February 2012

Comcast launches minority-owned channels to meet regulatory commitments

Comcast will launch four minority-owned networks, including one led by former basketball player Magic Johnson and one proposed by rapper and producer Sean "Diddy" Combs, the company announced. The channels are part of a commitment Comcast made to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last year to secure approval for its bid to take over NBC-Universal. The agreement requires Comcast to launch 10 independently-owned channels over eight years, including four African-American channels and four Latino channels. Comcast also announced El Rey, a channel proposed by director Robert Rodriguez that will feature action movies and TV shows for Latino and general audiences. BabyFirst Americas, launching in April, is aimed at young children and their parents.

Comcast Takes Aim At Netflix With 'Streampix'

Comcast -- looking to take a bite out of Netflix's hide -- is launching Xfinity Streampix, a new multiscreen subscription video service that provides movies and full series of past-season TV shows that will be included in several premium bundles and offered for $5 per month with other video packages.

To launch Streampix, the cable operator has cut licensing agreements with Disney-ABC Television Group (for TV shows only), NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and Cookie Jar. Like Netflix's streaming-video service, Streampix will be available to customers in and outside the home on multiple devices including TVs (as a subscription VOD folder), computers and mobile devices. The new service is separate from the 75,000 TV shows and movies currently available to Comcast video subscribers on VOD, on XfinityTV.com and through the Xfinity TV app.

Youth shaping future of online TV, movies, music

Young people want their music, TV and movies now — even if it means they get these things illegally. But here's a radical notion to consider: What if young people who steal content weren't viewed as the problem? What if they and advocates for maximum online access could persuade the entertainment industry to loosen its tight grip on its coveted, copyrighted material — quite the opposite of what the industry is trying to do right now?

Silicon Valley: The rise of the adolescent CEOs

A look at the ever-younger entrepreneurs that Silicon Valley investors are backing these days. While little data on the phenomenon exists, venture capitalists say they are funding more chief executives under age 21 than ever before.

Marc Andreessen and other venture capitalists say the entrepreneurs they fund at 18 or 19 typically have been prepping for years -- learning computer code, taking on ambitious freelance projects and educating themselves on the Internet. Some are self-consciously molding themselves in the image of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 27, who created computer games as a child and was taking a graduate-level computer course by his early teens.

Social messaging apps 'lost networks $13.9bn in 2011'

Social messaging applications cost mobile network operators $13.9 billion (£8.8 billion) in lost SMS revenue last year, a report has claimed.

Analysis firm Ovum studied global use of popular services like Whatsapp, Blackberry Messenger and Facebook chat. It concluded that mobile operators must "work together to face the challenge from major internet players." Industry experts say operators can offset any losses through effective costing plans by mobile networks. The report gathered usage statistics from the leading social messaging applications typically used on smartphones across the world. As well as well-known names from popular social networks in the Western world, the study also included apps such as MXit - a massively popular program used mainly in South Africa. Social messaging apps make use of a smartphone's internet connection to send messages rather than the usually far costlier SMS - short message service - system. However, the study did not factor in the extra income networks received from mobile data costs because of increased internet usage resulting from social messaging. The research's author, Neha Dharia, said operators must look to work closely with the big players in social messaging.

Don’t Shoot The Messenger Over User Content, Courts Confirm

People are lining up to sue sites like Yelp and Ripoff Report over their users’ misbehavior, but courts continue to slam the door in their face. A new report shows the sites’ traditional legal shield is still strong, but that some are trying to use intellectual property laws to crack it. In “2011 State of the Law Regarding Website Owner Liability for User-Generated Content,” Internet lawyer Catherine Gellis offers a helpful update of websites’ ongoing effort to fight off lawsuits created by their users. Gellis found that websites’ core legal shield (Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act) continued to gain traction as courts last year again confirmed that businesses like auctioneers and consumer review sites can’t be sued over what their users do.

Regulations.gov: Remaking Public Participation

On January 18, 2011, the President issued Executive Order 13563, in which he directed regulatory agencies to base regulations on an “open exchange of information and perspectives” and to promote public participation in Federal rulemaking. The President identified Regulations.gov as the centralized portal for timely public access to regulatory content online. In response to the President’s direction, Regulations.gov has launched a major redesign, including innovative new search tools, social media connections, and better access to regulatory data. The result is a significantly improved website that will help members of the public to engage with agencies and ultimately to improve the content of rules. The redesign of Regulations.gov also fulfills the President’s commitment in The Open Government Partnership National Action Plan to “improve public services,” including to “expand public participation in the development of regulations.” This step is just one of many, consistent with the National Action Plan, designed to make our Federal Government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative.

