December 2010

Comcast has negotiated the 16-page "memorandum of understanding" with the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, promising to make new investments in Asian-American programming if its merger with NBC Universal is approved. The company has pledged to expand distribution of Asian American owned-and-operated and targeted programming. It also promised to launch a new Video OnDemand offering called "Cinema Asian America."

Rep Lee Terry (R-Nebraska) said he is seeking a new Democratic partner to work with him to push legislation that would overhaul the universal service fund, which provides subsidies for telecommunications services in rural and high-cost areas.

Terry's longtime partner in recent years in the effort to overhaul the fund, Rep Rick Boucher (D-VA) was defeated for re-election in November. As chairman of the House Communications Subcommittee, Rep Boucher played a key role in pushing the issue this Congress. Despite the loss of Boucher, Rep Terry, who also sits on the House Commerce Committee, said he plans to take the lead on the effort. He added, however, that he believes it will take a Democratic partner to help move the measure forward, saying "it needs to be bipartisan." He said he has talked with some Democratic members about working with him on the bill but was not ready to reveal any names. Incoming House Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) is supportive of the effort but it's unclear where the issue will fall on Upton's priority list.

The House cleared two technology-related bills including one that aims to crack down on firms that engage in deceptive online marketing tactics. By voice vote, the House passed a Senate bill known as the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act. It would prohibit companies from using misleading post-transaction advertisements and require them to clearly disclose the terms of their offers to consumers and obtain credit and debit card information directly from a consumer purchasing the service or product. It would bar online retailers and other websites from passing on consumers credit, debit or other billing information to third-party sellers. The legislation, offered by Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller (D-WV), emerged from a Commerce Committee investigation into aggressive online marketing tactics by three firms in particular, Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty.

The House also cleared another Senate bill by voice vote that would place new restrictions on caller identification "spoofing," which involves changing the number or name that appears on caller ID during a phone call. The legislation would ban the use of the technology for the intention to "defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value." Supporters say the technology used to deceive a caller's true identity is easily found on the Internet and is being used by scam artists for identity theft and other crimes and in some cases to cause physical harm.

E-books are quickly going mainstream: They represent nearly one out of 10 trade books sold. It's easy to imagine a near future in which paper books are the exception, not the norm.

But are book lovers ready to have their reading tracked? Most e-readers, like Amazon's Kindle, have an antenna that lets users instantly download new books. But the technology also makes it possible for the device to transmit information back to the manufacturer. "They know how fast you read because you have to click to turn the page," says Cindy Cohn, legal director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It knows if you skip to the end to read how it turns out." Cohn says this kind of page-view tracking may seem innocuous, but if the company keeps the data long-term, the information could be subpoenaed to check someone's alibi, or as evidence in a lawsuit. And it's not just what pages you read; it may also monitor where you read them. Kindles, iPads and other e-readers have geo-location abilities; using GPS or data from Wi-Fi and cell phone towers, it wouldn't be difficult for the devices to track their own locations in the physical world. But it's hard to find out what kind of data the e-readers are sending. Most e-book companies refer all questions about this to their posted privacy policies. The policies can be hard to interpret, so Cohn and the EFF created a side-by-side comparison. It's just been updated to include Apple's iPad.