January 2, 2013 (Holiday Break Edition)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for JANUARY 2, 2012 (Happy 2013!)
Here’s the top stories from the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013.
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
President signs foreign surveillance reauthorization bill into law
China Tightens Rules for Internet Users
Why Regulation and Free Speech Don’t Mix - editorial [links to web]
A Digital Milestone in 2012: 100,000,000 White House Video Views - press release [links to web]
POLICYMAKERS
Senate Confirms Clyburn to Full FCC Term
Kerry Nomination Means More Commerce Reordering
Observers ponder impact of Markey's Senate bid on House Commerce Committee
FCC Names Steven Wildman as Chief Economist - press release
INTERNET/BROADBAND
US Internet Users Pay More for Slower Service - op-ed
Verizon: Let Us Count the Ways FCC Is Wrong on Open Internet [links to web]
House Republicans urge Obama not to issue cybersecurity order [links to web]
A Tiny City Built To Be Destroyed By Cyber Terrorists, So Real Cities Know What’s Coming [links to web]
The Internet Deserves Its Own Holiday - op-ed
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
FCC Adopts Rules to Promote Deployment of Internet Services Onboard Aircraft - press release
The Real Hazards of E-Devices on Planes - analysis
Christmas Day: tablet activations outpace smartphones
FCC Won't Enforce Build-Out Requirements on LightSquared [links to web]
CONTENT
E-book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading Declines - research
Little Sign of a Predicted E-Book Price War
E-book restrictions leave 'buyers' with few rights - analysis
Instagram Flap Shows Confusion Over Control of Content - analysis
Facebook was the top search term in 2012 for the fourth straight year - research [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
Hey, CJR; Let's Do the Time Warp Again! - op-ed
Free Press Says Any More Ownership Deregulation Is Unjustified [links to web]
Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook vs. Amazon - analysis
Tribune, Bankruptcy Over, Is Expected to Sell Assets [links to web]
JOURNALISM
When Media’s Decision in the Face of Events Is to Say Nothing About Them [links to web]
Sun-Times Media Will Close Suburban Newsrooms [links to web]
ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency - analysis
Were Obama’s Early Ads Really the Game Changer? - op-ed [links to web]
PATENTS
Jury Awards $1.17 Billion in Patent Suit [links to web]
Apple to Samsung: Keep Galaxy S III Mini Out of the U.S. and We Won’t Sue [links to web]
Samsung Loses Bid to Seal Sales Data in Apple Dispute [links to web]
TELECOM
Over half of American homes don’t have or use their landline
Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services
CHILDREN AND MEDIA
FTC Releases Follow-Up Study Detailing Promotional Activities, Expenditures, and Nutritional Profiles of Food Marketed to Children and Adolescents - press release [links to web]
ACA Ready to Work Toward Curbing Violence [links to web]
NRA President LaPierre blames media, others for Newtown shooting [links to web]
COMMUNITY MEDIA
Mobile Connections to Libraries - research
2012/2013
Tech Giants Brace for More Scrutiny From Regulators - analysis
NTIA Recap of 2012 and Look Ahead to 2013 - press release [links to web]
Beyond SOPA: the top nine tech policy stories of 2012 - analysis [links to web]
2013: The year carriers choose whether Wi-Fi is friend or foe [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
FISA AMENDMENTS REAUTHORIZATION
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jennifer Martinez]
President Barack Obama signed a bill on Dec 30 that would reauthorize for another five years a measure that gives U.S. intelligence authorities the ability to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists abroad without a court order. The Senate passed, in a 73-23 vote, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Reauthorization Act despite concerns raised from some lawmakers that it needed to be amended with additional oversight and privacy protections. The law was set to expire Dec 31.
benton.org/node/142322 | Hill, The | AP | LATimes | ars technica
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CHINA TIGHTENS RULES FOR INTERNET USERS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Carlos Tejada]
China enacted new rules on Dec 28 that beef up disclosure requirements for Internet users, in Beijing's latest move to get a tighter grip on its voluble and increasingly restive online community. Senior members of the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp parliament, approved the rules Friday as part of an effort to strengthen personal privacy laws, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. The rules, unveiled Monday, received a slew of positive coverage in state-run media and were widely expected to be enacted. The rules require Internet users to use their real names when signing up for Internet services from network and service providers. They follow rules that went into force in March that required users of Chinese social-media services to disclose their real names to providers, though implementation has been hobbled by the size of their massive user bases as well as technical problems. The latest rules also require service providers to remove posts with illegal information, to save them and to forward them to authorities. The rules weren't explicit on what constitutes illegal information or which authorities offenses should be reported to.
