemes, according to analysts.

Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg said the nation's largest wireless service provider will introduce pay-as-you-eat Internet data plans in coming months, joining AT&T and Cricket who have also moved toward tiered pricing schemes. The Federal Communications Commission, which once looked at such price models with a skeptical eye, has recently signaled it would approve of those price packages. That would be boon for wireless operators, analysts said. Some public advocacy groups warned that users would access the Web less and the tech industry would be worse for it. But some consumers like the idea of paying for what they actually used, saying they didn't want to pay flat-rate fees that subsidized the heaviest users.

Paul Gallant, a communications and media analyst at Concept Capital, predicted that the FCC would apply the same reasoning for tiered pricing on wireless networks to cable and broadband fixed-wired service providers such as Verizon's FiOS. But public interest groups warn that charging too much for data would deter users from viewing video over the Internet. That could be a scheme, they say, to keep consumers strapped to their cable and satellite television subscriptions

White House to assess progress on crucial Internet upgrade

Senior Obama administration officials are encouraging Internet service providers to upgrade their technology before the Web runs out of space for new sites. Officials plan to use a workshop Sept 28 at the National Press Club to draw attention to the deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6, known in shorthand as IPv6.

The protocol, which is often referred to as "Next Generation Internet," is the successor to the current infrastructure of the Web, IPv4. The switch to IPv6 has become a critical issue because the stock of unused web addresses could be exhausted before the end of the year. While IPv4 offers roughly 4.3 billion Web addresses, IPv6 can support a virtually unlimited number of devices. "Tomorrow NTIA will facilitate stakeholder discussions among business, government, and the Internet technical community to highlight the importance of IPv6 to the continued growth of the Internet economy. IPv6 benefits will allow for increased innovation online and allow the Internet to remain a powerful engine for commerce and economic growth," said NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling.

Vivendi sells NBCU stake

French conglomerate Vivendi SA is selling a 7.6% stake in NBCU to parent General Electric for $2 billion. Vivendi had said it would sell its position in NBCU as part of the agreement to merge NBCU with Comcast.

Benton

Search