February 2012

The use of social media has shifted and dramatically expanded from 2008. Yes, the use of social media was a big part of the narrative of that election. But the extent to which campaigns are using social and digital media in this campaign is going to make the 2008 election look like the social media Dark Ages. "In 2008, social media was an auxiliary component of the campaign," said Zac Moffatt, digital director of the Mitt Romney campaign. "Now it's integrated into the core concept of how the campaign will reach people. We have moved away from the mindset that the website is the primary place where people will interact with the campaign."

Proview Electronics says it is now seeking to regain worldwide rights to the iPad name and is suing Apple for alleged fraud and unfair competition, hoping to have a 2009 sale of the trademark ruled void.

The Taiwan-based maker of LED lights said that it had amended its lawsuit filed earlier this month in Santa Clara, California's Superior Court. Apart from having the trademark sale voided, it also is seeking unspecified compensation, a share of Apple's profits from alleged "unfair competition" and an order for Apple to stop using the trademarks. Proview contends Apple intentionally misled it when it bought iPad trademarks through a special purpose company called IP Application Development Ltd. that concealed it was acting on Apple's behalf. Experts in the high-tech field say such tactics are common given the secrecy surrounding new product launches, especially Apple's. But Proview says IP Application Development told it that it wanted the trademark because it was an abbreviation of its name.

[Commentary] It has been just over 6 years since Ed Whitacre, then CEO of AT&T, kicked off the Network Neutrality movement by famously declaring that rival services would not “use my pipes for free,” neatly side stepping the fact that customers were actually paying to “use [his] pipes” already.

Because why just collect money from one side of a platform when you can collect the same money again from the other side? Well, it appears that AT&T may finally be on the verge of realizing Whitacre’s vision — at least for the wireless world. While details remain sparse, the Wall St. Journal broke a story yesterday that AT&T may “allow” application providers to pay the overage charges for customers who exceed AT&T’s arbitrary “bandwidth cap.” As my colleague John Bergmeyer pointed out over at Public Knowledge there is not much functional difference between simply charging both sides of the platform directly and giving you the first 2 GB/month and then charging you for access. So the Federal Communications Commission (and possibly the Federal Trade Commission as well) should finally take that “hard skeptical look” I and others keep asking them to take. What AT&T proposes is a radical change in pricing for a critical piece of our information infrastructure on which our economy increasingly depends. But we understand virtually nothing of how these prices and policies are set. The FCC has tremendous authority to investigate what is going on, whatever ultimate authority it may have to regulate in this area.

A host of broadcast groups have proposed a compromise solution to the Federal Communications Commission's proposal that they put their entire political file into an FCC-managed national database of TV station public inspection file information.

According to a filing at the FCC, Barrington, Belo, Gannett, Hearst, Scripps, Meredith, Raycom, and Post-Newsweek, among others, have suggested that the stations could put some of that info either on their own Websites or an FCC Website, with the name of the media buyer, the candidate, and the entity that paid for the ads or programming time, as well as the aggregate amount paid for the spots. The file would be updated weekly during election seasons, as well as the day before the election, and once a month otherwise.

Free Press and other members of the Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition (PIPCA), which has been pushing for greater online disclosure, says the compromise is inadequate and exempts information the public should have more readily available to it. For one thing, they said, allowing stations not to put the information in an FCC database defeats the FCC's goal of having an easily searchable repository of the information. Broadcasters argue converting the entirety of their political files to online would be a paperwork burden and pull resources from other areas. PIPAC says keeping written political files and a different online file would be more work. It also said the station group proposal could exclude expenditures by Super PACs.

[Editor’s note: The Benton Foundation is a PIPCA member]