benton.org/node/142321 | Wall Street Journal | Los Angeles Times
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POLICYMAKERS
COMMISSIONER CLYBURN RECONFIRMED
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
On Jan 1, the Senate approved the nomination of Federal Communications Commission commissioner Mignon Clyburn, this time for a full five-year term retroactive to July 1, 2012, when her current term expired. She had been serving out the term of commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who exited to join the Department of Agriculture. The nomination had been held up after the death of Commerce Committee member Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) forced the committee to postpone a vote. Had the nomination not been voted before the seating of a new Congress, Commissioner Clyburn would have had to have a new hearing in the Commerce Committee.
benton.org/node/142320 | Broadcasting&Cable | Chairman Genachowski | Commissioner McDowell
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KERRY NOMINATION AND SENATE COMMERCE
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
There will have to be some re-ordering of the Senate Commerce Committee, and perhaps the House Commerce Committee, the two committees that oversee communications policy. With the nomination of Senator John Kerry (D-MA) to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State -- he will almost certainly be confirmed -- that would remove him from the post of chair of the Communications Subcommittee, where he has pushed for privacy legislation and network neutrality regulations. The Commerce Committee is already getting a new ranking member -- expected to be Sen. John Thune (R-SD) with the retirement of Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and the resignation of Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) to head the Heritage Foundation.
benton.org/node/142319 | Broadcasting&Cable
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REP MARKEY AND HOUSE COMMERCE COMMITTEE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jennifer Martinez]
Rep. Edward Markey's (D-MA) run for Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) seat may leave the House Commerce Committee without one of its longest-serving members and fiercest advocates for online privacy rights. It's too early to say how the race will shake out, but Markey's Senate bid has some observers questioning how his possible departure from the House will affect the dynamics on the Commerce Committee. Rep Markey has been active on energy policy during his time on the committee. He has also served as a leader on its telecommunications subpanel for more than 20 years and is credited for his work on prominent cable TV and telecommunications legislation. "His institutional memory is unbelievable," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group. Rep Markey has been a vocal proponent of network neutrality rules, which require Internet service providers to treat all Web traffic equally, and hammered the now-defunct AT&T/T-Mobile merger while serving on Commerce. Those positions often upset some major industry players. "There are some good folks on that committee who won't stand up to Google, to the tech industry," Sohn said. "He'll stand up to anybody." When reviewing policy, "he doesn't think about what Google is going to think, what is Comcast going to think, and what would Verizon think," Sohn added.
benton.org/node/142318 | Hill, The
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FCC ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF STEVEN WILDMAN AS NEW CHIEF ECONOMIST
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the appointment of Steven Wildman to the position of FCC Chief Economist. Professor Wildman, an expert on communications and media issues who holds the James H. Quello Chair of Telecommunications Studies and is serving as the Acting Chair of the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media at Michigan State University, will commence his role in January 2013. Wildman will take over as Chief Economist from Marius Schwartz, who is returning to his prior role as a Professor of Economics at Georgetown University.
Wildman’s teaching and research focus on economics, law and policy across the communications industry, and the impact of information technologies on the organization of economic activities. He has conducted detailed research on broadband adoption examining infrastructure cost structures and demand in rural and underserved areas. He has also studied the efficiency properties of alternative spectrum governance regimes and network interconnection policy.
He has held numerous fellowships and received prominent awards, including the Information and Telecommunications Education and Research Association Distinguished Research Award, the Journal of Media Economics Award of Honor for Scholarly Contributions, and the McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Policy Research. Prior to joining Michigan State University, Wildman was an Associate Professor at Northwestern University’s Department of Communications Studies. He has also worked at the University of California’s Department of Economics. Wildman holds a Ph.D in Economics from Stanford University, as well as an M.A. and a B.A. degree in Economics from Stanford University and Wabash College respectively.
