February 2012

Big Media Executives Take To FCC To Fight Political Advertising Disclosures

Have you ever wondered exactly how much the Mitt Romney or Barack Obama campaigns are paying for their television advertising? If the companies that own most of those TV outlets get their wish, you won’t. Executives from News Corporation, NBCUniversal, the Walt Disney Company and the National Association of Broadcasters met with officials at the FCC on Monday to express their displeasure at proposed public interest rules, according to FCC filings. The rules in question would force TV networks to share details online about political advertising, including the rates that political campaigns pay for ad time. The executives argued that by posting the rate information in their “public files” and posting those files online:

“[C]ompetitors in the market and commercial advertisers may anonymously glean highly sensitive pricing data, which, by law, will represent the lowest rates charged by the station to its most favored commercial advertisers,” adding that they were “[O]pen to discussing other options for keeping sensitive rate information out of the online public file.”

Public Interest Groups to Congress: So-Called Reform Bills Would Compound Corporate Influence at the FCC

Forty-five public interest groups sent a letter to the House Commerce Committee opposing two bills that would severely limit the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to promote competition, innovation and access to communications services. The two bills, under the guise of “reforming the FCC,” would put the very companies the FCC is tasked with regulating in control of the agency. The letter urges lawmakers to adopt more sensible reforms that would better protect consumers and promote economic development. The groups write: “These bills would severely hinder the FCC’s ability to carry out its congressional mandate to promote competition, innovation and the availability of communications services. We urge the Committee to cancel its proposed markup of these two bills as currently drafted, and consider more suitable reforms to the FCC that focus on protecting consumers and limiting the undue influence of corporate lobbyists.”

Google Enters Georgia’s Public Broadband Debate

Google is among a group of organizations urging Georgia legislators to oppose Senate Bill SB 313. It would prevent funding public broadband networks and subsidizing costs of services with public tax dollars.

But Google and other Internet-based organizations argue that could hurt private-public partnerships and impact workforce development. In a letter to Sen. David Shafer the coalition states: “...this bill, if enacted, will harm both the public and private sectors, stifle economic growth, prevent the creation or retention of thousands of jobs, hamper work force development and diminish the quality of life in Georgia.” Representatives from eight rural cities and counties have also voiced disapproval with the measure

FBI’s Steve Jobs file: He will ‘distort reality ... to achieve his goals’

Steve Jobs, being considered in 1991 for an appointment under President George H.W. Bush, underwent a thorough background investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to newly released files from the agency.

The FBI amassed a lengthy and often unflattering file on Apple’s co-founder, with more than 30 interviews of friends, neighbors, family, former business associates and Jobs, that revealed his early drug use and concerns that the then-head of NeXT was neglecting his daughter born out of wedlock with his high school girlfriend. The business genius was a late bloomer, having graduated from Homestead High School in Cupertino (CA) with a 2.65 GPA. Those interviewed generally agreed that he was a strong business leader and would succeed in an appointment to Bush’s Export Council. “They recommended him for a position of trust and responsibility,” according to the FBI files. It would be five years until Apple bought NeXT and returned Steve Jobs to its fold, and six years until he would be appointed the company’s interim chief executive.

Senate panel clears bill to allow cameras in Supreme Court

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved bipartisan legislation requiring television cameras in the Supreme Court. The vote was 11-7, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) siding with six Republicans in opposition.

The top Republican on the committee, Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), voted in favor along with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). The issue for years has been a priority for many lawmakers, but the high court's decision to hear challenges to the healthcare reform law's individual mandate and Medicaid expansion this spring has made the argument for broadcasting oral arguments and the justices' questions even more compelling. The bill however isn't expected to pass before the high court hears oral arguments over three days starting March 26; the House has yet to even schedule a markup, let alone a floor vote.

In world of copyright craziness, BitTorrent soars to new heights

It's a turbulent time in the world of content distribution. Despite a successful protest against overly restrictive anti-piracy legislation, law enforcement has demonstrated its already considerable power to take copyright-infringing websites offline, and several hosting and torrent sites have gone dark voluntarily to evade prosecution. In the middle of all these warring groups -- or perhaps more accurately, completely removed from them -- stands BitTorrent, a company whose technological innovation gave the Internet important new capabilities, making it easier for everyone to share files, both legally and illegally.

