July 3, 2012 (The Declaration of Internet Freedom)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for JULY 3, 2012
Headlines is taking an extended break for 4th of July – we’ll be back MONDAY, July 9.
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Twitter Releases Statistics on Government Requests
Judge Finds No Constitutional Violation in Producing Tweets
Cost to Protect U.S. Secrets Doubles to Over $11 Billion
Watching How China Censors
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Groups release dueling Internet freedom declarations
The Declaration of Internet Freedom: how the net’s minutemen plan to protect the future
Verizon urges court to scrap network neutrality rules
NIST Kicks Off New National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence [links to web]
Broadband contract attracts two bidders in UK
ACCESSIBILITY
FCC's Video Description Rules Are Now in Effect
National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program - public notice
CONTENT
Users to YouTube: let us record your videos
Analyst: Parents use Netflix to avoid commercials
For Baseball, TV Landscape Is Becoming a Pretty Picture [links to web]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
Wireless carriers' disaster plans tested after storm
May 2012 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share - press release
Maybe We Should Stop Calling Smartphones 'Phones'
Galaxy Tab Ban Set to Take Effect as Judge Denies Samsung’s Request for a Reprieve
PRIVACY
Facebook email switch continues causing problems
TELEVISION
CBS, NBC and Fox head to court over Dish ad-skipping feature [links to web]
TV's Evolving Taboos
For Baseball, TV Landscape Is Becoming a Pretty Picture [links to web]
COMMUNITY MEDIA
The Murrow Rural Information Initiative - research
LABOR
The road to gender balance in tech is paved with code
Doing Apps and Start-Ups While Still in High School [links to web]
'Welcome to Facebook, your new job': High school students will spend four weeks learning ins and outs of social network [links to web]
MORE ONLINE
Dell buys Quest Software for $2.4 billion [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
These headlines presented in partnership with:
Google Outlines Proposals To EU To End Antitrust Probe
New European Guidelines to Address Cloud Computing
Italy not letting Apple off the hook for illegal warranty policy [links to web]
Chinese hackers steal Indian Navy secrets with thumbdrive virus [links to web]
Fujitsu Adapts Android Smartphones As Location Guides for the Blind
Apple's Chinese suppliers violate worker rights, says labor group
Watching How China Censors
Universal Music faces EU setback on EMI
Broadband contract attracts two bidders in UK
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
TWITTER TRANSPARENCY REPORT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Somini Sengupta]
Twitter said government agencies in the United States had sought information on 948 Twitter user accounts in the first half of this year, more than any other country in the world. Japan came second, with requests for information affecting 147 Twitter accounts. The company received a total of six requests from courts and law enforcement agencies worldwide to take down content. They came from countries as varied as France and Pakistan. The company said it had so far complied with none of them. It also took down more than 5,000 tweets in response to requests from copyright holders. The information was released in a blog post announcing what the company called the Transparency Report, detailing government inquiries of who posts what on Twitter. The report, which Twitter said it would compile and publish twice a year, is modeled after a similar effort by Google.
benton.org/node/128239 | New York Times | Twitter | LATimes | The Hill
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TWEET RULING
[SOURCE: New York Law Journal, AUTHOR: Andrew Keshner]
Twitter must produce tweets and user information of an Occupy Wall Street protester, a judge has ruled, discounting objections from the social media website in a case of first impression. "The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts. What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you," Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr., sitting in Manhattan, wrote in People v. Harris, 2011NY080152. Sciarrino on June 30 ordered the site to produce in chambers Malcolm Harris' user information and tweets from over a more than three-month period—information the Manhattan District Attorney's Office is seeking for its prosecution of a disorderly conduct charged against Harris. Harris was one of some 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested during an October march across the Brooklyn Bridge.