benton.org/node/142293 | Federal Communications Commission
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
PAYING MORE FOR SLOWER SERVICE
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Susan Crawford]
[Commentary] The American copper wire telephone system is, in fact, becoming obsolete. The physical switches used in the network are reaching the end of their useful lives. But now that cable has won the battle for wired Internet service and consumers are moving to mobile phones for voice service, the telephone companies are looking to shed the obligation to maintain their networks at all. Meanwhile, the U.S. is rapidly losing the global race for high-speed connectivity, as fewer than 8 percent of households have fiber service. And almost 30 percent of the country still isn’t connected to the Internet at all. To fix this problem, a new approach is needed. The first step is to decide what the goal of telecommunications policy should be. Network access providers -- and the FCC -- are stuck on the idea that not all Americans need high-speed Internet access. The current 4 Mbps Internet access goal is unquestionably shortsighted. It allows the digital divide to survive, and ensures that the U.S. will stagnate. A smarter goal would be to give most Americans access to reasonably priced 1 Gb symmetric fiber-to-the-home networks. This would mean 1,000 Mbps connections, speeds hundreds of times faster than what most Americans have today. Only fiber can meet the growing demand for data transmission.
benton.org/node/142317 | Bloomberg
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INTERNET DESERVES ITS OWN HOLIDAY
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Marvin Ammori]
[Commentary] Every so often in human history, something new comes along that warrants a celebration, and that deserves its own holiday. That’s why I propose we celebrate “Internet Freedom Day” later this month. We already know there’s pent-up demand for holidays, typified by the number of official – and unofficial – holidays out there. Take Super Bowl Sunday, which is more widely celebrated than most official holidays. Take Black Friday, our post-holiday celebration of another contact sport, of sorts: shopping. Take April Fool’s Day, a celebration of pranks and human gullibility. And then there’s Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14 – get it?), a celebration of circumferences, math, and store-bought cherry pie. So it’s shocking that we don’t already have an unofficial Internet Freedom Day, or even an official holiday like we do for the Fourth of July, given that the internet is one of the most revolutionary technologies the world has ever known. It has given us an entire universe of information in our pockets. It may connect us to spammers in Nigeria and cat videos, but it also connects us to our loved ones and people we only know from Twitter. To honor this #InternetFreedomDay, I hope people will write blog posts, make videos, and throw flash mob parties. Most Wired readers probably don’t need anyone to tell them to – or suggest how to – celebrate internet freedom. You’re probably the kind of person who edits your own encyclopedia, creates your own how-to videos, and 3-D prints your own paraphernalia. But please tell others — including your grandparents on Facebook — to join in a celebration of their daily freedom. If nothing else, you should call your representatives in Congress on January 18 to remind them that you still care about internet freedom. Let’s spread the message in true Internet Style.
benton.org/node/142279 | Wired
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
NEW RULES TO PROMOTE DEPLOYMENT OF AIRCRAFT INTERNET SERVICE
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: ]
The Federal Communications Commission has adopted a Report and Order establishing rules to help speed the deployment of Internet services onboard aircraft. The FCC’s action enables broadband providers to meet increasing consumer demands and promotes the economic growth and job-creating impacts of ubiquitous broadband. This action also continues the FCC’s efforts to update and streamline regulatory requirements across the agency. Since 2001, the FCC has authorized a number of companies, on an ad hoc basis, to operate Earth Stations Aboard Aircraft (ESAA), i.e., earth stations on aircraft communicating with Fixed-Satellite Service (FSS) geostationary-orbit (GSO) space stations. Installed on the exterior of the aircraft, the satellite antenna carries the signal to and from the aircraft, providing two-way, in-flight broadband services to passengers and flight crews. The Report and Order formalizes ESAA as a licensed application in the FSS and establishes a regulatory framework for processing applications while ensuring other radio service operations are protected from harmful interference. Rather than have to license on-board systems on an ad hoc basis, airlines will be able test systems that meet FCC standards, establish that they do not interfere with aircraft systems, and get FAA approval.
By reducing administrative burdens on both applicants and the FCC, the new rules should allow the FCC to process ESAA applications up to 50 percent faster, enhancing competition in an important sector of the mobile telecommunications market in the United States and promoting the widespread availability of Internet access to aircraft passengers.
benton.org/node/142295 | Federal Communications Commission | FCC
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E-DEVICES AND PLANES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Nick Bilton]
In September, a passenger was arrested in El Paso after refusing to turn off his cellphone as the plane was landing. In October, a man in Chicago was arrested because he used his iPad during takeoff. In November, half a dozen police cars raced across the tarmac at La Guardia Airport in New York, surrounding a plane as if there were a terrorist on board. They arrested a 30-year-old man who had also refused to turn off his phone while on the runway. Who is to blame in these episodes? You can’t solely pin it on the passengers. Some of the responsibility falls on the Federal Aviation Administration, for continuing to uphold a rule that is based on the unproven idea that a phone or tablet can interfere with the operation of a plane. Dealing with the FAA on this topic is like arguing with a stubborn teenager. The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane’s avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims, spreading irrational fear among millions of fliers.