HHS Sec Sebelius announces major progress in doctors, hospital use of health information technology

Department of Health and Human Services’ Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the number of hospitals using health information technology (IT) has more than doubled in the last two years. She also announced new data showing nearly 2,000 hospitals and more than 41,000 doctors have received $3.1 billion in incentive payments for ensuring meaningful use of health IT, particularly certified Electronic Health Records (EHR).

Secretary Sebelius is in Kansas City, Missouri visiting Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley Health Science Institute to make this announcement and discuss the growth of professional jobs in the health information technology field. The announcement details information from a new survey conducted by the American Hospital Association and reported by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT which found that the percentage of U.S. hospitals that had adopted EHRs has more than doubled from 16 to 35 percent between 2009 and 2011. And, 85 percent of hospitals now report that by 2015 they intend to take advantage of the incentive payments made available through the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. The announcement also highlights new data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) detailing $3.12 billion in incentive payments the agency has made to physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers who have started to meaningfully use EHRs to improve the quality of patient care. In January alone, CMS provided $519 million to eligible providers. EHR incentive payments can total as much as $44,000 under the Medicare EHR Incentive Program and $63,750 under the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program.

Why the Chicago News Cooperative is closing

James O'Shea, founder and editor of the Chicago News Cooperative, told his staff that on February 26 the CNC would shut down. Or to be more specific, it would stop publishing in the New York Times and stop maintaining its website, the two forums in which it publicly exists.

Two pieces of bad news drove this decision. O'Shea was counting on a substantial grant from the MacArthur Foundation, which had helped put CNC on its feet in the fall of 2009 and had already given it a total of a million dollars. But a problem arose. The IRS has yet to rule that CNC and similar web-based news operations in other cities deserve the not-for-profit 501(c)(3) they've applied for. This hasn't been a problem for these operations, which have been able to receive through fiscal agents — which in the case of CNC has been WTTW. But a couple of weeks ago a MacArthur staff attorney said, wait a minute. He advised the foundation that until the IRS ruled for CNC, MacArthur grants should be earmarked for specific programs rather than simply to sustain the co-op. This didn't mean that CNC had no way to use the MacArthur grant to stay afloat, but it did mean a different approval process and a longer wait for the money to arrive. O'Shea found out about the delay early this past week. He was in no financial position to wait. Meanwhile, CNC had been in conversations for several months with the New York Times, for which it has produced four pages of Chicago news a week. The Times knew that CNC's financial position was precarious. O'Shea hoped the Times would pay more for the service; but instead the Times decided not to go forward at all with a shaky partner in a publishing experiment far more important to CNC than it was to the Times. On Feb 16 the Times called O'Shea and they called off the relationship. But the closing of CNC is about more than a delayed foundation grant and a canceled contract. CNC has suffered throughout from a lack of development muscle.

More competition is key to cutting excessive international mobile roaming charges, says OECD

Governments should do more to boost competition in international mobile roaming markets in order to drive down the high prices being paid by consumers and businesses, says the OECD.

To help them, the OECD has laid out a series of measures that governments could take that would encourage effective competition, raise consumer awareness and protection and ensure fairer prices. The mobile phone sector is considered generally competitive in domestic markets. But for users travelling abroad, OECD analysis says roaming prices are excessive compared to the costs incurred by operators. A recent OECD report revealed that prices of up to USD 25 were being paid for downloading 1 MB of data while roaming abroad. The OECD Recommendation says that promoting transparent information on roaming prices would protect consumers and businesses. A financial limit for data roaming services would also help. It is essential to remove barriers that prevent mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) from having access to wholesale mobile services on local conditions and on fair and reasonable terms, says the OECD. These MVNOs should also benefit from regulated wholesale roaming rates between operators. If other measures are not effective, governments should consider price regulation for roaming services. Wholesale roaming services could be regulated by means of bilateral or multilateral wholesale agreements with mutually established price caps.

Benton

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