December 2010

DirecTV: Comcast/NBCU Conditions Should Be Open-Ended

DirecTV told the Federal Communications Commission that conditions on the Comcast/NBCU merger should last for at least six years, but after that should only be lifted when and if Comcast/NBCU can demonstrate they are no longer needed.

According to an ex parte filing, DirecTV executives told Joshua Cinelli, media advisor to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, that the deal conditions should be at least as long as those in the News/Hughes and Adelphia/Comcast/Time Warner Cable deals, and that those conditions should include online access and arbitration provisions because the deal presents "a combination of broadband and content never seen before" at a time when the convergence of that content gives Comcast the opportunity and incentive to withhold it from competitors, like DirecTV, or discriminate in pricing.

Level 3 Calls For Internet Access Conditions On Comcast/NBCU

Level 3 Communications brought the fight with Comcast over Internet connection fees to the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission, asking the agencies to impose conditions on Comcast's deal for NBC Universal that would guarantee large backbone providers like Level 3 wouldn't have to pay Comcast to deliver Internet traffic for five years.

Specifically, Level 3 wants the FCC and DOJ to impose conditions in effect for five years following the closing of the Comcast/NBCU deal that would force the cable operator to provide cost-free interconnects with requesting Internet backbone companies "meeting such nondiscriminatory, fair and reasonable requirement as Comcast may choose to specify." Level 3 suggested the criteria for settlement-free interconnection may include the number of announced routes and the extent of customer interaction between the networks.

Comcast, NBCU Sign Agreement With African American Groups

Comcast and NBCU have reached a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the NAACP, National Urban League and National Action Network (Rev. Al Sharpton) on the steps, most already outlined, it will take to promote diversity in corporate governance, employment/workforce recruitment and retention, procurement, programming, and philanthropy and community investments.

Comcast has already made numerous commitments to boosting African American participation in its business, including outlining them in a letter to Congress in connection with a Chicago forum on the proposed deal. But Thursday's announcement puts those commitments in the form of a binding pledge to these groups, similar to ones struck with Hispanic and Asian American groups.

Google Fights Growing Battle Over “Search Neutrality”

The European Union, which has been investigating Google’s dominance in web search as a result of complaints from several competitors, is broadening that investigation to include other aspects of the company’s business. The EU opened the original case last month, and has now added two German complaints to it — one made by a group of media outlets and one by a mapping company, both of whom claim Google is favoring its own properties unfairly, and also has refused to compensate publishers for their content.

111th Congress Fails to Enact Significant Cybersecurity Reform

The don't ask, don't tell provision wasn't the only section excised from the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011. The provision that would have established an Office of Cyberspace in the White House, headed by a Senate-confirmed director, does not appear in H.R. 6523, the latest version of the defense bill.

In May, just before the House of Representatives approved the defense bill, Reps Diane Watson (D-CA) and James Langevin (D-RI) successfully sponsored a rider to not only create a Senate-confirmed cyberspace director in the White House but also establish a board to assure compliance with federal IT security regulations as well as require agencies to automate continuous monitoring of their IT systems and establish processes to acquire secure software. Langevin's press secretary said she doubted the lawmakers would be able to attach a similar rider to the revised bill. "While anything can happen," spokeswoman Joy Fox said , "it is our understanding that there will be no cyber amendments in any defense bill that passes this year." The exclusion of the Watson-Langevin amendment from the defense act means that Congress has failed to enact any significant cybersecurity legislation in the past two years. Several cybersecurity bills had passed the House during the current 111th Congress, but no significant IT security bill ever came up for a vote in the Senate.

Misinformation and the 2010 Election: A Study of the US Electorate (updated)

The findings of a study to determine whether Americans perceived that the information in this post-Citizens United environment was reliable, or whether they perceived a high level of misinformation. In addition, another goal was to assess the quality of the information in the election environment by asking a wide range of questions on issues that were prominent in the campaign and determining whether, and to what degree, voters were misinformed on these issues.

