November 2011

Which tech companies back SOPA? Microsoft, Apple, and 27 others

“No comment” is Microsoft’s official position on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). But Microsoft did support the pre-SOPA Protect IP Act, something that SOPA did draw on heavily for its roots. To quote the official page on the House website: “The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) builds on the Pro IP Act of 2008 and the Senate’s Protect IP Act introduced earlier this year.” So we have Microsoft supporting the intellectual ancestor of SOPA, but that’s certainly not enough to say that the company supports SOPA outright. Microsoft is a major player in the Business Software Alliance, along with Apple and 27 other companies. And the BSA supports SOPA.

National electronic health records network gets closer

The ambitious goal of setting up a nationwide, interconnected, private and secure electronic health records system isn't yet a reality -- but we're getting closer.

The 2009 Recovery Act, better known as the stimulus bill, set aside more than $20 billion for incentives to health care providers that deploy and meaningfully use certified electronic health records systems in their offices or hospitals. The first incentives are set to go out in the form of $22,000 Medicaid payments to early adopters within the next six months. Since we're still in the early phases, it's hard to get clear numbers for adoption rates. Prior to the bill, just 17% of physicians' offices and 12% of hospitals had implemented some kind of electronic health records system. Now, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), the agency tasked with organizing the electronic health records project, 75% of hospitals have responded to surveys saying they are planning on investing in health information exchange services.

Network Neutrality Should Be Enshrined in EU Law Says Parliament

Network neutrality should be enshrined in European Union law, says the European Parliament. The Parliament adopted a resolution calling on the European Commission to do more to guarantee an open Internet and net neutrality. Parliamentarians want to see E.U. telecom rules properly and consistently enforced and want internet traffic management practices to be monitored closely in order to "preserve the open and neutral character of Internet."

Lawmaker opposition to SOPA grows

While the Stop Online Piracy Act has a lot of bipartisan support, it’s also garnered quite a bit of lawmaker opposition — particularly from California politicians, who are joining Silicon Valley opposition to the bill.

Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D- CA) said on Twitter that Congress needs to “find a better solution” than SOPA, adding the hashtag “#DontBreakTheInternet.” Earlier this week, fellow-Californian Reps. Anna Eshoo (D), Doris Matsui (D), Mike Thompson (D), John Campbell (R), Zoe Lofgren (D), Mike Honda (D) and George Miller (D) all signed a letter to the House Judiciary Committee outlining their opposition. Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO), Ron Paul (R-TX), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and Mike Doyle (D- PA), also signed the letter.

Why the House is stacking the deck on Internet piracy

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on a proposed bill to combat online piracy. Five proponents were invited to testify, compared to just one opponent. The decision to invite just one dissenter -- Google -- to testify seemed designed not only to present a lopsided picture of the bill, but also to provide sponsor House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and his allies with a punching bag.

Both committee members and witnesses, such as the Motion Picture Association of America's Michael O'Leary, basically accused Google of working in league with content pirates. In his opening statement, Chairman Smith accused Google of trying to "obstruct the Committee's consideration of bipartisan legislation." Did he mean, by opposing it? O'Leary said that Google searches of movies often put pirate sites above legitimate sites in the search ranking. Amid all the talk of Google seeking to "profit" from piracy, the implication was that Google purposefully engineers the rankings to favor the former. O'Leary offered no evidence of this. The battle here -- basically producers of movies and music versus technology and Internet companies -- is a longstanding one. To get an idea of why so many legislators have taken sides with the former group, one might simply compare how much each side spends on lobbying Congress.

Chairman Leahy adds cybercrime measure to defense bill

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) filed amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday that would increase the penalties for cybercrimes and make it a felony to damage a computer that controls systems critical to national security.

The amendment clarifies that only serious misconduct such as hacking should be prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as opposed to relatively innocuous actions such as lying in an online profile or violating a site’s terms-of-use agreement. It would increase the criminal penalties for computer hacking and conspiracy to commit hacking. The amendment also includes several changes proposed earlier this year by the Obama Administration, including streamlining the criminal penalties for computer fraud and creating a new offense for damaging systems that control critical infrastructure such as transportation or public health networks.

Music industry groups slam broadcasters in supercommittee letter

In a letter to the deficit-reduction committee, four music industry groups took a shot at the National Association of Broadcasters for resisting incentive spectrum auctions.

Broadcasters and the music industry have a long-running feud over whether artists should receive royalties when radio stations play their songs. In the letter, the heads of the American Federation of Musicians, the Recording Academy, SoundExchange and the Music Managers Forum wrote that they “strongly support” empowering the Federal Communications Commission to hold incentive auctions of spectrum currently used by television broadcasters. The auctions would raise billions of dollars in revenue for deficit reduction and free up spectrum for wireless broadband devices. The program would be voluntary, and the government would split some of the revenue with the participating stations.

Political Ads To Hit $3.2 Billion, Most In Local TV Buys

Some $3.2 billion in political advertising is estimated to hit television networks, stations and other platforms for the 2012 -- with the weight of these commercials doing creating more than their usual upset: Price hikes in TV commercials.

Media buying agency Harmelin Media expects TV commercial increases of between 7% and 15% in key election periods for non-political marketers -- especially for spot TV market in the 45 to 60 day window before a primary or general election. Within the general election window -- Sept. 7 through Nov. 6, 2012 -- it says rates are estimated to rise on average by 10%, due to political advertising. Early morning and early fringe dayparts -- those near news programming -- will have the strongest impact on rates: a projected 16% rise. It says early news, prime access and late news dayparts could see rates rise 9%. It also warns there will be heavily, then usual preemptions of existing schedules. (Political advertisers get the lowest unit rate and the ability to have the commercials inserted in place of non-political advertisers). Also there will be overall viewer fatigue from the onslaught of political ads affecting all TV advertising effectiveness during these periods. Harmelin says, by way of Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis, that the overall $3.2 billion in expected TV political advertising will represent a 52% increase in TV dollars versus the last presidential campaign season in 2008.

11% Of Magazine Exposures Are Digital-Only, Survey Shows

Eleven percent of U.S. adults’ exposures to magazines are exclusively via digital platforms, new data from GfK MRI says. But with newsstands available on more devices, that number should increase. Between March and October 2011, GfK MRI estimates that the total U.S. gross magazine audience (the number of consumer exposures to magazine-branded content on any platform, including print) was 1.58 billion. Of those, 135 million exposures were print + digital, and 166 million were digital-only. That digital-only group is made primarily of men (63 percent), and they’re more likely to be young, affluent and well-educated.

Bloggers Remember Rooney

The death of a 92-year-old journalist--whose curmudgeonly commentary was part of the longest-running prime time TV news magazine--prompted wide-ranging tributes on blogs last week. For the week of November 7-11, the No. 1 story on blogs was the November 4 death of venerable commentator Andy Rooney, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Rooney's popular essays capped CBS's 60 Minutes broadcasts for more than 30 years. He was a writer even before the age of television as a correspondent for The Stars and Stripes during World War II, and he had worked at CBS for more than 60 years. His first on-air essay debuted July 2, 1978 after he had served as a producer and narrator for a series of broadcasts on CBS. And by his final send-off on October 2, 2011, Americans knew him as the bushy-browed and somewhat cantankerous observer of American life. Despite Rooney's status as an old-school newsman, bloggers revered him for bringing a distinct new mode of communication to the news.

Benton

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