March 7, 2011 (Network Neutrality)
In Like a Lion http://bit.ly/g8KeWS
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2011
This week's agenda kicks off with Toward a Copyright Office for the 21st Century http://benton.org/calendar/2011-03-06--P1W/
FCC REFORM
Comcast, Verizon, AT&T tell White House: FCC is mucking up Obama's vision
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Chairmen Upton, Walden to FCC: Show Us the Economic Analysis
Rep. Blackburn wants to hear from broader group than ISPs at hearing
Network Neutrality, Back in Court
As telecom industry evolves, success of Netflix is its biggest threat
USDA Invites Applications for Grants to Connect Rural Communities to Broadband Service
Cheap, Ultrafast Broadband? Hong Kong Has It
See also: City Telecom Hong Kong sets the good example for FTTH operators
Sites Like Twitter Absent From Free Speech Pact
Dictators and Internet Double Standards
Freedom of Internet is global concern
Amazon should pay fair share of sales tax
JOURNALISM
Senate Republicans introduce bill to defund NPR, PBS
NPR, PBS Put Millions Into Investigative Reporting
Community Funds Are Offered New Ways to Measure Health of News Coverage in Their Cites and Towns
VIDEO
Retransmission Review threatens Local Exclusivity
CBS beefs up digital business with Clicker Media acquisition
Looking to cut cable bills? Online TV could help
As telecom industry evolves, success of Netflix is its biggest threat
HEALTH
About 20% of drivers using Web behind the wheel, study says
Global market for telehealth tech on upswing
Glow of electronic devices is affecting Americans' sleep
PRIVACY
Rep Stearns promises new online privacy legislation
TV's Next Wave: Tuning In to You
Plastic Surgeon and Net's Memory Figure in Google Face-Off in Spain
Book It: Amazon In Legal Trouble Over Privacy
Lawmakers spar over REAL ID extension
Feds want new ways to tap the Web
PIRACY
Rep Lofgren: Websites Mistakenly Seized By ICE Should Sue Government
ACCESSIBILITY
FCC Townhall on Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Programming Accessibility Act in San Diego
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Dictators and Internet Double Standards
Freedom of Internet is global concern
Staffer e-mails are not private property
Survey: Agencies are failing to maintain critical electronic records
IT funding could be last budget survivor, study predicts
Feds want new ways to tap the Web
OPM updates unscheduled telework option
MORE ONLINE
Telecom Revenue Forecast: Sunny with Cloud Cover
Minnesota Approves CenturyLink-Qwest Merger
5 Questions for...Helen Brunner, Director, Media Democracy Fund
Kids' TV Up Despite Regulatory Challenges
New legislation a boon to community radio
Tribune Company bankruptcy nearing finish line
FCC REFORM
ISPs' LETTER TO WHITE HOUSE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Sara Jerome]
Broadband for America, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, NCTA, USTelecom, Time Warner Cable, and CTIA sent a letter to the White House saying the Federal Communications Commission is failing to comply with President Obama's directive to slash unnecessary regulations. The agency failed to propose reforms or repeal rules during its own regulatory review, the companies said. The companies offered ideas on how the FCC can streamline regulations to better promote broadband deployment: rely more heavily on the market, resist predictive judgments about technology trends, avoid making its data fit predetermined outcomes, embrace the limits of its authority and accelerate its decision-making speed.
benton.org/node/52018 | Hill, The
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
REQUEST TO FCC
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) along with Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Rep Lee Terry (R-Nebraska) wrote Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski asking for the economic analysis behind imposing new network neutrality regulations. They requested an answer by Monday, March 7. In addition to that analysis, the congressmen are looking for an answer on whether the FCC will close its open proceeding on classifying broadband as a Title II telecommunications service.
benton.org/node/52033 | Broadcasting&Cable
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BLACKBURN ON NET NEUTRALITY HEARING
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Sara Jerome]
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), an ardent net-neutrality opponent, is advocating that a hearing on the subject in the House next week should include a broader group of voices than just broadband companies. "The focus on [Internet service providers] reflects a flawed perspective on the issue. Net neutrality is not the government protecting Americans from greedy ISPs; it is an arrogant bureaucracy imposing its vision of the Internet on innovators and job creators. Those are the people we need to hear from," Blackburn's spokesman Claude Chafin said.
