December 2010

When libraries charge, you're not borrowing

[Commentary] It looks like the Cranberry Public Library, or the Cranberry Blockbuster Books 'n' Stuff, got the message. Officials there decided to begin charging $1 for DVD rentals. Yeah, once you start charging for it, that's not borrowing. What choice is there, though? State money is expected to be cut again in the coming year, when more people are in need of these facilities than ever. It might be a heartbreaker for those of us who could walk to the local library blindfolded, but it looks like the end is nigh. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, state government is backing away from libraries. Money is tied up in other projects. Such as? Outgoing Gov. Ed Rendell funneled money to a public policy center planned in honor of the late Johnstown Rep. Jack Murtha and, ironically, a library named for outgoing Sen. Arlen Specter. Those projects cost $10 million each.

Public Libraries: Computers, Books and Much More

[Commentary] As local governments have struggled to cope with the Great Recession and its aftermath, elected officials and their administrators have had to make increasingly tough budget choices. Slumping property tax revenue for example, has forced public officials to determine which services and personnel were essential, and how much they could afford for those essentials. Law enforcement, fire protection and basic social services are obvious choices as fundamental to any community's quality of life. Yet, with those critical community functions, at least one more service deserves special recognition: Public libraries can be the heart and soul of a community and its government -- especially in hard times. The public library is where an unemployed father or mother has free access to a computer to look for a job -- and where a knowledgeable staff member can help in the search. It is where a family struggling to get by on reduced income can find a treasure of books, movies and music -- all at no cost.

Common Sense Media and Verizon Announce Partnership to Promote Digital Citizenship

Common Sense Media and Verizon announced a partnership that will bring digital citizenship tools and advice to parents and kids across the United States. Parent advice and video tips are now featured in the Verizon Parental Controls Center, and lessons from Common Sense Media's groundbreaking digital literacy and citizenship curriculum will be available at Verizon Thinkfinity in early 2011.

Verizon is the first telecommunications company to partner with Common Sense Media, whose distribution portals also include Comcast, Cox Communications, DIRECTV, Time Warner Cable, Netflix, Fandango, GreatSchools, Best Buy, and Yahoo! The Verizon Parental Controls Center will host weekly Common Sense Media blogs and video tips providing tips and advice on the topics most important to parents in a 24/7 media world -- from preventing cyberbullying to helping kids manage their online privacy to deciding when is the right time to get your child a cell phone.

Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework

The Department of Commerce issued a report detailing initial policy recommendations aimed at promoting consumer privacy online while ensuring the Internet remains a platform that spurs innovation, job creation, and economic growth. The report outlines a dynamic framework to increase protection of consumers’ commercial data and support innovation and evolving technology. The Department is seeking additional public comment on the plan to further the policy discussion and ensure the framework benefits all stakeholders in the Internet economy.

The following are key recommendations of the report:

Consider Establishing Fair Information Practice Principles comparable to a “Privacy Bill of Rights” for Online Consumers: The report recommends considering a clear set of principles concerning how online companies collect and use personal information for commercial purposes. These principles would be recognized by the U.S. government and serve as a foundation for online consumer data privacy. They would build on existing Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs) that are widely accepted among privacy experts as core obligations.
Consider Developing Enforceable Privacy Codes of Conduct in Specific Sectors with Stakeholders; Create a Privacy Policy Office in the Department of Commerce: In considering new policies for commercial privacy, the government should enlist the expertise of industry, consumer groups, privacy advocates, and other stakeholders. In particular, the report recommends establishing a privacy policy office in the Department of Commerce that would work with the FTC, the Executive Office of the President, and other Federal entities, to examine commercial uses of personal information and evaluate whether uncertainty or gaps in privacy protections exist. The new office would convene stakeholder dialogues, and, with respect to specific areas of concern, help develop enforceable privacy codes of conduct.
Encourage Global Interoperability to Spur Innovation and Trade: Reducing regulatory barriers to trade is a high priority for the Obama administration. Currently, disparate privacy laws have a growing impact on global competition. The report recommends that the U.S. government work together with its trading partners to find practical means of bridging differences in our privacy frameworks. Collaborations with other privacy authorities around the world can reduce the significant business compliance costs. This global engagement could play a key role in a new dynamic privacy framework.
Consider How to Harmonize Disparate Security Breach Notification Rules: As an initial step towards consideration of a new privacy framework, the report recommends looking at ways in which to harmonize the rules that set standards for businesses to notify customers about commercial data security breaches. This comprehensive national approach to commercial data breaches would provide clarity to consumers, streamline industry compliance, and allow businesses to develop a strong, nationwide data management strategy.
Review the Electronic Communications Privacy Act for the Cloud Computing Environment: The report recommends that the Obama Administration review the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to address privacy protection in cloud computing and location-based services. A goal of this effort should be to ensure that, as technology and market conditions change, ECPA continues to appropriately protect individuals’ privacy expectations and punish unlawful access and disclosure of consumer data.