benton.org/node/142294 | New York Times
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TABLET ACTIVATIONS OUTPACE SMARTPHONES
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Ryan Kim]
Christmas Day was huge — not just for present-hungry kids, but also for app developers and device makers. App analytics firm Flurry has tallied up the numbers from Christmas and found that downloads and activations shattered previous records, showing how people love their apps and are increasingly embracing tablets. Device activations on Flurry’s network hit 17.4 million units, up 332 percent over the first 20 days in December, which represented a baseline of activity. That blew away last year’s mark of 6.8 million new device activations on a single day, said Flurry. Tablets were apparently the hot gift item, grabbing 51 percent of mobile device activations. This was the first Christmas that tablets edged out smartphones for activations. During the first 20 days of December, smartphones were activated four times more often than tablets. Flurry noted that the most popular devices were iPads, Apple iPad Minis and Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7-inch tablets, and that Amazon in particular had a good Christmas, increasing its tablet activations by several thousand percent over its baseline during the first half of December. The big increase in Christmas tablet sales may reflect the falling price points of tablets, which are becoming more affordable with smaller 7-inch models. With all those new devices, it’s no surprise that app downloads soared on Christmas Day. Flurry said there were 328 million app downloads that day, up 112 percent over the baseline. That flew by last year’s record of 242 million app downloads. The download parade was steady all day long, hitting about 20 million downloads an hour at 11 a.m. local time and remaining steady all the way through 8 p.m.
benton.org/node/142289 | GigaOm
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CONTENT
E-BOOK READING JUMPS
[SOURCE: Pew Internet and American Life Project, AUTHOR: Lee Rainie, Maeve Duggan]
The population of e-book readers is growing. In the past year, the number of those who read e-books increased from 16% of all Americans ages 16 and older to 23%. At the same time, the number of those who read printed books in the previous 12 months fell from 72% of the population ages 16 and older to 67%. Overall, the number of book readers in late 2012 was 75% of the population ages 16 and older, a small and statistically insignificant decline from 78% in late 2011. The move toward e-book reading coincides with an increase in ownership of electronic book reading devices. In all, the number of owners of either a tablet computer or e-book reading device such as a Kindle or Nook grew from 18% in late 2011 to 33% in late 2012. As of November 2012, some 25% of Americans ages 16 and older own tablet computers such as iPads or Kindle Fires, up from 10% who owned tablets in late 2011. And in late 2012 19% of Americans ages 16 and older own e-book reading devices such as Kindles and Nooks, compared with 10% who owned such devices at the same time last year. This move toward e-books has also affected libraries. The share of recent library users who have borrowed an e-book from a library has increased from 3% last year to 5% this year. Moreover, awareness of e-book lending by libraries is growing. The share of those in the overall population who are aware that libraries offer e-books has jumped from 24% late last year to 31% now.
benton.org/node/142281 | Pew Internet and American Life Project
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WHERE’S THE E-BOOK PRICE WAR?
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Streitfeld]
Where’s the ferocious price war over e-books? Last spring, the Justice Department sued five major publishers and Apple on e-book price-fixing charges. The case was a major victory for Amazon, and afterward there were widespread expectations — fueled by Amazon — that the price of e-books would plunge. But doomsday has not arrived, at least not yet. As four of the publishers have entered into settlements with regulators and revised the way they sell e-books, prices have selectively fallen but not as broadly or drastically as anticipated. The $10 floor that publishers fought so hard to maintain for popular new novels is largely intact. Amazon, for instance, is selling Michael Connelly’s new mystery, “The Black Box,” for $12.74. New best sellers by David Baldacci and James Patterson cost just over $11. One big reason for the lack of fireworks is that the triumph of e-books over their physical brethren is not happening quite as fast as forecast. “The e-book market isn’t growing at the caffeinated level it was,” said Michael Norris, a Simba Information analyst who follows the publishing industry. “Even retailers like Amazon have to be wondering, how far can we go — or should we go — to make our prices lower than the other guys if it’s not helping us with market share?”
