December 2012

Senate Commerce Committee Leaders Seek to Fast-Track Clyburn Approval

With Senate floor time "in flux" and unable to get a quorum of the Senate Commerce Committee to vote on the nomination of Federal Communications Commission commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the heads of the committee have come up with plan B -- seeking unanimous consent from the Senate on discharging the nominees from the committee. That would mean they would only need a full Senate vote to be confirmed. If no Senator objects, the nominations would not have to go through a committee markup and vote.

Apple Maps three times more likely to get you lost than Google Maps

How helpful is Apple Maps? Not very, according to a company that found Apple Maps is three times more likely to get someone lost than Google Maps.

Most generally regard Google Maps as the superior software, but the crowdsourcing company Crowdflower decided to take a look at the data and figure out how exactly the two softwares, and Bing, compare. Specifically, Crowdflower set out to answer how often each service will get you to the right location. To find out, the company took a look at directions to 1,000 businesses in the US and another 100 in the UK. The company used its resources to go to the website of each business and find the address listed. Crowdflower then went to each mapping service and searched the business name and the city it's in. The company was looking for two things: Does the mapping service give a result, and is the result accurate? In the first category, Google led the way in the U.S., finding 89% of the businesses. Bing followed with 79% and Apple Maps with 74%. For U.K. businesses, Google also got the best results with 91%, followed by Bing's 57% and Apple Maps with 47%.

How to fix the media ownership debate

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s proposed media ownership rules changes: a newspaper and a TV station in the same town would be allowed to merge if the station is number five in the ratings or worse and if it is also in one of the top 20 markets in the country and if there would still be at least eight media voices left in the town. Not exactly radical stuff.

Internet has increased the number of voices and provided many other benefits, but at the same time undermined the economic models that had previously subsidized local journalism. Newspapers are still laying off reporters by the thousands. So, if an occasional merger can save a local newspaper, we shouldn’t automatically rule it out just because it is a merger. The FCC is considering the reasonable step of lifting the ban on newspapers owning radio stations in the same town. Yes, this change allows “consolidation,” but permitting a newspaper to buy a radio station—perhaps to create a local radio news channel—could actually help communities. After all, commercial news radio has been declining: only 30 all-news commercial radio stations are left, down from 50 in the 1980s.

Instead of having a theological debate about consolidation—“good” vs. “evil”?—is it possible to create media policy that allows mergers that are likely to help the local media ecosystems and blocks those that are not?

Rep Waters to FCC: Don't Wade Into Ownership Just Yet

The Federal Communications Commission continues to solicit comment from the public on media ownership and diversity, and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, said she was concerned with reports that the commission intended to "revive some form of the same lax media cross ownership rules that the Third Circuit Court invalidated in July 2011."

Rep Waters is a long-time consolidation critic and continued in that vein in her letter, opining that only a few companies own the major broadcast nets and the vast majority of the top 50 cable nets. She says the FCC should not proceed with a vote on the ownership proposal until it has analyzed the findings of a recent ownership report (the so-called 323 report) that found little improvement in minority or female station ownership and the impact on that diversity landscape of even more deregulatory changes.

Senator Wyden introduces bill to regulate data caps

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced legislation to regulate the use of broadband data caps. "Data caps create challenges for consumers and run the risk of undermining innovation in the digital economy if they are imposed bluntly and not designed to truly manage network congestion," said Sen Wyden.

He hopes to address three issues with his proposal:

First, he wants to increase the amount and accuracy of information provided to consumers. His bill empowers the Federal Communications Commission to regulate ISPs' methods for measuring bandwidth usage with an eye to improving their accuracy. And it requires ISPs to provide their customers with realtime tools for tracking their usage and comparing them with the ISP's established caps.
Second, the bill requires that any data caps employed by ISPs function to "reasonably limit network congestion without unnecessarily restricting Internet use." According to a statement released with the legislation, "some data caps are so blunt that they may work to discourage Internet use even when doing so has no bearing on network congestion."
The most ambitious part of the legislation is a kind of network neutrality rule. It requires that any data cap (which is defined to include metering schemes) not be used to "provide preferential treatment of data that is based on the source or content of the data." That would ban a practice that is frequently mentioned by advocates of network neutrality regulation: the creation of a paid "fast lane."

Broadband Usage Pricing: Let It Flourish

[Commentary] Are Internet data-usage limits and overage fees a way for service providers to extract more dollars from their heaviest-consuming users -- or are they tools that will increase consumer choice and competition in the market? The reality is, they’re both. And ultimately, usage-based pricing models will result in healthier competition among ISPs. Two different policy papers, released within days of each other, reach diametrically opposite conclusions on this issue.