benton.org/node/128195 | New York Law Journal
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COST OF SECRETS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Scott Shane]
The federal government spent more than $11 billion to protect its secrets last year, double the cost of classification a decade ago — and that is only the part it will reveal. The total does not include the costs incurred by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other spy agencies, whose spending is — you guessed it — classified. John P. Fitzpatrick, head of the Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees the government’s classification effort and released the annual report, said that adding the excluded agencies would increase the spending total by “less than 20 percent.” That suggests that the real total may be about $13 billion, more than the entire annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. The costs include investigations of people applying for security clearances, equipment like safes and special computer gear, training for government personnel, and salaries for officials who review documents for classification and declassification. Spending on secrecy has increased steadily for more than a decade, driven in part by the expanding counterterrorism programs after the 2001 terrorist attacks, but also by the continuing protection of cold war secrets dating back decades. The total cost for 2001 was $4.7 billion, the oversight office said.
benton.org/node/128255 | New York Times
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
DUELING INTERNET FREEDOM DECLARATIONS
[SOURCE: IDG News Service, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]
Two groups with members who opposed controversial copyright enforcement bills in the Congress have released competing declarations of Internet freedom, two days before the U.S. celebrates its declaration of independence. One declaration -- backed by Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology and other groups -- calls for an end to Internet censorship, universal broadband access and net neutrality principles on an Internet "where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate." The second declaration -- from free-market think tanks TechFreedom, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other groups -- calls on governments to "do no harm" to the Internet and to avoid getting involved in the broadband marketplace. "Government is the greatest obstacle to the emergence of fast and affordable broadband networks," the declaration said. "Rather than subsidizing yesterday's networks, free the market to build tomorrow's."
benton.org/node/128238 | IDG News Service
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DECLARATION OF INTERNET FREEDOM
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: TC Sottek]
Before the dust could settle from the battle against the Stop Online Piracy Act earlier this year, the people that helped defeat it realized they needed to do more than play whack-a-mole with bad bills from Congress. Since the January 18th SOPA blackout, a group of net advocates, entrepreneurs, and academics have worked behind the scenes to find common ground and leverage an outraged public to promote a free and open internet. Today, they issue a “Declaration of Internet Freedom:” a set of five broadly worded principles intended to protect the internet from interference.
Expression: Don't censor the Internet.
Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.
Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.
Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users' actions.
Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.
There’s no guarantee that the Declaration’s principles will catch on with the public, but the story of its creation demonstrates the power and passion of a rapidly growing constituency that is now demanding to be heard: the users of the internet.
benton.org/node/128197 | Verge, The | Public Knowledge | Free Press | Slate
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VERIZON’S CHALLENGE TO NETWORK NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Verizon filed a brief in federal court in its lawsuit to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) network neutrality rules. The network neutrality rules prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or slowing down access to legitimate websites. Verizon argued that the FCC had overstepped its authority when it adopted the rules in 2010. The telecom company also claimed the regulations are "arbitrary and capricious," as well as unconstitutional. Verizon argued that instead of "proceeding with caution" in light of the Comcast ruling, the FCC adopted rules that "go even farther than its prior action and impose dramatic new restrictions on broadband Internet access service providers." "Here again, the FCC has acted without statutory authority to insert itself into this crucial segment of the American economy, while failing to show any factual need to do so," Verizon wrote. The company argued that Congress never authorized the FCC to regulate Internet access and that the agency acted without sufficient evidence to suggest the rules were necessary. Verizon claimed that the rules violate its First Amendment free speech rights. "Broadband networks are the modern-day microphone by which their owners engage in First Amendment speech," Verizon wrote. The company also argued the rules violate the Fifth Amendment by forcing broadband network owners to allow others to use their private property for free.
