August 2012

Sources: Votes Are In, and Its 5-0 for Verizon/SpectrumCo

According to sources inside and outside the Federal Communications Commission, all five commissioners have now cast their votes on Verizon/SpectrumCo, and it will be 5-0 approving Verizon's purchase of spectrum from cable operators Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Bright House, with the two Republicans concurring in part.

According to a source who had seen the voting record, FCC Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn have joined the others in OKing the deal, though both were said to be working on statements, so the order may not be released until late August 22 or 23. While the vote was 5-0, the two Republicans concurred--stopping short of approving--a data roaming obligation in the order, as well the FCC's authority over the marketing agreements, according to sources. The FCC was said to be working on two big items, the spectrum deal and its inquiry into potential reregulation of the special access market, with the latter likely to come out soon as well.

Facebook goes the Google way, introduces search result ads

Facebook officially launched a new type of ad that shows up when you use the social network's search bar. The new ads, called "Sponsored Results," to a degree follow in the footsteps of one of Facebook's biggest rivals: Google.

The ads show up when you search for a person, page, app or any other thing. To check them out, type in the word "Battle" and you may see an ad for a game called "Battle Pirates" show up. Zynga, Match.com and Marvel are also reportedly using the ads. The ads show up before other search results, which may bug users, but you can get rid of the ads when you see them by clicking on a small x located toward their top right corner.

Pandora speaks out against Nadler's music royalties draft bill

Online music service Pandora spoke out against Rep. Jerrold Nadler's (D-NY) draft legislation on music royalties, saying it would discriminate against new technology and hamper innovation.

The Web company supports a competing draft bill by Rep Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), which is aimed at lowering the royalty fees Internet radio services pay so they're level with the royalty rates paid by cable and satellite radio. Chaffetz's legislation would put Internet radio on the same royalty-setting standard as cable and satellite radio services, or the 801(b) standard of the Copyright Act. Tim Westergren, founder and chief strategy officer of Pandora, took issue with Nadler's draft bill — the Interim FIRST Act — because it would not put Internet radio on that same rate-setting standard. “The current system for establishing royalty rates is astonishingly unfair," Westergren said. "Fairness demands that all music related rate settings utilize the same 801(b) standard."

Industry Groups Highly Critical of FCC Broadband Report

The Federal Communications Commission caught flak from a number of industry groups for its conclusion that broadband is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner.

"The FCC's 706 report discounts the significant efforts being made by the private sector -- despite uncertainty for investment stemming from a persistently weak economy and repeated attempts by the Commission to exercise greater direction and control over this inherently unpredictable yet consistently innovative sector -- to continue building out broadband infrastructure," said the Internet Innovation Alliance. "Contrary to the FCC's assertions, more government control over the telecommunications industry with new rules is absolutely not a prerequisite for closing the digital divide." The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation also took issue with the FCC. "The FCC's latest 706 Report on the progress of broadband deployment in the United States reaches the erroneous conclusion that we're not making reasonable progress toward bringing broadband networking to all Americans," the group said. Broadband for America co-chair and former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. called the FCC assessment inaccurate because it overlooked the vast private-sector investment. The report did cite that investment, but concluded it was not enough.

Reps Markey, Barton Concerned About Marketing Tactics Cited in FTC Complaints

The co-chairs of the House Privacy Caucus were quick to use advocacy group complaints about viral marketing to call for legislation to better protect kids online.

After consumer groups petitioned the FCC to rule that "refer-a-friend" email solicitations on websites including those of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Joe Barton (R-TX) said those complaints highlighted the need for legislation to update COPPA. "Children and teens are especially vulnerable to targeted advertising due to their use of social media tools, making it important to update COPPA for the 21st century," said Rep Markey, "'Refer-a-friend' should not mean defer privacy protections for our nation's children and families." "COPPA is as outdated as a cassette player," said Rep Barton. "Technology is advancing at a rapid pace and a lot has changed since that legislation was written back in 1998."

Would you give the government remote control over your router?

A team of wireless researchers in Germany proposed a way to improve the communications abilities of first responders, the brave people who rush into disastrous situations to help save the victims. But the proposal hinges on something many private citizens and privacy or security advocates will likely find uncomfortable: creating an “emergency switch” that lets government employees disable the security mechanisms in the wireless routers people have set up in their own homes. This would allow first responders to use all the routers within range to enhance the capabilities of the mesh networks that allow them to communicate with each other. In a mesh network, each node or device can route traffic to the other devices on the network through a series of hops. Adding devices (in this case wireless routers) thus improves the network's stability and performance.

Fox, Ad Council Target Texting While Driving

Using dramatic scenes from “Glee,” Fox and the Ad Council are illustrating the risks of texting while driving to teens nationwide with a new series of PSAs produced in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and all 50 state attorneys general. The PSAs will run in donated TV airtime as well as online.

Want the Federal Budget on your iPad? There’s an App for That.

The Government Printing Office has announced federally published eBooks will now be available for purchase through Apple. GPO also makes government e-books available through partnerships with Google’s e-bookstore, Barnes & Noble, OverDrive, Ingram, Zinio and other online vendors.

Federal Agencies are gearing Up for a Massive Data Dump

Databases of U.S. foreign assistance payments, nuclear reactors’ daily event reports and a national sex offender registry are in the running to be released through application programming interfaces in the next few months, according to agency updates on the federal digital strategy.

Application programming interfaces -- the tools used to stream automatically updated datasets -- are among the main methods for making government information more accessible to the public in federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel’s digital strategy, which calls on agencies to make APIs “the new default in government.” The government’s goal is for companies, nonprofits and others to take raw, machine-readable data from agency APIs and use it to build Web and mobile applications -- whether to serve the public, make a profit, or both. The expectation is that such data could be a boon to the private sector in the same way government-gathered satellite data has nurtured the Global Positioning System market and weather forecasting.

9 Concrete, Specific Things We Actually Know About How Social Media Shape Elections

How do social media actually shape elections? What does research say about how social media have affected elections in the past? When you take public discourse and run it through the Twitter spaghetti maker, how does it look?

Having looked at the literature, here are the nine things I think we can definitively say about how social media can shape elections, based on the way it already has done so, in elections around the world:

People and campaigns mostly use social media for dissemination, not dialogue.
Campaign websites remain the hub of US Presidential campaigns.
But non-major parties tend to converse more on Twitter. Especially pirates.
Elite journalists converse, too -- with each other.
But there's a potential for non-elite, anonymous users to succeed.
Discussion tends to happen around news events that are already being covered.
So what remains special about social media is that non-elite users control distribution.
Participating more in political discussion online doesn't necessarily increase political knowledge.
The huge effect social media have in elections, then, is that they allow non-elites to frame and distribute content made by elites. For better or for worse.

Benton

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