Broadband prices dropping around the world, but not in US

Looks like we're right back in the line sharing debate again.

A new study suggests that the United States could do better when it comes to home Internet services prices. The Technology Policy Institute's latest survey of the global high speed Internet market finds that US residential broadband subscription rates have "remained fairly stable" over the last three years, rising by just two percent. That's good, of course, since they didn't go way up. But residential broadband prices have fallen in most other countries, the paper notes -- in some instances by as much as 40 percent. The survey also found that prices in the United States for "triple play" plans are some of the most expensive among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member nations. Why the price gap? The paper emphasizes that "it does not evaluate the policies and other influences that impact those prices," but does note that many other nations require their big Internet service providers to "unbundle" or open their networks to small broadband providers at wholesale rates.

"Few countries actively regulate retail broadband prices, but every country that mandates network unbundling necessarily regulates wholesale prices," the TPI survey observes. "Wholesale prices are part of an ISP's costs, meaning that wholesale price regulation can affect retail prices. Thus it may not be surprising that the biggest price decreases have occurred in the EU [European Union], where wholesale prices for full unbundled loop access fell by about 10 percent between 2007 and 2009."

FCC could shape next phase of smartphones

[Commentary] The open wireless Internet already feels like a birthright. For anyone with a touchscreen smartphone, it’s outlandish to think you couldn't download any app – or tap into any Internet service – you wanted. The era of walled gardens, however, with all its limitations and frustrations, is not that far in the past. And the US, where the iPhone and its kind have made their biggest inroads, is about to put the new-found freedoms to their first serious test.

Some broad protections should help. One would be a rule – still being hammered out – to prevent mobile companies from blocking “competing services”. What that means is not at all clear. When the nature of communications is morphing – and not just into voice-over-IP and instant messaging, but also social networking and tweeting – deciding exactly what is competing with what becomes a challenge. But for the Federal Communications Commission, that may be just the point. Being too prescriptive at this stage would leave future innovations unprotected. Also, vague boundaries could be effective if companies governed by them shy away from testing the limits. Another protection will lie in transparency, since operators will have to disclose to regulators when they block or degrade a service.

Senate Republicans oppose network neutrality

Twenty-nine Republican senators -- led by Sens Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) -- wrote to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski this week to oppose his proposal to regulate Internet lines.

US Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks

Federal prosecutors, seeking to build a case against the WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge dissemination of classified government documents, are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.

Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them. Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks.

Watch a Newspaper Reinvent Itself

At the new offices of The Register Citizen in this faded old mill town, there’s a sign out front welcoming residents to come in for coffee and muffins at the Newsroom Café -- sort of Starbucks meets “Lou Grant.” Mimeographed fliers reading “Public Welcome!” invite people to walk in and participate in the 4 p.m. story conference. Residents are free to stroll through the newsroom as reporters peck out stories.

“I have no idea how this is going to work,” Emily M. Olson, the managing editor, said as 10 staff members were joined by a retiree moving to Florida, a public safety commissioner, a Democratic Town Committee member, and a Wal-Mart assistant store manager and intrepid blogger, who showed up for the meeting. “It’s all new to us, but if you hear something that piques your interest, feel free to share it with us.”

Torrington, a city of 36,000 in northwestern Connecticut, pockmarked with abandoned mills, is not the first place that comes to mind as a brave outpost on the digital frontier. And The Register Citizen, with roots dating to 1874 and a print circulation that’s fallen from 21,000 in the late 1980s to 8,000 now, isn't an industry giant either. But when it moved Monday from its dilapidated 105-year-old home into a renovated factory space meant to embody a full-bore embrace of the Internet, it provided one metaphor for how journalism is trying to reinvent itself. If Torrington seems an unlikely locale, well, that’s the point.

China Agrees to Intellectual Property Protections

Senior Chinese officials pledged to better crack down on software piracy and other violations of intellectual property rights as part of a series of commercial agreements after two days of talks.

The Chinese delegation, led by Wang Qishan, the vice premier for economic matters, also agreed to lift certain barriers to imports of heavy industrial machinery and to hold talks on easing a ban on imports of American beef that was imposed during a 2003 scare over mad cow disease. The talks, which took place during an annual forum known as the United States-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, did not address the thorniest issues in the economic relations between the two countries, like the giant trade imbalance and the value of China’s currency. But the largely technical discussions helped set the stage for a state visit by President Hu Jintao to Washington next month, officials on both sides said.

Benton

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