benton.org/node/128232 | Hill, The
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ACCESSIBILITY
VIDEO DESCRIPTION RULES
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
As of July 1, 2012, broadcast affiliates of the top four national networks in the 25 largest markets and MVPD systems with more than 50,000 subscribers must comply with the Federal Communications Commission’s video description rules. Video description is audio-narrated descriptions of a television program’s key visual elements inserted into natural pauses in a program’s audio soundtrack. This accessibility feature allows people who are blind and visually impaired to follow a program’s content during television segments that only have visual images. The FCC’s new rules require covered broadcast affiliates of ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC located in the top 25 TV markets to provide 50 hours per calendar quarter (approximately 4 hours per week) of video-described prime time and/or children’s programming. The covered MVPD systems, when they carry any of the top five non-broadcast networks,1 i.e., the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, TBS, TNT, and USA, must also provide 50 hours per calendar of video-described prime time and/or children’s programming. Additionally, the video description rules require all network-affiliated broadcast stations and MVPD systems to pass through any video description provided with network programming that they carry if they have the technical capability to do so and are not using it for other program-related content. Once a program is aired with descriptions, re-runs of that program must also include video description unless the capability of providing description is being used for other program-related content.
benton.org/node/128200 | Federal Communications Commission
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EQUIPMENT DISTRIBUTION PROGRAM
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
The Federal Communications Commission’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau announces the launch of the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program (NDBEDP), effective July 1, 2012. The NDBEDP will begin to fill existing equipment and technology gaps to meet the communications access needs of this underserved population which, until now, largely has been denied the opportunity to enjoy the full benefits that these systems can provide. The FCC established the NDBEDP in response to the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). The CVAA directed the FCC to establish a program using funding of up to $10 million annually from the Interstate Telecommunications Relay Service Fund (TRS Fund) for the nationwide distribution of communications equipment to low-income individuals who are deaf-blind. On April 4, 2011, the Commission adopted the NDBEDP Pilot Order, establishing the framework for a two- to three-year pilot program to fulfill this CVAA mandate. The FCC announced the selection of 53 applicants to become certified programs authorized to distribute equipment under the NDBEDP in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands
benton.org/node/128230 | Federal Communications Commission | FCC list
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CONTENT
RECORDING YOUTUBE
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Janko Roettgers]
If YouTube wants to be the future of broadcast, then it also has to support the DVR of tomorrow. That’s the main argument of a new online petition urging Google to allow third-party tools and services that record content from YouTube, which has attracted more than 170,000 signatures in just three days. The petition was launched in reaction to reports that Google has been sending cease-and-desist letters to YouTube-MP3.org, Music-Clips.net and other sites, demanding to take down offerings that allow users to download the audio tracks of YouTube videos. In the letter, a YouTube lawyer referred to the site’s Terms of Service, which don’t allow the downloading of content that isn’t made available for download by YouTube itself. The petition, on the other hand, argues that downloading MP3 files from YouTube is simply an act of recording media, comparable to the DVR or even the cassette recorder.
benton.org/node/128227 | GigaOm
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NETFLIX, KIDS AND COMMERCIALS
[SOURCE: Fortune, AUTHOR: Dan Mitchell]
Here's an aspect of the commercial-skipping phenomenon that might often go overlooked: parents who rely on streaming services like Netflix, as well as video on demand and DVRs, to keep their little ones' minds from being polluted by ads. Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger's theory is that programmers of children's television -- specifically Viacom and Disney -- should limit the amount of programming they make available to Netflix and charge more for it. The commercial-avoidance afforded by the video streamer further supports that theory, he noted in a report to investors. The programmers should also be more picky about when they make the content available, he said. He recently conducted focus groups consisting of a total of 16 "moms" in which he found that "content control, commercial avoidance and time management" were their top considerations when choosing programming for their kids. The moms also told him that they had originally subscribed to Netflix for themselves, but because of a "dwindling supply" of offerings for adults, they now use the service mostly for their children -- who, he adds, don't seem to much care which device they use for viewing. TV sets, computers, tablets and phones are all fine with them. And the more they watch Disney and Viacom (which owns Nickelodeon) programming that way, the less valuable it is to those companies, he says. "Viacom and Disney should do everything in their power to steer viewership toward modes with the best long-term economics, namely traditional TV and emerging forms of TV Everywhere VOD," he wrote. There has been a "negative impact of Netflix on Disney's and Viacom's kids' TV ratings."
