March 2013

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

JUDGE STRIKES DOWN SURVEILLANCE LAW
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jennifer Valentino-Devries]
Judge Susan Illston, of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, struck down a controversial set of laws allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek people's data without a court's approval, saying the strict secrecy orders demanded by the laws are not constitutional. Judge Illston said the laws, which underlie a tool known as a "national security letter," violate the First Amendment and the separation of powers principles. In her order, Judge Illston ordered the government to stop issuing national security letters or enforcing their gag orders, although she said enforcement of her judgment would be stayed pending appeal. A Department of Justice spokesman said the department was "reviewing the order." If the department does not appeal, the judge's orders will go into effect after 90 days.
benton.org/node/148063 | Wall Street Journal
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TELECOM

COMMISSIONER CLYBURN AT CFA EVENT
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn]
Speaking to the Consumer Federation of America, Federal Communications Commission member Mignon Clyburn noted that the way in which we communicate is continually changing, but the FCC’s top priority is still to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable communications services. She stressed how the Universal Service Fund’s Lifeline program has been instrumental in increasing the number of low-income consumers with telephone access. The overall penetration rate for phone service in this nation has increased significantly due to a modest monthly subsidy of less than $10 per month for service. But the Lifeline program has been under attack as of late, and what the critics fail to mention, is what one major provider shared with us. That its average Lifeline customer is a middle-age grandmother, raising her grandchildren on only $12,000 per year.
benton.org/node/148034 | Federal Communications Commission
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DEFENDING LIFELINE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Republicans have targeted a federal phone subsidy, widely referred to as the "Obama phone" program, as a prime example of wasteful government spending. But supporters of the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program are coming to its defense, arguing that it is crucial for ensuring that needy people are able to communicate with their loved-ones and call for help in an emergency. "Allow me to set the record straight," said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. "Without this program, 15 million low-income families would literally be choosing between feeding their children or going without a dial tone that potentially could save their lives and put them on a better economic path." Consumer advocacy groups Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Center for Media Justice and the Utility Reform Network issued statements praising Commissioner Clyburn for her full-throated defense of the subsidy.
benton.org/node/148073 | Hill, The
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FCC’S LIFELINE PROGRAM
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Clarissa Ramon]
[Commentary] The need and expense of basic social service programs has been subject of national debate. On Capitol Hill, the costs and benefits of such services are described in terms of dollars and cents. The Universal Service Fund (USF) is no exception from scrutiny and it is the position of Public Knowledge that cuts to our communications service safety net, is a mistake that would harm millions of Americans. Our telephone system is one of that has made America great. Its reliability has fostered innovation and growth as well as provided an essential public safety net. As mandated by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the FCC is required to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable communication services. Unlike other federal safety net programs USF is subsidized by carriers, not through federal taxes, and provides millions of Americans with critical services they might have not otherwise had access to. The Lifeline program has undergone significant reforms according to Clyburn. Strides have been taken within the Commission to investigate claims of fraud and abuse, reform the eligibility confirmation process and improve the overall education about the Lifeline program. Clyburn reported over $200 million was saved last year as a result of these reforms, with an additional $400 million projected savings over the next. As the technology advances, the conversations will only become more complicated, and the scrutiny will continue. I applaud policy makers like Commissioner Clyburn who, despite the current political climate- remain committed to protecting a vital lifeline for so many Americans.
benton.org/node/148036 | Public Knowledge
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

GUIDANCE ON OBTAINING EXPERIMENTAL AUTHORIZATIONS FOR COMMERCIAL SPACE LAUNCH ACTIVITIES
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
The purpose of this Public Notice is to provide guidance for commercial space launch activities and related spacecraft use that require the use of spectrum for operational communications related to launch, cargo delivery, and/or re-entry. Currently, commercial space launch operations use radio frequencies allocated exclusively for federal government use, and the scope of such operations often encompass use of radio transmissions from within and beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) may authorize use of these radio frequencies on a temporary, noninterference basis through the FCC’s Experimental Authorization process. This Public Notice provides guidance to applicants on how to obtain an Experimental Authorization for communications used for commercial space launch activities and related cargo transport activities. This Public Notice also provides guidance concerning experimental licensing of related non-government ground stations and ground testing facilities.
benton.org/node/148037 | Federal Communications Commission | Chairman Genachowski | Tech Crunch
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WITH A CARRIER FOR THE LONG HAUL
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Nick Bilton]
If dating were like the cellphone industry, you would have to sign a contract when you entered a relationship stating that you would remain monogamous for two years, even if you wanted to break up. That’s what cellular carriers have pulled off by successfully lobbying for a recent government ruling that you cannot take the phone you paid for and switch to another provider. It’s the latest reminder that owning a cellphone on one of the biggest United States providers can sometimes feel like an unhappy relationship. Time and again, in the minds of many customers, these companies take advantage of us and there isn’t much we can do about it. Srinivasan Keshav, a professor at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, who studies mobile computing, has found that cell carriers make more than a 4,000 percent profit on text messages. Sending a megabyte of text messages over the cell network costs customers roughly $1,500. What does it cost carriers? Close to nothing, as texts piggyback on other data transfers, including voice calls. The carriers combined make billions of dollars a year in fees on texting alone.
benton.org/node/148072 | New York Times
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DISTRACTED DRIVING
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Anahad O’Connor]
Despite increasing media attention and laws forbidding the practice, more Americans than ever are using their cellphones to talk and send text messages while driving, a new study shows. According to the research, nearly 70 percent of Americans ages 18 to 64 said they had chatted on their phones while driving in the past 30 days, and about 30 percent said they had sent text messages while behind the wheel. Drivers in seven European countries were also included in the study, and the numbers showed that the practice appears to be far more common in the United States than overseas.
benton.org/node/148043 | New York Times
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CONTENT

