January 2013

President signs foreign surveillance reauthorization bill into law

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.

China Tightens Rules for Internet Users

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.

Senate Confirms Clyburn to Full FCC Term

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.

Kerry Nomination Means More Commerce Reordering

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.

Observers ponder impact of Markey's Senate bid on House Commerce Committee

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.

US Internet Users Pay More for Slower Service

[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.

Little Sign of a Predicted E-Book Price War

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?”

When Media’s Decision in the Face of Events Is to Say Nothing About Them

Members of the media may declare blackouts for many reasons. Some are out of caution. But more often, the blackout is more akin to a boycott that, when made public, can be a tool for media outlets or commentators to raise the level of discourse, to focus the public’s attention elsewhere or to glean some attention from those they are barring.

Instagram Flap Shows Confusion Over Control of Content

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.

Tribune, Bankruptcy Over, Is Expected to Sell Assets

Analysts and prospective buyers are preparing for horse trading to begin over the Tribune Company’s newspapers now that the company, whose holdings include The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, has emerged from bankruptcy protection.

Tribune, which completed its bankruptcy paperwork on Dec 31, has not announced the sale of any assets, but it is likely to do so in the next several months so it can streamline its business, said Reed Phillips, managing partner of DeSilva & Phillips, a media banking firm. The troubled state of the newspaper industry makes those assets most likely to be sold, he added. Less clear, however, is whether the company will sell them all at once or by region, for example selling The Chicago Tribune with Chicago magazine.

Benton

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