benton.org/node/128221 | Fortune
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
WIRELESS CARRIERS’ DISASTER PLAN
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Roger Yu]
Large wireless carriers stepped up disaster recovery efforts over the weekend as a rare derecho storm stomped through the Mid-Atlantic, and millions of cell calls and data downloads strained their capacity. Many regional cell sites were still without power Monday, and customers complained of spotty or non-existent coverage. Industry executives and analysts say wireless networks, with cell sites designed to cover as much as 5 to 10 miles, often struggle during heavy call volumes. But they also say a series of disaster-recovery measures the carriers put in place after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 helped mitigate disruptions during the weekend. "There has been a lot of effort to beef up and backup power," says Phil Marshall, a mobile network analyst at Tolaga Research. Managing network capacity in disasters and large events has always been critical to carriers' operations. But the industry's investment in such efforts has ratcheted up in recent years, along with its greater ambition to install faster data networks and attract more customers using smartphones, Marshall says.
benton.org/node/128252 | USAToday
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NEW COMSCORE FINDINGS
[SOURCE: comScore, AUTHOR: Press release]
For the three-month average period ending in May 2012, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.7 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by LG with 19.1 percent share. Apple continued to grow its share in the OEM market, ranking third with 15.0 percent (up 1.5 percentage points), followed by Motorola with 12.0 percent and HTC with 6.1 percent. Nearly 110 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May, up 5 percent versus February. Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 50.9 percent market share (up 0.8 percentage points). Five years after the release of the first iPhone, Apple’s share of the smartphone market reached 31.9 percent in May (up 1.7 percentage points). RIM ranked third with 11.4 percent share, followed by Microsoft (4.0 percent) and Symbian (1.1 percent).
benton.org/node/128218 | comScore
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PHONES NOT USED MUCH FOR CALLING
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Megan Garber]
Every day, the average smartphone user spends 128 minutes actively using the device. That's just over two hours. The average user is spending those 128 minutes surfing the Internet (for nearly 25 minutes), engaging in social networking (for more than 17), listening to music (more than 15), and playing games (more than 14). What the average user is doing relatively little of, however, is talking -- using the smartphone as, you know, a phone. The average user is spending around 12 minutes doing that -- making talking with friends a less popular activity than playing, say, "Words with Friends."
benton.org/node/128226 | Atlantic, The | O2
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GALAXY TAB BAN
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Ina Fried]
A federal judge on July 2 paved the way for a ban on U.S. sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 to go into effect. U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh issued an injunction on that product last week, as well as a separate injunction barring sales of the Galaxy Nexus smartphone in patent infringement cases brought by Apple against Samsung. Samsung appealed the ruling over the weekend, asking a federal appeals court to put the injunctions on hold. Judge Koh is also being asked to put the injunction on hold. On July 2 she denied a stay for the Tab ban, but has yet to rule on that request relative to the Nexus.
benton.org/node/128253 | Wall Street Journal
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PRIVACY
FACEBOOK PROBLEMS
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Salvador Rodriguez]
After causing a raucous week by changing users' listed email addresses to ones ending in @facebook.com, Facebook's switch is causing yet another embarrassment for the company and problem for many users. The email switch has gone beyond the walls of Facebook, according to various users, who are saying that the change is affecting the emails listed in their contact books. Across the Web, people are saying the emails listed for many of their contacts in their address books have been replaced by @facebook.com emails.
benton.org/node/128205 | Los Angeles Times
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TELEVISION
TV TABOOS
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Brian Steinberg]
Television networks have long sprinkled salt into the dialogue of their scripted dramas and comedies, but now they're testing out tastes heretofore banished from the kitchen. After running shows with titles such as "$#*! My Dad Says," "Don't Trust The B---- In Apt. 23" and "GCB" (for "Good Christian Bitches") on old-school networks like CBS and ABC, TV is tilling new ground for profanity. Time was, the freer hand enjoyed by cable networks such as HBO and FX put pressure on broadcasters to try rougher dialogue. These days, the squeeze is coming from nascent media outlets happy to rewrite old rules. Current audience tastes are shaped by "entertainment from unregulated markets" such as Howard Stern on satellite radio and uncensored rap on Pandora, said Philip Dalton, assistant professor and chair of speech communication, rhetoric and performance studies at Hofstra University. Premium cable is also still pushing the boundaries of taste as it tries to lure top talent and gain notice. Because of all this, Dalton said, many broader TV networks "face a real challenge to find and build audiences while following tamer conventions."
