November 2010

To Publish Leaks Or Not to Publish?

An organization has obtained secret documents. They are newsworthy, but they could be damaging as well, to national interests and individuals. Do you publish?

News organizations are confronting that question as aggressive tactics like those of WikiLeaks become more common in an age of fast-moving information. The roughly quarter-million cables released Sunday comprise a sampling of the traffic between the State Department and several hundred embassies and consulates. They include information about the conflict between the U.S. and Pakistan over nuclear fuel, Washington's discussions with South Korean officials about the future of North Korea, and bargaining with other countries over how to empty the Guantanamo Bay prison. Anthony E. Varona, professor and associate dean at American University-Washington College of Law, said the line is still unclear between "giving the public the news it has a First Amendment right to receive and serving as instruments of lawlessness." He added that the courts had ruled on both sides of the argument over the years. "The bottom line is whether publication by WikiLeaks, with amplification by the traditional news media, will advance the public interest and the First Amendment or threaten their very existence," Mr. Varona said. "The next several days will reveal much along these lines."

With better sharing of data comes danger

The release of a huge tranche of U.S. diplomatic cables has laid bare the primary risk associated with the U.S. government's attempt to encourage better information-sharing: Someone is bound to leak.

The U.S. intelligence community came under heavy criticism after Sept. 11, 2001, for having failed to share data that could have prevented the attacks that day. In response, officials from across the government sought to make it easier for various agencies to share sensitive information - effectively giving more analysts wider access to government secrets. But on Nov 28, the Web site WikiLeaks, which had previously released sensitive U.S. documents about the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, once again proved that there's a downside to better information-sharing. In recent weeks, senior administration officials have warned that the WikiLeaks disclosures could affect the balance of weighing the "need to know" versus the need to protect sensitive material, sources and methods.

The director of U.S. national intelligence, James Clapper, has said he believes the WikiLeaks releases will have a "chilling effect" on information-sharing. "We have to do a much better job of auditing what is going on on any [intelligence community] computer," he said this month. "And so if somebody's downloading a half-million documents . . . we find out about it contemporaneously, not after the fact." To prevent further breaches, the Pentagon announced Sunday it had ordered the disabling of a feature on its classified computer systems that allows material to be copied onto thumb drives or other removable devices.

Website Closures Escalate US War on Piracy

A federal crackdown that shut more than 70 websites last week is the latest sign of an escalating war against counterfeit and pirated products, using legal tactics that may be closely scrutinized by civil-liberties groups.

Domain names of the affected sites -- which offered such diverse goods as scarves, golf gear and rap music -- were seized by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security, under court-approved warrants. Owners of copyrights and trademarks commonly use civil procedures to try to stop sales of disputed goods on the Web. A law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for example, established a procedure under which site owners are required to take down pirated media -- such as videos and music -- after being notified by the copyright holder. But the rapid proliferation of sites selling pirated goods -- many of them from outside the US -- has made that process unworkable, some U.S. companies and trade groups say. ICE's latest crackdown is based on procedures used in criminal cases, including seizing domains and assets of suspect websites without prior notification of their owners.

Sinking the online pirates

[Commentary] Imagine having a nemesis who assaults you daily (often mocking you as it does) yet somehow stays beyond the reach of the law. That's a rough approximation of the entertainment industry's view of online piracy — particularly the kind practiced by the likes of Sweden's The Pirate Bay, Latvia's mp3fiesta and a growing number of websites that stream bootlegged movies and TV shows from digital lockers. Such sites exist almost exclusively to promote illegal downloading or streaming of movies, music, video games and software, making money through advertisements or even by selling unauthorized copies of the works themselves.

Copyright holders have shut down some offending sites through civil suits and federal investigations, but these cases have taken years to complete. Meanwhile, new sites and services have emerged to replace the shuttered ones, and the amount of copyright infringement has increased over the years as broadband connections have proliferated. Fed up, the entertainment industry has lobbied hard for a more powerful legal weapon against online piracy. It found a receptive audience in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which unanimously approved a bill this month that would speed the process of penalizing such sites. The goal of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (S 3804) is a good one — there's no defense for online businesses whose raison d'etre is infringement. But some of the methods employed by the bill could create significant problems of their own.

Do Monopolies Rule the Internet?

[Commentary] This will surprise consumers overwhelmed by choice on the Internet, but there's a growing claim that "monopolies" -- dominant firms such as Google and Facebook -- rule the Web. But as close students of economic history know, the greater threat to freedom on the Web would be for the government to decide which companies are good and which need to be broken up or punished. So long as government keeps out the way, the Internet can stay free.