Although the word "BitTorrent" is often used in context with the word "piracy," the company itself has steered clear of legal problems by avoiding any distribution of unlicensed content, and narrowing its focus to delivering the best Internet file-sharing technology it's capable of building. BitTorrent, developer of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol and owner of the popular BitTorrent and uTorrent client software, says its monthly active users have increased from 100 million to 150 million in the past year. Despite the recent upheaval noted above, such as the shutdown of torrent search engine BTJunkie and even lawsuits filed against BitTorrent users, BitTorrent Chief Strategy Officer Shahi Ghanem tells Ars he expects nothing but continued growth. And the company has its eye on new markets, including live streaming of content and an experimental "cloud storage" service taking advantage of the same peer-to-peer technology BitTorrent is known for.

Super Bowl XLVI Drove Internet Traffic Down As Much As 20%

With more than 111 million Americans tuning in to Sunday's Super Bowl on TV, overall Internet usage in the U.S. declined as much as 20% on Feb. 5 compared with an average Sunday, even with NBC's debut of the first legal online video feed of the game, according to a study by network-equipment maker Sandvine. NBC's free, live online stream of Super Bowl XLVI accounted for 6.2% of all downstream broadband traffic in the U.S. at 9 p.m. Eastern Sunday -- while Netflix's share dropped precipitously during the game, according to Sandvine, which sells equipment for monitoring and managing bandwidth on fixed and mobile networks.

Can't We All Get Along?

If you thought the sparring between AT&T and Sprint ended with the demise late last year of AT&T's bid to buy T-Mobile, think again.

AT&T is once again on opposite sides of a major telecom issue with Sprint, a fierce critic of the AT&T-T-Mobile merger, and several other smaller rivals. The issue this time is over legislation aimed at freeing up more spectrum to meet the public's growing demand for wireless technologies. Sprint, along with T-Mobile, C-Spire Wireless, Cricket and other smaller wireless operators want members of Congress to give the Federal Communications Commission discretion to design future spectrum auctions as it sees fit. They called on lawmakers Wednesday to strip a provision from House spectrum legislation that would bar the FCC from imposing restrictions on who can bid for spectrum given up for auction by broadcasters. "The proposed provision would substantially limit the FCC's ability to promote competition and a competitive wireless marketplace for consumers throughout America. It would facilitate spectrum warehousing, inefficient use of scarce spectrum resources, and reduce spectrum auction revenues to the U.S. Treasury," they wrote in a letter to the House and Senate payroll tax conference committee. The payroll tax cut package could include the spectrum legislation.

The FCC map of places your mobile data plan won’t work

The Federal Communications Commission is spearheading a big effort to get rural Americans online, and to help, later this year carriers can apply for a $300 million fund to bring wireless broadband to the heartlands. Only it’s not the heartlands, as the nifty interactive map shows. The largest areas without 3G coverage are in the Western US. So for those of you planning a road trip, a move or who might want to avoid the lure of the web while on holiday, the map gives a big picture view at how much physical area of the U.S. isn’t connected via 3G –something that isn’t always apparent because carriers measure their coverage in terms of the percent of the population covered.

Internet-Only TV Homes Surge 22.8%, Spend 9% Of TV Time Online

Characterizing it as a “development to watch,” Nielsen issued a new report showing that the number of US households that bypass cable or satellite TV and subscribe only to broadband Internet access has grown dramatically in the past year, and not surprisingly, they spend dramatically more time watching TV over the Internet.

The Nielsen report said it is too soon to determine whether these households are so-called “cord-swappers” -– swapping the cable/satellite TV cord for the broadband Internet cord -– but they are growing faster than any other segment of the “cross-platform” television marketplace. While the percentage of Internet-only TV homes is still relatively small -– less than 5% of all TV households -– they grew 22.8% over the past year, according to the report, which reflects data for the third quarter of 2011 vs. the third quarter of 2010. Not surprisingly, these households are streaming more than twice as much TV online as the general population: an average of 11.2 minutes daily vs. 5.0 minutes for all TV households. While these households are relatively low users of TV -– at about half as much as the time spent watching TV by the general population –- they currently are watching more than 9% of all their TV minutes online. According to Nielsen’s data, the average TV household currently is watching about 1.9% of their total TV minutes online.

Benton

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