benton.org/node/128198 | AdAge
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COMMUNITY MEDIA
MURROW RURAL INFORMATION INITIATIVE
[SOURCE: Washington State University, AUTHOR: Brett Atwood, Michael Beam, Douglas Blanks Hindman, Elizabeth Blanks Hindman, Lawrence Pintak, Ben Shors]
The state of Washington is an information enigma. Some of the nation’s leading digital technology companies are headquartered in and around Seattle, yet vast areas of the state are starved of locally relevant public affairs news. Google and Yahoo are just two of the global Internet companies that have opened offices in the state, joining content giants like Amazon and MSNBC, yet only 20 towns have a daily newspaper, just 23 have radio stations with some form of local news, and TV is clustered in four cities with tightly defined coverage areas. T-Mobile is headquartered in the state, yet mobile dead zones are common outside the major towns. Facebook recently opened a major office in Seattle, yet Washington’s use of social networking platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is lower than many other states. In huge sections of Washington, citizens have little or no access to news about what is taking place in their own communities. The situation is particularly grim in areas populated by minorities and on some of the vast Native American reservations. In short, Washington is a digital state with a rural information ghetto.
benton.org/node/128220 | Washington State University
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LABOR
TECH GENDER BALANCE
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Eliza Kern]
Women getting together to learn programming and build their own tech communities have been getting a lot of love recently. And for a good reason. Silicon Valley tech companies want to hire more women, and while there are plenty of issues with how those companies retain the women they hire, finding them in the first place is a big issue. According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, women made up only 14 percent of computer science graduates at major research universities in 2010. Yet there’s a huge need for programmers and IT professionals, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimating that those occupations will grow by 22 percent between 2010 and 2020, and a war going on among Silicon Valley startups for the best talent. Rails Girls, Girls Who Code, and Ladies Learning Code are just a few of the organizations that are attempting to get women excited about and interested in technology.
benton.org/node/128229 | GigaOm
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
These headlines presented in partnership with:
GOOGLE PROPOSALS
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Aoife White]
Google outlined proposals to European Union regulators in an effort to end an antitrust investigation into allegations that the operator of the world’s largest search engine discriminates against rivals. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt sent EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia a letter responding to the probe. The settlement offer addresses the “four areas the European Commission described” as potential concerns, Google spokesman Al Verney said. Almunia in May asked Google to make an offer to settle concerns it promotes its own specialist search services, copies rivals’ travel and restaurant reviews, and that agreements with websites and software developers stifle competition in the advertising industry. He said last month he would send Google an antitrust complaint, that could lead to a fine or limits on conduct, if the proposal was unsatisfactory. “Three of the four areas are relatively easy to address,” said Greg Sterling, a senior analyst at Opus Research. “The ‘concern’ about placement of ‘Google content’ in search results is more problematic given that it goes to the heart of Google’s ability to control its search experience and algorithm.”
benton.org/node/128208 | Bloomberg | WSJ | LATimes | The Hill
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NEW EUROPEAN GUIDELINES TO ADDRESS CLOUD COMPUTING
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Kevin O’Brien]
The European Commission’s panel on privacy is expected to endorse the concept of cloud computing as legal under the Continent’s privacy law and to recommend for the first time that large companies and organizations police themselves to assure that personal information kept in remote locations is protected. The panel, known as the Article 29 Working Party, is expected to make the recommendation as part of its long-awaited guidelines on cloud computing, which have the potential, some industry experts say, to allay concerns over data privacy and pave the way for wider adoption of the remote-computing services that are more common in the United States. The report will highlight the advantages of using cloud computing to encourage innovation and economic efficiency, said a person with knowledge of the recommendations, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak for the group. This would reflect a new, more practical approach by European officials to remote computing’s role in the broader economy.
