April 2012

Tim Berners-Lee: demand your data from Google and Facebook

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the world wide web, has urged internet users to demand their personal data from online giants such as Google and Facebook to usher in a new era of highly personalized computer services "with tremendous potential to help humanity." Berners-Lee, the British born MIT professor who invented the web three decades ago, says that while there has been an explosion of public data made available in recent years, individuals have not yet understood the value to them of the personal data held about them by different web companies.

In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee said: "My computer has a great understanding of my state of fitness, of the things I'm eating, of the places I'm at. My phone understands from being in my pocket how much exercise I've been getting and how many stairs I've been walking up and so on." Exploiting such data could provide hugely useful services to individuals, he said, but only if their computers had access to personal data held about them by web companies. "One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't … There are no programs that I can run on my computer which allow me to use all the data in each of the social networking systems that I use plus all the data in my calendar plus in my running map site, plus the data in my little fitness gadget and so on to really provide an excellent support to me."

Tim Berners-Lee urges government to stop the snooping bill

The UK’s government's controversial plans to allow intelligence agencies to monitor the internet use and digital communications of every person in the UK suffered a fresh blow when the inventor of the world wide web warned that the measures were dangerous and should be dropped.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who serves as an adviser to the government on how to make public data more accessible, says the extension of the state's surveillance powers would be a "destruction of human rights" and would make a huge amount of highly intimate information vulnerable to theft or release by corrupt officials. In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee said: "The amount of control you have over somebody if you can monitor internet activity is amazing. "You get to know every detail, you get to know, in a way, more intimate details about their life than any person that they talk to because often people will confide in the internet as they find their way through medical websites … or as an adolescent finds their way through a website about homosexuality, wondering what they are and whether they should talk to people about it."

State Senate panel backs bill to deregulate Internet phone service

An industry-backed bill that would preempt state agencies from regulating Internet-enabled voice and data transmissions won unanimous approval from a state Senate committee in its first legislative hearing.

Amid protests from consumer advocates, the bill's author, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), tried to downplay the significance of the measure, which proponents said would simply lock the state's current hands-off policy into law. Such a reiteration of existing practices would give Silicon Valley businesses "the certainty" to continue developing innovative, Internet-powered products and programs, Padilla argued at a hearing of the Senate Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee. The bill "maintains the environment that has taken us to where we are today and ensures it will continue tomorrow," said Robert Callahan, a lobbyist for TechAmerica, a Silicon Valley telecommunications and technology trade group. But opponents, mainly consumer advocates for the poor, elderly and minorities, countered that Padilla's bill, SB 1161, would strip the California Public Utilities Commission of its last vestige of power to require telephone companies to provide universal, basic land-line service to any consumer.

Senate Commerce panel to examine how Netflix, Hulu are changing TV

The Senate Commerce Committee will meet April 24 to examine how online video services like Netflix and Hulu are affecting the future of television, Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) announced late on his Twitter account.

Democrat calls for hearing on Google Wi-Fi snooping

Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said he still has questions about why Google collected private data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks, and called on Congress to hold a hearing on the incident. “The circumstances surrounding Google’s surreptitious siphoning of personal information leave many unanswered questions. I believe Congress should immediately hold a hearing to get to the bottom of this serious situation,” Rep Markey said.

Romney says ‘vast left-wing conspiracy’ in media is attacking him

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said a “vast left-wing conspiracy” in the media was working with the Obama campaign to coordinate attacks against him.

“There will be an effort by the quote vast left-wing conspiracy to work together to put out their message and to attack me,” Romney said in an interview with Breitbart.com. “They're going to do everything they can to divert from the issue people care about, which is a growing economy that creates more jobs and rising incomes. That's what people care about.” The media has been a favorite target of the GOP presidential candidates so far in the primary season, particularly with Newt Gingrich, who on several occasions earlier in the cycle blasted debate moderators for questions he deemed inappropriate. After one such incident, Romney criticized Gingrich for attacking the media.

Report: High Speed Broadband Provides Key Returns for Small Biz

Groups looking to free up more spectrum for broadband released a report saying a small business start-up could save over $16,000 by using high-speed broadband. Saying broadband was an entrepreneurship booster the Internet Innovation Alliance (AT&T and fiber supplier Corning are members) and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council broke out the savings.

The report estimated the cost of high-speed at $490. The report put the total savings ($16,550.52) at about 33.37% of the total start-up cost. They include on printing services, Web and logo design, office space vs. working out of the home, travel costs and newspaper subscriptions. The report said broadband would reduce start-up costs, thus lowering barriers to entry and freeing up more money for revenue-generation and preserving capital for future investment.

NAB: Localism Still Key to Success for Stations and Women in TV

Top executives at two major TV station groups and a top syndication producer all credited their background in local TV as a key to their success, but admitted they had faced many tough tradeoffs as they worked to navigate complex technology, business and family challenges during their career.

"Even with an avalanche of information, local news still matters," noted Rebecca Campbell, president, ABC Owned Television Group, who added that newer technologies, such as social media and Twitter, were, if anything, making local news more relevant and popular. She noted that when one of their local news anchors, tweeted that Penn State coach Joe Paterno had been fired, the news quickly spread. But breaking the news on Twitter before the airing of the newscast actually attracted audiences. "It didn't at all take away from the product," she explained. "In fact, it was completely the reverse."

FCC’s McDowell Offers Hope on Political Ad Files

Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell stopped just short of formally endorsing the broadcaster-backed alternative to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s plan to require TV stations to post their entire political advertising files online.

Speaking at a NAB Show panel with fellow FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, he said he would prefer that stations “aggregate” the spending of individual candidates and PACs and report that on a weekly or daily basis rather than requiring them to put the rates of all political buys on the Web — a proposal that broadcasters have been vigorously opposing and that is set for an April 27 FCC vote. “Isn’t it more valuable to know that x campaign or x super PAC is spending $25,000 on that station?” McDowell’s proposal sounds a lot like the alternative proposed by the Television Operators Caucus, a coalition of leading broadcasters. It too would require stations to post regular summaries of spending by candidates and PACs. After the panel, Commissioner McDowell said he wouldn’t go so far as to say he was endorsing the specific TOC plan. “But if it’s in the same spirit, it’s in the same spirit.”

FCC’s McDowell: Auctions Will Likely Yield Less Spectrum Than Estimated

Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell says he doesn't think that incentive auctions will yield much spectrum for wireless broadband providers.

"I'm less optimistic than the [FCC's] National Broadband Plan, which talked about 120 megahertz. It ended up they forgot about Canada and Mexico. Oops," Commissioner McDowell said during a panel discussion with fellow FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn at the National Association of Broadcasters annual show. "So they pared that to 80 megahertz. But I ask 80 megahertz where?" He added that it will be difficult to reach even 80 megahertz given that each television broadcaster only has 6 megahertz to give up. "Broadcaster by broadcaster, that's got to be a lot of broadcasters leaving the market," Commissioner McDowell said. The problem is compounded by the Canada-Mexico issue Commissioner McDowell jokingly referred to that relates to language included in the spectrum legislation, which authorized the incentive auctions. Broadcasters and some lawmakers voiced concern that some U.S. viewers, particularly in bigger areas along the Mexican and Canadian borders like Detroit, could lose access to over the-air television following the "repacking process" to free up a swath of spectrum to auction. In response, Congress included language in the spectrum legislation that requires the United States to negotiate with Canada and Mexico before they can reclaim spectrum affecting those areas. Given the difficulty of such a process, the language could take a significant chunk of spectrum off the table, some broadcasters say.

Benton

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