Taking a pro-industry stance is “The Economics of Usage-Based Pricing in Local Broadband Markets.” The paper, funded by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, argues that usage-based broadband pricing gives ISPs incentives to invest in their infrastructure, to access small markets and to offer lower-priced tiers.

That’s hogwash, according to the second paper, “Capping the Nation’s Broadband Future?” published Dec. 17 by New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative. Data caps and usage-based pricing exist precisely because there’s not enough broadband competition in the U.S., according to the paper’s authors. “Data caps may offer an effective means for incumbents to generate more revenue from subscribers and satisfy investors, but making bandwidth an unnecessarily scarce commodity is bad for consumers and innovation,” the OTI paper says.

Behind closed doors at the UN's attempted "takeover of the Internet

[Commentary] The first few days of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) were mostly, for me, spent figuring out how everything worked.

The highest-level meeting was the Plenary, which established several committees, of which Committee 5 (COM5) did the substantive work of revising treaty text. COM5 established two working groups that split up the treaty text between them. At each official meeting, the name of the game was consensus. Where consensus could not be reached on a particular issue, an ad hoc group was created to deal with that issue. The ad hoc group would spend additional time trying to forge a consensus. If a particular meeting could not find language that every member state could agree to, it would report back to the next-highest level meeting with the contentious text in square brackets. The first five days of the conference followed a pattern. Any issue not immediately agreed to on the first day was referred to COM5. Any issue not immediately agreed to in COM5 was referred to a working group, which referred them to ad hoc groups. Because there was little consensus, the ad hoc groups reported back to the working groups with proposals that were filled with brackets, and this bracketed text likewise worked its way back up through COM5 to the Plenary.

The host country United Arab Emirates (UAE) dropped a bombshell. It announced that it was putting forward a new “multi-regional common proposal,” a complete rewrite of the treaty to substitute for all the bracketed text we had worked on. It had support from numerous member states. Bahrain, Russia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Oman all expressed support for the document, which was not yet available for inspection.

Verizon: FCC Not Best Judge of Its Authority

Verizon Wireless is hoping to have its wireless deregulatory cake and eat it too. In a brief in the Supreme Court, the company said the court should rule that the deference the courts generally give an expert agency's subject area expertise when it reviews a challenge to one of those decisions should not extend to the agencies' determination of the scope or existence of its statutory authority. In other words, the Federal Communications Commission should not be the arbiter of the limits of its own authority, which should be the purview of the courts.

But the case at issue was one in which the FCC determined it had the authority to cut through local delays in tower citing approvals, a move applauded by cell companies including Verizon Wireless. In its filing, Verizon says as a general matter, courts should not give Chevron deference, but instead adjudicate de novo on whether there is statute providing the authority, but that the court need not overturn the ruling itself, since the company argues Congress has given the FCC that express authority to preempt local and state regulations.

Civil liberties groups urge Senate to debate surveillance bill

Civil liberties and privacy groups are urging the Senate to debate a handful of amendments that are aimed at beefing up the privacy protections in a controversial surveillance bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said he plans to file cloture by the end of the Dec 20 on the FISA Amendments Act, which would reauthorize the 2008 surveillance bill for another five years. The measure gives U.S. officials the authority to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists abroad without a court order. Sen Reid is currently in discussions with lawmakers about taking up the bill with a limited number of amendments, a Senate aide said. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) are among the senators that hope to have their amendments considered. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Free Press have pressed the public to contact their senators this week about debating these amendments. The groups charge that the surveillance measure lacks transparency and could be used to sweep up American citizens' communications without a warrant.

Apple takes quest for Samsung product ban to appeals court

Apple has decided to appeal a federal judge's ruling that denied the company's request to ban 26 Samsung products.

In August, a jury ruled that the Samsung products had infringed a handful of Apple patents and ordered the South Korean tech giant to pay $1.05 billion in damages to the maker of the iPhone. Apple then sought a potentially more devastating punishment against Samsung by requesting a permanent injunction against those products. While many of the Samsung products in question are older, such a move could be used as leverage in a second lawsuit pending in federal court that involves some of Samsung's most popular current products, including the Galaxy S III smartphone. However, U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh recently ruled that Apple had failed to demonstrate that the features at issue were significant enough to play a big role in persuading consumers to buy one phone or the other. As expected, Apple informed Koh on Thursday that it intends to appeal that decision to 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Judge Koh still has yet to rule on Apple's request to increase the damages verdict by $500 million. Samsung, which was denied by Koh its request for a new trial, is also expected to appeal the case.

Benton

Search