benton.org/node/52034 | Hill, The
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NET NEUTRALITY BACK IN COURT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] It was predictable that a telephone or cable company would challenge the rules proposed last December by the Federal Communications Commission to guarantee that the Internet remains an open network. Still, the lawsuits filed by Verizon and MetroPCS earlier this year against the FCC’s net neutrality rules are disappointing. The suits fall into a swirl of antiregulatory fervor among Republicans on Capitol Hill. The continuing resolution passed by the House last week forbids the FCC from using any money to put the new rules into effect. While the FCC believes its new rules will survive the court challenge, we fear that its strategy is legally vulnerable. Verizon and MetroPCS are bringing their cases in the DC Circuit. The choice for American consumers is between the open broadband they have come to expect — in which they can view any content from sources big and small — and a walled garden somewhat like cable TV, where providers can decide what we can see, and at what price.
benton.org/node/52098 | New York Times
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TELECOM AND NETFLIX
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
The more that consumers embrace the movies-at-home ethos of Netflix, the more uncomfortable major players in the entertainment industry have become. Now Netflix, a secretive company known more for the laid-back attitude of its founder than for sharp elbows, has emerged at the center of a titanic clash over the future of television. Because if Netflix can bring movies straight into your living room through the Internet, it can bring a full slate of TV shows, too. Pretty soon, who needs cable? On the other hand, if cable companies can bring you movies and TV directly over high-speed Internet lines, who needs Netflix? Multibillion-dollar corporations are fretting over those questions and fighting to influence the outcome.
benton.org/node/52089 | Washington Post
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CONNECTED COMMUNITY GRANTS AVAILABLE
[SOURCE: Department of Agriculture, AUTHOR: Press release]
Rural Utilities Service (RUS) Administrator Jonathan Adelstein announced that USDA is accepting applications for grants to provide broadband access in rural communities currently without broadband service. Joining him to make the announcement was Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Funding is provided through the Community Connect Grant program. Grants are available to communities in the most rural, economically challenged areas where loans would not be sustainable. Funds may be used to construct, acquire or lease facilities to deploy broadband to residents, businesses and essential community facilities such as police and fire stations, libraries, schools, and health care clinics. Eligible entities are incorporated organizations, Tribes and tribal organizations, state and local government bodies, for-profit or non-profit cooperatives, private corporations and limited liability corporations. Individuals are not eligible to apply. Grants range from $50,000 to $1.5 million. While grants cannot be renewed, applications to extend existing projects are welcome. Each project requires matching contributions, must serve a rural area where broadband service does not exist, must provide services to critical communities free of charge for two years, and must offer basic service to all premises within the proposed service area. $25 million is available.
benton.org/node/52010 | Department of Agriculture | Federal register notice
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HONG KONG BROADBAND NETWORK
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Randall Stross]
Hong Kong residents can enjoy astoundingly fast broadband at an astoundingly low price. It became available last year, when a scrappy company called Hong Kong Broadband Network introduced a new option for its fiber-to-the-home service: a speed of 1,000 megabits a second — known as a “gig” — for less than $26 a month. In the United States, we don't have anything close to that. But we could. And we should. Verizon, the nation’s leading provider of fiber-to-the-home service, doesn't offer a gig, or even half that speed. Instead, it markets a “fastest” service that is only 50 megabits a second for downloading and 20 megabits a second for uploading. It costs $144.99 a month. That’s one-twentieth the speed of Hong Kong Broadband’s service for downloading, for more than five times the price. One thing working in Hong Kong’s favor, of course, is its greater population density, enabling broadband companies to reach multiuser dwellings at a much lower cost. But density is only part of the explanation. The personality of Hong Kong Broadband should be noted, too. A wholly owned subsidiary of City Telecom, it is an aggressive newcomer. It was willing to suffer seven years of losses while building out its fiber network before it turned profitable. Hong Kong Broadband’s principal competitor is an older company, PCCW, which has several other lines of business, including phone, television and mobile. PCCW also offers gigabit service to the home and benefits from the same population density. But PCCW’s price is more than twice as much as Hong Kong Broadband’s. Despite its low prices, Hong Kong Broadband now operates in the black. Inexpensive pricing of gigabit broadband is practical in American cities, too. “This is an eminently replicable model,” says Benoit Felten, a co-founder of Diffraction Analysis, a consulting business based in Paris. “But not by someone who already owns a network — unless they’re willing to scrap the network.”
