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April 2013

When Will Cable Start Shifting Bandwidth Away from Video and to Internet Access?

If an Internet service provider’s highest-margin product is projected to have demand growth of an order of magnitude growth, or more, while other products with lower profit margins are declining, should we not expect more bandwidth to allocated to the fast-growing, highest-margin service?

Internet bandwidth, despite all worries about the “dumb pipe” implications, is the highest-margin product most ISPs can sell. And while the strategic implications are different for telcos, cable operators, satellite, mobile and other ISPs, at least for cable operators, it will make sense to shift network bandwidth to Internet access, while allocating less for video entertainment. Among other things, that could in the future conceivably mean a bigger shift to “switched” or “on demand” video, more fiber, closer to the customer and significant changes in the volume of channels offered to end users. One issue is precisely how high profit margins might be, for various providers.

Nevada opens door of online gambling with poker launch

Nevada will lead the nation into the world of legal, real-money Internet gambling with the launch of a Las Vegas-based online poker site.

UltimatePoker.com will deal the first hand at noon ET to in-state gamblers in what its operators, as well as industry observers, see as a watershed moment for gaming. "This is, for Nevada, a new day," said Reno gaming analyst Ken Adams. "There's been a huge amount of speculation on what online gaming means. Estimates in New Jersey run from $20 (million) to $30 million to $2 (billion) to $3 billion. The only way to find out is when it starts. Up to now, we've been talking in theories. Now we'll get a peek at reality." Ultimate Poker is a subsidiary of Station Casinos LLC of Las Vegas, which operates 16 locals-oriented casinos throughout Southern Nevada and touts itself as the nation's first provider of legal, secure online poker.

Online poker will be available 24/7, but there are restrictions. Players must be at least 21 years old and physically within the state's boundaries to play, two rules which Breitling is confident his company's "complicated and sophisticated" software can police. And so far, only online poker will be played — with bets as little as a penny — on personal computers from accounts funded by MasterCard, checks, wire transfers or person-to-person at any Station casino.

The Next Elizabeth Warren: Susan Crawford’s crusade against lousy, overpriced Internet providers

Telecom regulators don’t usually have public followings, except perhaps among other telecom regulators. But as soon as rumors began circulating that Julius Genachowski planned to resign as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), petitions appeared on sites like BoingBoing, Reddit, and Daily Kos calling on President Barack Obama to appoint a 50-year-old law professor and former administration official named Susan Crawford as Genachowski’s successor.

It’s not hard to see why she has acquired an enthusiastic fan base in these precincts of the Internet. With an appealing blend of earnestness and feistiness, Crawford is set on turning the sorry state of broadband and wireless services in the United States into the biggest populist outrage since Elizabeth Warren went after the banks. Like Warren, Crawford has become a dreaded figure to the industry she wants to reform. Representatives from Comcast and other telecoms have refused to appear on congressional panels with her. “My name comes up in discussions about the new FCC chair. I’m on lists,” Crawford has said—but she expects the job to go to telecom entrepreneur and Obama bundler Tom Wheeler. “It’s obvious to me that they can’t [appoint me],” she told me. “The incumbents would go bananas.”

As cyberthreats mount, hacker’s conviction underscores criticism of government overreach

Their guns drawn, a dozen federal agents, police and forensics experts kicked in the door of a run-down two-story home in Arkansas shortly after dawn, barged inside and ordered the occupants to put their hands on their heads. The target of the raid was neither terrorist nor bank robber. He was a 24-year-old computer hacker suspected of handing off stolen e-mail addresses to the media. With that, the Justice Department began a case that has come to symbolize what some lawyers and civil libertarians see as overreach in the government’s campaign against cybercrime.

The hacker, Andrew Auernheimer, was convicted and sentenced last month to more than three years in prison for obtaining about 120,000 e-mail addresses of iPad users from AT&T’s Web site — including New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein and other prominent figures — and giving them to the Web site Gawker. At the time it happened three years ago, the data breach jolted federal officials because it affected one of the nation’s most prominent companies and triggered fears about the security of increasingly popular mobile devices. Yet only a few, heavily redacted e-mail addresses were published, court documents show. No one’s account was broken into. AT&T fixed the problem in about an hour, and a company official testified that there probably was not enough evidence to sue the hackers.

How to Defeat Cyber Jihad

A great paradox of the conflict with al Qaeda is that the terrorists, largely driven by 14th century Islamist ideology, make such skillful use of 21st century information technology.