Cable groups suffer as viewers switch to video streaming

Netflix, the DVD subscription service that also offers movies to be streamed online, has a share performance chart most companies would kill for. A year ago the stock was trading at $58; last week, after 12 months in which the company began to attract attention for its willingness to buy digital rights to Hollywood movies, the shares were hovering around $187.

The company launched a $7.99 streaming-only subscription service last week, which fuelled a further jump in the shares. Yet its expansion, and the growth of rival online video services, such as Hulu, has come at a cost. Debate is raging in the US media industry about television viewers “cutting the cord” – abandoning traditional cable TV in favour of new, cheaper online video services. Recent data appear to support the theory that consumers are shifting online.

Although the number of people subscribing to TV services offered by satellite or telecoms groups is growing, cable TV subscriptions have suffered their biggest drop in 30 years, according to figures compiled by SNL Kagan, the research firm. It is unclear how much of this decline can be attributed to online alternatives, although the high cost of TV services is clearly an issue, according to Spencer Wang, a media analyst with Credit Suisse.

Google Grows, and Works to Retain Nimble Minds

Google, which only 12 years ago was a scrappy start-up in a garage, now finds itself viewed in Silicon Valley as the big, lumbering incumbent.

Inside the company some of its best engineers are chafing under the growing bureaucracy and are leaving to start or work at smaller, nimbler companies. Recent departures include low-level engineers, product managers and prominent managers like Lars Rasmussen, who helped create Google Maps and Wave before he left for Facebook, and Omar Hamoui, the founder of AdMob who was vice president for mobile ads at Google and is now looking for his next project. At least 142 of Facebook’s employees came from Google. Corporate sclerosis is a problem for all companies as they grow. But a hardening of the bureaucracy and a slower pace of work is even more perceptible in Silicon Valley, where companies grow at Internet speed and pride themselves on constant innovation -- and where the most talented people are often those with the most entrepreneurial drive.

Much of Silicon Valley’s innovation comes about as engineers leave companies to start their own. For Google, which in five years has grown to 23,000 employees from 5,000 and to $23.7 billion in revenue from $3.2 billion, the risk is that it will miss the best people and the next great idea.

Google satellite service sets 2013 take-off

O3b Networks, the Google-backed satellite venture seeking to provide Internet access to people in developing countries, is planning to launch services in 2013 after securing $1.2 billion of funding.

O3b has finalized $770 million of debt financing and $410m of equity investments so that it can launch eight satellites in the first half of 2013. The satellites are due to provide “backhaul” connections between mobile operators’ base stations in emerging markets and the worldwide web. The satellites are supposed to be a cost-effective means of linking base stations to the web, given that fixed-line telecoms infrastructure does not exist in many developing countries. O3b stands for the “other three billion” people in the world who do not have regular access to broadband Internet.

The Internet's cyber radicals: heroes of the web changing the world

[Commentary] There has been an explosion of technologies to circumvent censorship in countries where panic-stricken regimes have tried to stem dissident information. What today's crop of cyber-radicals demonstrate is that power does reside in the hands of the people, thanks to the foundations laid by Tim Berners-Lee 20 years ago. And a new generation of social activists are exploiting the technological tools available to them for their own agendas.

Rural-rural divide is the real broadband problem

[Commentary] The real problem facing rural America is a rural-rural divide. Due to our outdated and inefficient Universal Service system, all telephone consumers subsidize certain phone companies for delivering the most expensive broadband service while those serving other rural areas receive nothing. Most of the money goes to a minority of rural lines, leaving up to 24 million Americans without any broadband service. The National Broadband Plan would reprioritize billions of dollars that were not being effectively used to assure that everyone gets a baseline service.

Dave Duncan, of the Iowa Telecommunications Association says "the FCC does not believe all Iowans should have access to the same type of broadband speeds." This is misleading because for most Americans, markets - not government regulators - determine their broadband speeds. If Duncan really believes the government should subsidize rural areas so the speed any American receives, every American would receive, he should acknowledge that it would cost over $300 billion, adding $30 to the monthly bill of every telephone subscriber. The plan rejected this, as such a fee would put basic communications services out of reach for tens of millions of Americans, making a mockery of the Universal Service program. Further, there is no evidence the benefits of such expenditures would equal a small fraction of its cost.

It is no accident Duncan never mentions his proposal's cost. He believes government should force consumers across the country to subsidize his members to build the most expensive networks possible, no matter the cost or benefits. It's time to end such policies. If his companies were using their own money, there would be no objection. But for America to have ubiquitous broadband networks, we need to make tough, fiscally responsible decisions and stop pretending that endless and limitless government subsidies to private companies are the right path forward.

Benton

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