benton.org/node/142316 | New York Times
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E-BOOK OWNERSHIP RIGHTS
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Michael Hiltzik]
[Commentary] There's a crass old joke about how you can never buy beer, just rent it. Who would think that the same joke applies to book buying in the digital age? But that's the case. Many people who'll be unwrapping iPads, Amazon Kindles or Barnes & Noble Nooks on Tuesday morning and loading them with bestsellers or classics won't have any idea how limited their rights are as their books' "owners." In fact, they won't be owners at all. They'll be licensees. Unlike the owners of a physical tome, they won't have the unlimited right to lend an e-book, give it away, resell it or leave it to their heirs. If it's bought for their iPad, they won't be able to read it on their Kindle. And if Amazon or the other sellers don't like what they've done with it, they can take it back, without warning. All these restrictions "raise obvious questions about what 'ownership' is," observes Dan Gillmor, an expert on digital media at Arizona State University. "The companies that license stuff digitally have made it clear that you own nothing."
benton.org/node/142305 | Los Angeles Times
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INSTAGRAM AND CONTENT CONTROL
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Somini Sengupta]
The ruckus (now lawsuit) over whether Instagram would use your pictures to make money has drawn new attention to an unresolved battle of the Web era: Who owns your stuff online? As the law professor Eric Goldman points out, we might own our data, but we may not always control what happens to it. There are too many complicated, sometimes impenetrable clauses in company Terms of Service. Instagram is a free service, and the business model of free Web services relies precisely on taking advantage of user data, including the “content” users produce. Facebook makes money by letting advertisers direct marketing messages at prospective customers, based on what they reveal about themselves and who their friends are. And even as Facebook too says it doesn’t “own” any of it, personal data is the company’s most valuable asset. Advertising is its principal moneymaker.
benton.org/node/142314 | New York Times
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OWNERSHIP
RESPONSE TO WALDMAN
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Craig Aaron]
[Commentary] Over at the Columbia Journalism Review, Steven Waldman laments that the media ownership debate is "stuck in a bit of a 1980s time warp." Well, gag me with a spoon. Waldman, a respected former Federal Communications Commission official who authored the agency's exhaustive "future of media" report, dismisses the latest moves by the FCC to eliminate longstanding limits on how much media one company can own in a single market as "hardly radical." What else would you call eliminating the only rules that would prevent Rupert Murdoch from adding the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to his media empire? Terrible? Apocalyptic? Insane? How about just plain wrong? As Charlie Pierce recently wrote in Esquire about the phone-hacking and Petraeus-backing head of News Corp.: "There is simply no reason for any country anywhere in the world ever to do favors for Rupert Murdoch ever again." Yet that's exactly what the FCC is proposing to do. For a guy who has spent so much time thinking about the crisis in journalism, Waldman seems strangely oblivious to how we actually got into the current mess.
benton.org/node/142288 | Huffington Post, The
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APPLE VS GOOGLE VS FACEBOOK VS AMAZON
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jessica Lessin, Greg Bensinger, Evelyn Rusli, Amir Efrati]
Four big technology fiefs -- Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook -- have been creeping into each other's turf for years. In 2013, their war is set to escalate around two fronts: hardware and search. Software giants including Google and Amazon are interested in ramping up hardware to boost customer loyalty and to extend control over their software services and the revenues that flow from them. That is heightening their collision course with Apple, which is responding by building more of its own software to make its devices stand out. Google, with the $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility under its belt, plans to use the phone maker to release new Android devices to help knock Apple's iPhone off its perch. And Amazon, which has upped the ante in the tablet wars with the Kindle Fire, has also been testing its own phone. Meanwhile, all four companies see search as a big opportunity for retaining and profiting off customers. While Google's paradigm of typing queries in a search box has prevailed for years, now its rivals want to undercut the Web-search giant through mobile search on smartphones and other devices, and a slew of search services that allow recommendations from friends.
benton.org/node/142310 | Wall Street Journal
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
WHY MEDIA IGNORED MURDOCH’S BID TO HIJACK THE PRESIDENCY
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Carl Bernstein]
So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press. In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election. All this was revealed in a tape recording of Petraeus's meeting with McFarland obtained by Bob Woodward, whose account of their discussion, accompanied online by audio of the tape, was published in the Washington Post – distressingly, in its style section, and not on page one, where it belonged – and, under the style logo, online on December 3. Indeed, almost as dismaying as Ailes' and Murdoch's disdain for an independent and truly free and honest press, and as remarkable as the obsequious eagerness of their messenger to convey their extraordinary presidential draft and promise of on-air Fox support to Petraeus, has been the ho-hum response to the story by the American press and the country's political establishment, whether out of fear of Murdoch, Ailes and Fox – or, perhaps, lack of surprise at Murdoch's, Ailes' and Fox's contempt for decent journalistic values or a transparent electoral process. The tone of the media's reaction was set from the beginning by the Post's own tin-eared treatment of this huge story: relegating it, like any other juicy tidbit of inside-the-beltway media gossip, to the section of the newspaper and its website that focuses on entertainment, gossip, cultural and personality-driven news, instead of the front page.