Whether to tell their story of a sacred mission to reduce the shadow cast by American power over the Muslim world, to motivate recruits to join the jihad, or to provide a form of "distance learning" in terrorist tradecraft, al Qaeda operatives have made extensive use of cyberspace-based connectivity. And somehow, after more than a decade of being so relentlessly hunted, they still enjoy the largely unobstructed use of this virtual haven. It is just as important as their somewhat harried physical havens in the mountains of Waziristan, Yemen, and a few other remote fastnesses. The Boston bombing once again reminded the world of the benefits al Qaeda reaps from cyberspace, as it appears that the Tsarnaev brothers were radicalized and trained via jihadist websites. In this they were hardly alone.

The questions now before the global counterterrorist coalition are the same ones that have resonated for the past decade, but are now perhaps more urgently voiced in the wake of Boston: How is online jihad to be stopped?

National Institute of Standards and Technology
Department of Commerce
Wednesday, June 12, 2013, from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Thursday, June 13, 2013, from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Friday, June 14, 2013, from 8:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-04-30/pdf/2013-10137.pdf

The agenda is expected to include the following items:

—Cybersecurity
• Executive Order 13636, Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (78 FR 11737, February 19, 2013);
• Development of New Cybersecurity Framework;
• Request for Information (RFI)—Developing a Framework to Improve Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (78 FR 13024, February 26, 2013);
• Notice of Inquiry (NOI)—Incentives to Adopt Improved Cybersecurity Practices (78 FR 18954, March 28, 2013),

—DHS Information Sharing Update,

—Update on Legislative proposals relating to information security and privacy,

—Update on FISMA—transfer of operational responsibilities for DHS and OMB,

—FISMA—gaps and issues,

—DHS—investigative discussion on reducing required reporting,

—US–CERT changing reporting categories, and

—Update of NIST Computer Security Division.


April 30, 2013 (Power of Internet Advocacy)

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for TUESDAY, MAY 30, 2013

Who wants to talk privacy? http://benton.org/calendar/2013-04-30/


TELECOM
   Should we provide a ‘Hand Up” to low-income Americans or “Hang Up” on them? - analysis
   Restricting Lifeline program funding won't make it more efficient - op-ed

WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
   After Sandy, Questions Linger Over Cellphone Reliability
   Sprint to talk with Dish about bid
   Clearwire to Take $80 Million Funding Draw From Sprint
   Sprint Sets June 12 as Tentative Date for SoftBank Deal Vote
   SoftBank Won't Raise Sprint Bid, CEO Says [links to web]

ACCESSIBILITY
   FCC Adopts Accessibility Rules - public notice

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   CISPA Changes Show Power of Internet Advocacy - op-ed
   AT&T: FCC Begins Transition to All-IP Interconnection - press release [links to web]

TELEVISION
   NM Delegation Asks FCC to Protect Rural Broadcasting [links to web]
   Diller: Aereo Is 'Not a Loophole; It Is a Right' [links to web]

CONTENT
   After Streaming Kills Cable, Where Will the Content Come From? - analysis
   The Delete Squad: Google, Twitter, Facebook and the new global battle over the future of free speech
   A decade of iTunes singles killed the music industry [links to web]
   Google Buys Wavii, a Startup that Summarizes Online Content [links to web]
    Betaworks: The Company That's Buying Up All the Key Pieces of the Online-News Ecosystem [links to web]

LABOR
   First lady unveils program to help veterans find tech jobs [links to web]
   Is the Specter of a 'Cyber Cold War' Real? - analysis [links to web]
   The Myth of America's Tech-Talent Shortage [links to web]

EDUCATION
   Colleges Adapt Online Courses to Ease Burden

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   Panel seeks to fine tech companies for noncompliance with wiretap orders
   Internet lobby vows 'wiretap mandate' will be 'dead on arrival' in Congress [links to web]
   Google vs Brazil
   The Delete Squad: Google, Twitter, Facebook and the new global battle over the future of free speech
   Supreme Court Backs State Restrictions on Who Can Ask for Information [links to web]

ADVERTISING
   Online Ads Can Now Follow You Home
   Nielsen Gets Digital to Track Online TV Viewers [links to web]

LOBBYING
   Silicon Valley learning the DC art of secret money
   Rey Ramsey is stepping down as head of TechNet [links to web]

RESEARCH
   Lamar Smith Proposes New Criteria for Choosing NSF Grants
   President Obama Celebrates the 150th Anniversary of the National Academy of Sciences - press release [links to web]