benton.org/node/52069 | New York Times
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JOURNALISM
SENATE BILL TO DEFUND PUBLIC BROADCASTING
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Sara Jerome]
Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced a bill to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which doles out federal funds to radio and television stations. Sen DeMint said it "should be an easy decision" to halt taxpayer money for public broadcasting while the nation is "on the edge of bankruptcy." He pointed out that the bipartisan debt commission convened by President Obama suggested ending the subsidies. The pair focused on NPR and PBS, two major recipients of public media dollars — particularly on the salaries of media execs at both outlets, including the nearly $1 million a Sesame Street president takes home each year. "Americans struggling to make ends meet shouldn't be forced to fund public broadcasting when there are already thousands of choices for educational and entertainment programming on the television, radio and Web," Sen DeMint said. The federal government issued about $420 million last year for public media. Obama's recent budget request included $451 million for this purpose. The total over the last decade is about $4 billion, according to Sens Coburn and DeMint.
benton.org/node/52019 | Hill, The
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INVESTING IN INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: ]
National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System and local public broadcast stations around the country are hiring more journalists and pumping millions of dollars into investigative news to make up for what they see as a lack of deep-digging coverage by their for-profit counterparts. Public radio and TV stations have seen the need for reporting that holds government and business accountable increase as newspapers and TV networks cut their staffs and cable television stations have filled their schedules with more opinion journalism. In the past three years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has invested more than $90 million in federal funds on new journalism initiatives. That includes a $10 million local journalism initiative that is paying for the creation of five regional centers that will help local PBS and NPR stations cover news that affects wider geographic areas. Also, a $6 million grant from the group expanded the PBS investigative series "Frontline" from a seasonal series with a summer break to a year-round program. Meanwhile, NPR has started an investigative reporting unit supported by philanthropic funds including $3.2 million donated in the last year.
benton.org/node/52061 | Associated Press
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NEWS JUNKIES AND ACTIVISM
[SOURCE: Chronicle of Philanthropy, AUTHOR: Cody Switzer]
People who regularly follow the news are more likely to be involved in their communities and feel they make a difference, according to a study released by three nonprofits this week. Those findings were unveiled as the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation played host to about 350 community-foundation leaders as part of its annual Media Learning Seminar -- an event that pulls together journalism experts and foundation officials for two days of discussions about how foundations can help provide better information to their communities, in part by giving grants to news organizations. In conjunction with the release of the study, Knight unveiled a “community information toolkit” designed to help community foundations identify problems with news-media coverage and information infrastructure in their cities and towns.
benton.org/node/52059 | Chronicle of Philanthropy
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PRIVACY
AMAZON PRIVACY CASE
[SOURCE: MediaPost, AUTHOR: Wendy Davis]
Amazon has been hit with a potential class-action lawsuit for allegedly circumventing the privacy settings of Internet Explorer users. "For years, Amazon has been taking visitors' personal information that it was not entitled to take," Nicole Del Vecchio and Ariana Del Vecchio allege in their complaint against the online retailer, which was filed this week in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Their lawsuit alleges that Amazon got around the privacy filters built into Internet Explorer by "spoofing" the browser into classifying Amazon as offering more privacy protections than it did. The Del Vecchios accuse Amazon of violating several laws, including a federal computer fraud law and a Washington state consumer protection law. The lawsuit comes several months after researchers at Carnegie -Mellon published a study concluding that many Web sites thwart users' privacy settings by providing erroneous information to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. That browser enables users to automatically reject certain cookies, including tracking cookies. To accomplish this, the browser relies on Web site operators to provide accurate "compact policies" -- or codes that provide information about their privacy policies to the browser. But, the report stated, many sites using compact policies "are misrepresenting their privacy practices, thus misleading users and rendering privacy protection tools ineffective." The Del Vecchio's allege in their lawsuit that Amazon was among the companies to use defective compact polices.
benton.org/node/52045 | MediaPost
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PIRACY
ICE WEB SITE SEIZURES
[SOURCE: paidContent.org, AUTHOR: Joe Mullin]
Speaking at a Silicon Valley legal conference, Rep Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said that the recent website shutdown by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement COICA are way out of line, and an abuse of due process. In particular, she pointed out a recent episode during which, while pursuing a handful of websites allegedly connected to child pornography, ICE agents accidentally shut down more than 80,000 unrelated websites and tarnished them with child porn-related accusations. The ICE operations are taking down websites without due process, and “apparently without any regard to the First Amendment or fair use,” said Lofgren. Most of the ICE’s recent seizures have been over alleged copyright and trademark violations, not child porn. But the owners of the 80,000 websites that were slandered with the child porn accusation should consider suing the federal government, she added. She is the second politician on Capitol Hill to express concerns about ICE’s behavior, following earlier comments by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).
benton.org/node/52041 | paidContent.org
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