DMCA AND OUR CULTURAL HERITAGE
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Benj Edwards]
[Commentary] If the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) remains unaltered, cultural scholarship will soon be conducted only at the behest of corporations, and public libraries may disappear entirely. That's because the DMCA attacks one of the of the fundamental pillars of human civilization: the sharing of knowledge and culture between generations. Under the DMCA, manmade mechanisms that prevent the sharing of information are backed with the force of law. And sharing is vital for the survival of information. Take that away, and you have a recipe for disaster. "DMCA is a mess," says Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections at Stanford University Libraries. "It's basically putting cultural repositories in positions where they either have to interpret very murky scenarios or they have to decide that they are going to do something that they realize is forbidden and hope that nobody's going to notice."
benton.org/node/148061 | Atlantic, The
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TELEVISION

VERIZON SEEKS TV SHAKE UP
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Shalini Ramachandran]
Verizon is proposing to shake up the pay-television business based on a simple premise: it wants to tie the fees it pays to carry TV channels to how many people actually watch them. Verizon, whose FiOS TV is the nation's sixth-biggest pay-TV provider, with 4.7 million subscribers, has begun talks with several "midtier and smaller" media companies about paying for their channels based on audience size, according to Terry Denson, the phone company's chief programming negotiator. He declined to identify any of the media companies. Under existing arrangements, distributors like cable and satellite operators pay a monthly, per-subscriber fee to carry channels based on the number of homes in which they agree to make the channels available, regardless of how many people watch those channels. Verizon would like to offer broad distribution of a "significant number of channels," including independent networks and smaller outlets. But each channel would be paid solely according to how many subscribers tuned in each month for a "unique view," or a minimum of five minutes, Mr. Denson said. Viewership would be measured by Verizon's set-top box data, not Nielsen ratings.
benton.org/node/148093 | Wall Street Journal
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BROADCASTERS SUE TO KEEP RATES SECRET
[SOURCE: Bellingham, AUTHOR: Lewis Kamb]
When the media take the government to court over public records, they’re usually trying to pry the records in question loose on behalf of the public’s right to know. But this month, the corporate owners of four local television broadcasters separately have sued Click Cable TV – and by extension The News Tribune – to keep records containing their financial agreements with the city-owned cable network secret. Pierce County Superior Court Judge Ronald Culpepper is set to weigh arguments from all sides during a hearing to decide whether the court should grant a preliminary injunction to stop the records from being disclosed to the newspaper. If granted, the order would temporarily halt release of the records pending a full-blown trial over the issue. The broadcast companies are prepared to contend the records – so-called “retransmission agreements” that detail how much they charge Click to air broadcast signals for KING, KOMO, KIRO, KCPQ and KSTW – contain protected trade secrets that are exempt from public disclosure.
benton.org/node/148014 | Bellingham Herald
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

BROADBAND GENDER EQUITY
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The United Nations’ Broadband Commission for Digital Development has set a target of 2020 for gender equity in broadband access, thanks in part to actress Geena Davis. That announcement came over the weekend at the seventh meeting of the commission, which was held in Mexico City. The goal is to "spur female access to the power of information and communication technologies." That new target was set after the first in-person meeting of the gender working group, which was launched in New York last year for Davis. The new gender target was one decisive outcome of the first face-to-face meeting of the Broadband Commission Working Group on Gender March 16. The working group was launched in New York in 2012 by Geena Davis, actor, advocate and ITU's Special Envoy on Women and Girls. The commission endorsed the recommendation, asked the working group members track gender initiatives and report back at the next commission meeting in September in New York, where the commission will also be releasing its second State of Broadband report featuring a country-by-country ranking based on access and affordability.
benton.org/node/148099 | Broadcasting&Cable
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INTERNET NATIONALISM
[SOURCE: Technology Review, AUTHOR: Bruce Schneier]
[Commentary] For technology that was supposed to ignore borders, bring the world closer together, and sidestep the influence of national governments the Internet is fostering an awful lot of nationalism right now. We’ve started to see increased concern about the country of origin of IT products and services; U.S. companies are worried about hardware from China; European companies are worried about cloud services in the U.S; no one is sure whether to trust hardware and software from Israel; Russia and China might each be building their own operating systems out of concern about using foreign ones. I see this as an effect of all the cyberwar saber-rattling that’s going on right now. The major nations of the world are in the early years of a cyberwar arms race, and we’re all being hurt by the collateral damage. Nationalism is rife on the Internet, and it’s getting worse. We need to damp down the rhetoric and—more importantly—stop believing the propaganda from those who profit from this Internet nationalism. Those who are beating the drums of cyberwar don’t have the best interests of society, or the Internet, at heart.
benton.org/node/148084 | Technology Review
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JOURNALISM

STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA
[SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: ]
In the news media, a continued erosion of reporting resources has converged with growing opportunities for newsmakers, such as political figures, government agencies, companies and others, to take their messages directly to the public. The public, for its part, is not very aware of the financial struggles that have led to the news industry’s cutbacks in reporting, but nearly one-in-three (31%) say they have stopped turning to a particular news outlet because it no longer provides the news they were accustomed to getting. These are among the major findings in the Pew Research Center’s 2013 State of the News Media report, its 10th annual report on the health and status of American journalism. The report pinpoints multiple signs of shrinking reporting power. For newspapers, estimates for newsroom cutbacks in 2012 put industry employment down 30% since its peak in 2000 and below 40,000 employees for the first time since 1978. On local television, where audiences were down across every key time slot in 2012, news stories have shrunk in length, and, compared with 2005, coverage of government has been cut in half and sports, weather and traffic now account for 40% of the content. On cable, coverage of live events during the day, which often requires a crew and correspondent, fell 30% from 2007 to 2012, while interview segments were up 31%. And among news magazines, the end of Newsweek’s print edition coincided with another round of staff cuts, and Time, the only general news print magazine left, announced cuts of roughly 5% in early 2013 as a part of broader company layoffs. This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands.
benton.org/node/148100 | Project for Excellence in Journalism
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA

POLITICAL AD DISCLOSURE
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Michael Copps]
[Commentary] In case anyone doubted the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to require fuller disclosure of who actually pays for all those anonymous political ads that flooded the airwaves last year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just reaffirmed that authority. The GAO—the government’s top watchdog agency—is also critical that the FCC has not bothered to update its “sponsorship identification” guidelines since the 1960s and it recommended that the Commission do so. The right of the people to know who is sponsoring advertisements, both commercial and political, goes back to the 1920’s and the old Federal Radio Commission. Subsequently this authority was rolled into the new Federal Communications Commission when it was established in 1934.
http://benton.org/node/148065/
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GOP’S DIGITAL STRATEGY
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Steve Friess]
A top GOP official urged a hastily organized gathering of about three dozen conservative digital experts to stop causing negative publicity about the party’s technology problems because it could hurt fundraising. Mike Shields, hired about two weeks ago as chief of staff for the Republican National Committee, held forth in the Reagan conference room at party headquarters with several major figures present, including current digital director Tyler Brown and Zac Moffatt, digital chief of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Sources described the meeting as “tense” and aimed at “pre-damage control.” It opened with Shields giving out his email address and cell phone number and exhorting his audience to come to him — not journalists — with issues.
benton.org/node/148020 | Politico
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

FRENCH PRESSURE INTERNET GROUPS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Hugh Carnegy, James Fontanella-Khan]
French authorities opened a new front this week. Now under the aegis of the Socialist government of François Hollande, the country’s telecoms regulator asked the Paris public prosecutor to investigate Skype, the popular, Microsoft-owned internet phone service, for failing to register as a telecoms operator. To some observers, these moves reflect a classic French instinct to exert control over unruly markets. “It is not really surprising that with the internet becoming such a big part of the economy it has attracted the attention of the French ‘engineers’,” says a French businessman. “There is a strong tradition here that just letting things happen cannot be the best answer.” But does the flurry of action across a wide sweep of internet activity signal a potentially damaging attack on a much-needed source of growth in a sclerotic economy? Or are the French authorities simply acting more forcefully to come to grips with problems that are vexing regulators around the globe?
benton.org/node/148080 | Financial Times
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March 2013

Press regulation deal struck by parties in UK

China’s new leadership is ratcheting up pressure on Western tech and media companies

Benton Foundation Statement on Lifeline Program

March 18, 2013 (Political Ad Disclosure for 2014)

Political Ad Disclosure for 2014 -- Why Not?

The State of the News Media 2013

UN Sets 2020 Broadband Gender Equity Goal

US Looked at Wall Street Journal Over Claims of Bribery

Hacker Case Leads to Calls for Better Law

GOP Taps Tech Allies To Narrow Digital Gap