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TELECOM

HAND UP OR HANG UP?
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Amina Fazlullah]
[Commentary] Last week’s Congressional oversight hearing on the Lifeline program vacillated between fact and fiction. Thanks to efforts by Springwire and Consumer Action, more than 1,400 Americans who benefit from the program wrote to tell the committee how important Lifeline phone service is to low-income households. Testimony from industry, consumer advocates and government confirmed that providing communications support to low-income households allows these Americans to call employers, schools, health care providers, family, veterans' help lines, and police. The bottom line is that access to communications helps people find their own pathways out of poverty. However, despite a record overflowing with letters of support, individual stories and expert testimony, many members attending the hearing continued to perpetuate negative myths about the program.
http://benton.org/node/150667
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LIFELINE FUNDING
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Sarah Morris, Benjamin Lennett]
[Commentary] If you’ve watched certain YouTube videos or heard statements from a number of Republican members during last week’s House hearing, you might think the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program is enabling rampant abuse of taxpayer funds by the poor to collect stockpiles of free cell phones. It would be wrong thinking, as the most egregious abusers of the program have been opportunistic private companies, not the vast majority of low-income households that rely on the program for discounted basic phone service. The Federal Communications Commission’s reforms to the Lifeline program aren’t perfect, and implementation of the various components is ongoing. However, efforts to restrict Lifeline’s funding won’t improve the program’s efficiency. Rather, it will reduce the program’s ability to serve the nation’s most vulnerable at a time when the number of families and veterans falling into poverty are increasing. Congress should vigilantly monitor the progress of the FCC’s reforms, but it should not unnecessarily place such a critical program in the cross fire of the budget debate or use it to launch partisan attacks against the current Administration.
[Morris is the policy counsel for the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute; Lennett is the policy director there.]
benton.org/node/150860 | Hill, The
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

CELLPHONE RELIABILITY
[SOURCE: National Public Radio, AUTHOR: Tracy Samuelson]
Roughly one in four cellphone towers in the path of Hurricane Sandy went out of service. It was a frustrating and potentially dangerous experience for customers without a landline to fall back on. Now, local officials and communications experts are pushing providers to improve their performance during natural disasters. In the city of Long Beach (NY), all the cell towers went down during Sandy. City Manager Jack Schnirman described the experience at a recent Federal Communications Commission hearing on how cellphone networks held up, or didn't, during the storm. "There was one woman in particular who passed away, of natural causes, an elderly woman," he said. "And her daughter had to walk literally a mile and a half from her home to police headquarters just to say, 'Listen, my mom has passed, and I thought I should tell somebody.' " To prepare for the next disaster, Schnirman wants better access to "Cell on Wheels," or COWs. They're cell towers that can be moved from place to place. He wants backup power, like generators, at cell towers. And he wants better access to the cell providers themselves. He said he didn't even know whom to call during Sandy.
benton.org/node/150808 | National Public Radio
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SPRINT TALKING TO DISH
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Sprint-Nextel said that it has received a special waiver from SoftBank to talk with Dish Network about its takeover proposal. SoftBank, a Japanese cellphone carrier, agreed to buy Sprint last year. Earlier this month, Dish announced a competing $25.5 billion offer for Sprint. Sprint said that the waiver will allow a special committee of its board to enter into a non-disclosure agreement and to hold discussions "for the purpose of clarifying and obtaining further information from DISH regarding its proposal."
benton.org/node/150815 | Hill, The
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SPRINT FUNDING FOR CLEARWIRE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Thomas Gryta]
Clearwire will again tap financing from Sprint Nextel under their buyout deal, taking a $80 million draw for May that will be the last available before Clearwire shareholders vote on the deal. In December, Sprint offered to buy the rest of Clearwire in a $2.2 billion deal, and provided the wireless broadband operator up to $800 million in financing that it could draw on in installments of $80 million over 10 months. The company didn't take that funding in January or February, as it was considering an offer from satellite TV company Dish Network, but took the cash in March and April. Clearwire shareholders are set to vote on the deal on May 21. In a regulatory filing, Clearwire warned that the failure of the Sprint deal could force it to stop its network overhaul if it can't find alternative funding. The company's board is "actively considering" whether to make a June 1 interest payment on about $4.5 billion of outstanding debt, in order to save cash if the deal doesn't close for any reason. Clearwire said that its current cash could last until the first quarter of 2014.
benton.org/node/150841 | Wall Street Journal | Bloomberg | Los Angeles Times – Hesse interview
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SPRINT-SOFTBANK VOTE?
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Thomas Gryta]
Sprint Nextel has tentatively set June 12 as the date for a shareholder vote on selling a 70% stake to Japan's SoftBank for $20.1 billion. A Sprint spokesman said the proxy related to the vote hasn't been approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the date may change. Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier, is intertwined in a series of deals that aim to remake the long-struggling company. After striking a deal with SoftBank last fall, Dish Network made a competing $25.5 billion proposal to buy Sprint last week. Sprint's board has formed a special committee to evaluate the Dish offer and it has also requested additional information from Dish. A number of major Sprint shareholders have voiced their endorsement of the Dish offer. Sprint itself is in the process of buying the portion of mobile-broadband company Clearwire that it doesn't already own. Dish had made an offer for Clearwire prior to its proposal for all of Sprint. Dish has said it would be able to sign a definitive agreement to buy Sprint shortly after Sprint grants access to its financial details.
benton.org/node/150814 | Wall Street Journal
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ACCESSIBILITY