The key findings of the study are:

Perceptions of Misleading and False Information: An overwhelming majority of voters said that they encountered misleading or false information in the last election, with a majority saying that this occurred frequently and occurred more frequently than usual.
Evidence of Misinformation Among Voters: The poll found strong evidence that voters were substantially misinformed on many of the issues prominent in the election campaign, including the stimulus legislation, the healthcare reform law, TARP, the state of the economy, climate change, campaign contributions by the US Chamber of Commerce and President Obama’s birthplace. In particular, voters had perceptions about the expert opinion of economists and other scientists that were quite different from actual expert opinion.
Variations in Misinformation By Voting Behavior: There were significant differences between those who voted Democratic and Republican in the level of misinformation on various issues that were prominent in the campaign and that respondents said were important in shaping their votes.
Variations in Misinformation by Exposure to News Sources: Consumers of all sources of media evidenced substantial misinformation, suggesting that false or misleading information is widespread in the general information environment, just as voters say they perceive it to be. In most cases increasing exposure to news sources decreased misinformation; however, for some news sources on some issues, higher levels of exposure increased misinformation.

Update:

Fox News doesn't seem too concerned about a University of Maryland study that found that the network's viewers are the "most misinformed." Michael Clemente, the senior VP of news editorial for Fox, responded by pointing out some of the school's own labels: “The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having ‘Students Who Study The Least’ and being the ‘Best Party School’—given these fine academic distinctions, we’ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was ‘researched' with."

How Apple's iPhone Widens the Trade Deficit With China

The iPhone is the invention of an American company, Apple, and ought to benefit our nation's economy. Why, then, is it contributing $1.9 billion to the US trade deficit?

That figure comes from a working paper by researchers at the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo, and was spotted by Mother Jones. A paltry minority of the components of the iPhone are actually made in the U.S.--equivalent to only 6 percent of the phone's $179 wholesale cost. The great bulk of the parts are made by Japanese, German, and Korean companies; they're then funneled through China, where they're assembled at Foxconn, and sent out at an inflated price. According to the study authors, Yuqing Xing and Neal Detert: "Global production networks and highly specialized production processes apparently reverse trade patterns: developing countries such as the [People's Republic of China] export high-tech goods—like the iPhone—while industrialized countries such as the US import the high-tech goods they themselves invented."

The authors offer a scenario in which Apple suddenly decides not to pursue profit maximization, dumps the oft-criticized Foxconn, and decides to pursue a model of corporate responsibility and patriotic we're-in-it-togetherness. It's true that U.S. workers fetch about 10 times as much as Chinese workers, and the manufacturing costs would rise to $68 per phone from about $6.50 per phone. But if Apple sold the phones at an average of $500 (already the asking price for some models), they say, it would still clear a 50% profit margin.

How Twitter Use Has Changed, From 2009 to 2010

It's been a good year for Twitter. The microblogging platform has grown by over 100 million users this year and expanded its staff from 130 to 350 people. And it's rolled out major redesigns and improvements to its site, mobile apps and APIs. People who created a Twitter profile before January 2009 now account for just 4.7% of the total Twitter population. That's one of the findings in a new study by the social media analytics and monitoring service Sysomos that examines over 1 billion tweets from 2010 and compares the data with Twitter usage in 2009. So how has the influx of new users changed the ways in which Twitter is used? The results of the study suggest we may be disclosing more personal information in our profiles and following more people, but even as more people have joined, most Twitter activity still comes from a very small number of users.

Telcos to benefit from Australia's NBN redesign

NBN Co, the company building the $36 billion national broadband network (NBN) in Australia, has been forced to redesign the project after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission rejected its plan for just 14 points of interconnect (POIs) -- located in capital cities. The broadband provider will now have to offer Internet service providers (ISPs) about 120 places to connect to the network. Industry analysts, however, are unsure how the large telcos – including Telstra, Optus and AAPT – will react, given they lobbied for between 200 and 400 POIs.

Governments shouldn't have a monopoly on Internet governance

The beauty of the Internet is that it’s not controlled by any one group. Its governance is bottoms-up—with academics, non-profits, companies and governments all working to improve this technological wonder of the modern world. This model has not only made the Internet very open—a testbed for innovation by anyone, anywhere—it's also prevented vested interests from taking control. But last week the UN Committee on Science and Technology announced that only governments would be able to sit on a working group set up to examine improvements to the IGF—one of the Internet’s most important discussion forums.

This move has been condemned by the Internet Governance Caucus, the Internet Society (ISOC), the International Chamber of Commerce and numerous other organizations—who have published a joint letter (PDF) and launched an online petition to mobilize opposition. Today, I have signed that petition on Google’s behalf because we don't believe governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on Internet governance. The current bottoms-up, open approach works—protecting users from vested interests and enabling rapid innovation. Let’s fight to keep it that way.

Benton

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