May 2012

[Commentary] It has been reported that NBCUniversal, News Corporation, and Walt Disney Company will block access to Hulu unless you pay for both a broadband subscription and a paid TV subscription. Such a move will prevent an estimated 3.58 million people from becoming Hulu customers and likely stifle Hulu’s future success. Who else but the executives who brought you the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would actively strangle their own Internet success story? With an annual doubling of revenue and average monthly growth of 100,000 paid subscribers, it must be that Hulu was too successful (and disruptive) for its stakeholders to handle. So rather than embrace the Internet, they have opted to reverse course and try to preserve the increasingly rejected business model of cable and satellite TV.

The telecommunications industry has been surprisingly silent in response to actions taken by the Federal Communications Commission involving the Universal Service Fund. Does this mean the reforms have met with broad approval? Not exactly.

But there does seem to be a sense of resignation. Some of the changes made are not to everyone’s liking. On the other hand, most people seem to agree that they’re better than what might have been. Among those weighing in with Telecompetitor on this topic were representatives of the National Exchange Carrier Association, the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and Windstream, which helped shape many of the USF reforms related to price cap carriers.

Facebook is about to share a whole lot of information about itself as it pitches potential investors on its initial public stock offering coming in May. But users of the popular website are becoming more wary about how much information they share with Facebook, says a new study from Consumer Reports that asked Facebook users in the United States what steps they took to protect their privacy on the world's largest social network.

About a quarter of the users surveyed admitted they made up information about themselves. Consumer Reports said that’s double the number who said they did that two years ago, a finding that it says signals that users have become more guarded. Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, is using the June issue of the magazine to push for a national privacy law that would give consumers control over companies tracking them online. Facebook has more than 150 million users in the US. Consumer Reports says it's urging Facebook to make it clearer to users how to protect their information. But the study also found that the majority of U.S. Facebook users have adjusted their privacy settings, only about 13 million have not, which would seem to indicate that Facebook users are taking control of their privacy on the site. Facebook insists that it offers users extensive tools to control their privacy.

Facebook has agreed to be an observer at the Global Network Initiative (GNI), an organization that aims to prevent censorship of the Internet by authoritarian governments.

The GNI, a non-governmental organization also dedicated to protecting privacy rights, is sponsored by a coalition of corporations, nonprofits and universities. Facebook is the first company to accept the observer designation, which GNI created last December in order to allow corporations considering membership to learn about the organization and participate in policy discussions with members and staff. Facebook can remain an observer for 12 months before it has to make a decision about full membership, GNI said.