benton.org/node/128217 | New York Times
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FUJITSU ADAPTS ANDROID SMARTPHONES AS LOCATION GUIDES FOR THE BLIND
[SOURCE: cellular-news, AUTHOR:]
Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and Fujitsu announced their joint development of an indoor support system for the blind that uses ultra wide band (UWB) technology and a smartphone. The system is able to provide real-time positioning data, even indoors where GPS cannot be used, and provide audio instructions on the distance and direction to a destination to help guide the blind. Currently there are systems under development that use GPS with mobile terminals to provide audio instructions to an outdoor destination. GPS, however, cannot be reliably used indoors. Accordingly, NICT and Fujitsu decided to use a UWB positioning system, which can provide highly precise positioning indoors, in real time with a granularity of less than several tens of centimeters.
benton.org/node/128211 | cellular-news
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APPLE'S CHINESE SUPPLIERS VIOLATE WORKER RIGHTS, SAYS LABOR GROUP
[SOURCE: IDG News Service, AUTHOR: John Ribeiro]
There are serious violations of worker rights at Apple's other suppliers in China, even as Foxconn tries to improve working conditions, according to a labor rights group in New York.
Conditions at Foxconn remain far from satisfactory, wrote Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook that is appended to a 132-page report on an investigation by the group. But Foxconn is better in treatment of workers than some of Apple's other suppliers in China, he added. Apple's suppliers in China mistreat workers, making them work overtime beyond legal limits, paying them low wages, and exposing them to dangerous working conditions, according to the report.
benton.org/node/128210 | IDG News Service
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HOW CHINA CENSORS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Paul Mozur]
As China's 500 million Internet users rapidly adopt social media, academics and entrepreneurs are figuring out ways to track online messages and blog posts to better understand what the government censors—and even how to predict its intent. China's government employs software and an army of thousands to police the Internet, but it leaves much of the censoring to social-media sites like Sina Corp. to take down posts that violate local and national rules issued each week. While it is generally known that certain words or phrases, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, will trip the censors, the scope isn't fully understood. These sites usually offer clues that they deleted a post due to censorship—rather than by the user or due to a technical problem—leaving special messages or images such as an Internet police cartoon character. That is helping researchers figure out how China's opaque power structures work to control its citizens. "We have a degree of translucence now about censorship we never had," said David Bandurski, a researcher at Hong Kong University's China Media Project.
benton.org/node/128246 | Wall Street Journal
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UNIVERAL-EMI
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Alex Barker, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson]
Europe’s top antitrust watchdog has set out a sweeping list of objections to Universal Music’s £1.2bn bid for EMI’s record labels, putting pressure on the Vivendi subsidiary to offer large concessions to save the deal from being blocked. According to people who have seen a “statement of objections” circulated by the European Commission, it argues that Universal, the world’s largest music company, already extracts materially higher prices from digital distributors than rivals, and that buying EMI would allow it to raise digital music prices. The Commission disagreed with Universal’s assessment of its market share, which excludes music it distributes for independent record labels, these people said. It was similarly unmoved by its arguments over the countervailing power of Apple and the pressure on legitimate music sales from piracy.
benton.org/node/128244 | Financial Times
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UK BROADBAND PLAN
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Daniel Thomas]
Just two companies have been picked to compete for government funds allocated to rolling out broadband to far-flung parts of the UK, under a national framework agreement aimed at cutting costs for local authorities. The emergence of only two parties is likely to raise further questions about how competitive the selection process has been, given there is no guarantee both will bid for every tender. BT and Fujitsu have been chosen by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which operates the £530m broadband delivery UK program. This aims to provide superfast broadband to 90 per cent of every county by 2015 and ensure a minimum 2 Mbps elsewhere. The national framework agreement, under which councils can choose from a list of already approved providers, so avoiding some of the costs associated with the tendering process, is aimed at accelerating the speed of rural broadband provision. That spread is seen as a key economic and social need.
benton.org/node/128242 | Financial Times
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