benton.org/node/142282 | Guardian, The
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TELECOM
OVER HALF OF AMERICAN HOMES DON’T HAVE OR USE THEIR LANDLINE
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
It’s not really surprising but over half of Americans don’t have or use a land line, according to data published late last week by the Centers for Disease Control. The study tracks the demographics of land line telephone use and was designed to help the CDC adapt its data collection programs, which relied heavily on calling land lines. While the pitfalls of relying on landlines for surveys is well known, the report has some worthwhile stats on the demographics of landline telephone use. The survey found that more than one-third of American homes (35.8 percent) had only wireless telephones during the first half of 2012 while 15.9 percent of all households had both landline and wireless telephones but received all or almost all calls on the wireless phones. This means 51.7 percent of U.S. homes don’t have or didn’t use their landlines in the first half of 2012. That’s a 1.8 percent increase from the same period a year ago.
benton.org/node/142291 | GigaOm
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FCC LAUNCHES PROCEEDING ON PRISON CALLING RATES
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: ]
On December 24, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a Notice of proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) responding to two petitions for rulemaking that seek to “secure the ‘just and reasonable’ interstate rates for prisoners required by Section 201(b) of the Communications Act” by initiating this NPRM to consider changes to FCC rules governing rates for interstate interexchange inmate calling services (ICS). In the first petition for rulemaking, filed in 2003, (First Wright Petition), Petitioners requested that the FCC “prohibit exclusive inmate calling service agreements and collect call-only restrictions at privately-administered prisons and require such facilities to permit multiple long distance carriers to interconnect with prison telephone systems. . . .” In the second petition for rulemaking, filed in 2007, (Alternative Wright Petition), Petitioners proposed that the FCC require debit calling, prohibit per-call charges and establish rate caps for all interstate, interexchange inmate calling services. The FCC received significant comment on the two Petitions for Rulemaking.
benton.org/node/142296 | Federal Communications Commission
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COMMUNITY MEDIA
MOBILE CONNECTIONS TO LIBRARIES
[SOURCE: Pew Internet and American Life Project, AUTHOR: Lee Rainie, Kathryn Zickuhr, Maeve Duggan]
Some 13% of those ages 16 and older have visited library websites or otherwise accessed library services by mobile device. This is the first reading in a national survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project on this subject. An earlier survey in 2009 by scholars at the University of Washington found that 6% of Americans ages 16 and older had used a mobile device to connect to a library site, so the incidence of this activity has doubled since then. Those who are most likely to have connected to a library site include parents of minor children, women, and those with at least some college education. In all, the Pew Internet Project survey finds that 39% of Americans ages 16 and older have gone to a library website at one time or another and, of them, 64% visited a library site in the previous 12 months. That translates into 25% of all Americans ages 16+ who visited a library website in the past year. Those who are most likely to have visited library websites are parents of minors, women, those with college educations, those under age 50, and people living in households earning $75,000 or more.
benton.org/node/142280 | Pew Internet and American Life Project
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2012/2013
TECH GIANTS BRACE FOR INCREASED SCRUTINY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Somini Sengupta]
Silicon Valley lobbied hard in Washington in 2012, and despite some friction with regulators, fared fairly well. In 2013, though, government scrutiny is likely to grow. And with this scrutiny will come even greater efforts by the tech industry to press its case in the nation’s capital and overseas. In 2012, among other victories, the industry staved off calls for federal consumer privacy legislation and successfully pushed for a revamp of an obscure law that had placed strict privacy protections on Americans’ video rental records. It also helped achieve a stalemate on a proposed global effort to let Web users limit behavioral tracking online, using Do Not Track browser settings. But this year is likely to put that issue in the spotlight again, and bring intense negotiations between industry and consumer rights groups over whether and how to allow consumers to limit tracking. Congress is likely to revisit online security legislation — meant to safeguard critical infrastructure from attack — that failed last year. And a looming question for Web giants will be who takes the reins of the Federal Trade Commission, the industry’s main regulator, this year. David C. Vladeck, the director of the commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, has resigned, and there have been suggestions that its chairman, Jon Leibowitz, would step down.
benton.org/node/142311 | New York Times
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