February 2012

US Court of Appeals Denies Challenge to FCC Pole Attachment Payment Regime

The US Court of Appeals has upheld the Federal Communications Commission regime for the price cable and telecom companies pay for connecting to utility poles as "just and reasonable."

The FCC is directed by Congress to set a reasonable range of compensation and gives the FCC discretion within that range. Power companies can refuse connection -- per the original 1978 pole attachment law, but that was narrowed in the 1996 Telecom Act to cases of insufficient capacity or specific exceptions for things like safety and reliability. The Supreme Court upheld the FCC's pole attachment compensation regime in 1987. Following the 1996 act modification, Gulf Power and other utilities raised their rates beyond the maximum, cable operators challenged the increase and the FCC ruled in favor of cable operators. It is that decision Gulf Power was challenging in the petition that has now been denied. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit last week said it was denying the appeal for a couple of reasons. First was that it held that Gulf Power's challenge was essentially mute because the 11th Circuit in the Alabama Power case (2002) had already ruled on a similar challenge, and since Alabama Power and Gulf Power, were both owned by Southern Company, the court ruled that the doctrine of "issue preclusion" applies, which bars re-litigating the same case in a similar court. Gulf Power had also argued that the court had a new issue in front of it because the FCC had applied that 11th circuit decision on when a pole was at capacity too narrowly. The D.C. Circuit was having none of that, either. It upheld the FCC interpretation that the fact that a utility company might have to rearrange some connections to make room did not mean the pole was at capacity.

FTC Chairman: Google Offers 'Brutal Choice' on Privacy Policies

The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission said on that Google was giving consumers a "binary and somewhat brutal" choice on whether they want to go along with the changes to the company's privacy policies set to go into effect next week.

Chairman Jon Leibowitz was asked by Tech Daily Dose during an appearance on C-Span's Newsmakers show whether he is personally concerned about the changes Google is making to its privacy policies. The company announced last month that it was consolidating more than 60 privacy policies and that it would begin tracking consumers as they move from one Google service to another. "Other than saying that they have been clear, and that it's a fairly binary and somewhat brutal choice that they are giving consumers, I think I can't say much more," Chairman Leibowitz said. "But we're aware." Chairman Leibowitz urged companies to provide more understandable and clear privacy policies that would allow consumers to make a choice on whether they want to continue to visit a website or use an online service offered by those companies. "If companies gave clearer disclosures and, again some companies do give pretty clear disclosures, and Google in what it is doing is giving clear disclosure, I think consumers will be able to make a choice," he said. "And maybe, by the way, you have competition over privacy policies, which would be a good thing."

DHS pinpoints government computers set to lose Internet access

The Obama Administration employed a new government-wide network surveillance tool and private sector assistance to search for corrupted agency computers that are at risk of going offline in less than two weeks, Homeland Security Department officials said.

The DNSChanger virus had infected half of the government's major agencies as of early 2012, security firm Internet Identity reported on Feb. 2. Researchers there found 27 of 55 government departments had at least one corrupted computer or router. DNSChanger, which federal agents started eradicating last year, worked by commanding compromised machines in a botnet to communicate with rogue servers that redirected the victims to fraudulent websites.

Harry Potter E-Books Will Be In Libraries

J. K. Rowling’s Pottermore still has not officially launched, but the Harry Potter e-books and digital audiobooks sold exclusively through the site will also be available in public and school libraries, in a distribution agreement with OverDrive. OverDrive, the largest distributor of digital materials to libraries, is also providing the sales platform for paid e-book sales on Pottermore.

Facebook spies on phone users' text messages, report says

The (London) Sunday Times reports that Facebook is accessing smartphone users' personal text messages. Facebook admitted reading text messages belonging to smartphone users who downloaded the social-networking app and said that it was accessing the data as part of a trial to launch its own messaging service. Facebook denied the report, saying it is running a "limited" test of new features that may require the company to make use of permissions it already asks from users to access their texts. Facebook said its application for Android operating systems does not read or write text messages for most users. However, the company is "currently running a limited test of mobile features which integrate with SMS functionality."

Content May Not Be King Online

Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser suggested that content may not be king on the Internet as he launched coverage of Internet advertising companies.

"On the Web, the argument content is king is difficult, if not impossible, to make in the long-run, in our opinion," he wrote in a report entitled "Internet Advertising: Content Passes The Crown," taking issue with an old industry mantra. "What is important are infrastructure, platforms and tools controlled by Google, Facebook and others." Overall, he argued that "king content [has been] usurped" by those other important factors in the Web age. Describing winning companies in that context, Wieser said "winners take most." He sees three characteristics of successful Web businesses: "best-in-class provision of ad buying infrastructure, such as repositories of data and related technologies, and tools which support efficient use of the Internet by marketers; best-in-class ad sales infrastructure; and the ability to be "the hub of users’ overall needs or the bulk of their needs from the Web."

Apple Ignored Warning on Address-Book Access

Apple was warned as long ago as 2010 that the popular Gowalla location-sharing iPhone app was uploading users' address books without alerting them. This raises questions about why Apple didn't do then what it announced it would do recently. In a statement, the company said software upgrades for iPhones would be issued to protect users from the practice, which is forbidden.

FCC Strategic Goals, Where is Diversity?

[Commentary] Despite the Federal Communications Commission’s assurance that diversity, in all of its forms – “viewpoint, outlet, program, source, and minority and female ownership diversity” – is a key policy goal, the FCC’s lack of action and the resulting decline of minority ownership illustrate that diversity is should be a much higher priority. One of the FCC’s strategic goals is to ensure its continual improvement, and a subset of that goal is to “[c]reate and sustain an organizational culture that encourages diversity, innovation, accountability, and continual improvement.” One of the ways in which the FCC could reach this goal is to make diversity a strategic goal and to set benchmarks for progress. It is past time for the FCC to stop dancing around diversity. The FCC should evaluate its process for furthering diversity and begin implementing real change.

Mobile Network Operators Set Guidelines for App Privacy

Amid growing concerns over the privacy policies of mobile phone apps, the GSMA has published a set of guidelines that aims to give users more transparency, choice and control over how apps use their personal information. The guidelines outline how consumers' privacy should be protected when they are using mobile applications and services that access, use or collect personal information.

European mobile phone operators including Orange, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom have said they will implement the guidelines, but with many apps being developed independently of the big players, digital rights organizations have questioned how valuable a voluntary code of conduct really is. Anne Bouverot, GSMA‘s Director General, admitted that there are significant privacy concerns over what apps do with users' information. "The privacy guidelines which are being implemented now are an important first step, but to effect real change, there needs to be close collaboration between the mobile industry, Internet industry, civil society and regulators," said Bouverot.

How to protect your privacy on Google

Under new privacy rules that Google is implementing on March 1, all of the data that Google collects based on your usage of YouTube, Gmail, Google+ and Google search will be aggregated into one user profile. And you can't simply click a button to opt out. Google's ability to collect this information, which they use to deliver targeted ads to the pages that you look at, is part of the bargain. However, there are ways to manage your privacy. Here's what you can do.

Benton

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