ACCESSIBILITY RULES
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: ]
In this Second Report and Order, the Federal Communications Commission implements section 718 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (Act), which was added by section 104 of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA) to ensure that people with disabilities have access to emerging and innovative advanced communications technologies. Section 718 requires mobile phone manufacturers and mobile service providers that include or arrange for the inclusion of an Internet browser on mobile phones to ensure that the functions of the included browser are accessible to and usable by individuals who are blind or have a visual impairment, unless doing so is not achievable. Specifically, we take the following actions:
Affirm that Internet browsers used for advanced communications services (ACS), that are installed or included by ACS equipment manufacturers or provided by ACS service providers, are software subject to section 716 of the Act.
Find that sections 716 and 718 have overlapping requirements with respect to ensuring the accessibility of Internet browsers.
Adopt implementing regulations for section 718 that are consistent with the Commission’s Part 14 rules implementing section 716.
Decline to adopt requirements or safe harbors with respect to accessibility application programming interfaces (APIs).
Retain section 14.31 of the Commission’s rules with respect to recordkeeping requirements applicable to manufacturers and service providers subject to section 718.
benton.org/node/150834 | Federal Communications Commission
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

CISPA AND INTERNET ADVOCACY
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Leslie Harris]
[Commentary] Last week CISPA, the cybersecurity information-sharing bill, passed the House. Though fundamentally flawed, the bill is very different from when it passed the House a year ago, demonstrating the power of a growing Internet advocacy community that sometimes underestimates its own influence. Two game-changing achievements stand out. When CISPA was reintroduced this year, CDT and others pointed out that, once again, the bill allowed information shared with the government for cybersecurity purposes to be used for national security purposes unrelated to cybersecurity. In the face of criticism that this loophole would turn CISPA into a backdoor intelligence-gathering operation, the House Intelligence Committee amended the text to clearly prohibit such uses. Chalk up one significant victory for Internet advocacy. A second major flaw in the bill was that it would have changed decades of federal policy by shifting control over private sector cybersecurity programs to a super-secret military agency, the National Security Agency. Last year, in the face of criticism, the House leadership blocked any vote on the question of civilian versus military leadership. This year, in the face of ongoing advocacy about the dangers of giving a military agency the lead role in cybersecurity efforts for private sector networks, an amendment was allowed and passed. The amendment was poorly drafted and may not actually say what its sponsors or advocates intended, but there was no doubt that Members thought they were voting to reaffirm civilian leadership. There is no going back now. That House vote changed the dynamic of the debate. The lead Senate bill last year, and the White House, had already embraced civilian control. Any future cybersecurity bill must give the lead role to a civilian agency. A second significant victory for Internet advocates.
benton.org/node/150809 | Huffington Post, The
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CONTENT

CONTENT AFTER CABLE?
[SOURCE: AdWeek, AUTHOR: Sam Thielman]
[Commentary] Netflix is not going to kill cable. Nor is Amazon Prime. Nor is the mythical Apple TV. Because if they do, they will essentially be sawing off the limb on which they have built their businesses: content funded by the very cable model against which they offer an alluring alternative. And wow, is it ever funded—programming is expensive, as you may have heard. Cord cutting may be on the rise, but it's nowhere near the level of an existential threat to the cable industry, despite the hype. Nielsen’s fourth-quarter cross-platform report counted more than 5 million "zero-TV" households in 2012, up from just over 2 million as recently as 2007. Those are small numbers given the 110 million TV household universe. That said, cable operators (or MVPDs, for multichannel video programming distributors) and the networks they carry are dragging each other kicking and screaming toward the rich seam of multiplatform video distribution that Netflix and Amazon are already mining as fast as they can. To be sure, there's a new economic model for content coming, but it’s big enough to allow all parties to survive, perhaps even thrive. Here's how.
benton.org/node/150854 | AdWeek
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EDUCATION

ONLINE COURSES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Tamar Lewin]
Dazzled by the potential of free online college classes, educators are now turning to the gritty task of harnessing online materials to meet the toughest challenges in American higher education: giving more students access to college, and helping them graduate on time. Nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States arrive on campus needing remedial work before they can begin regular credit-bearing classes. That early detour can be costly, leading many to drop out, often in heavy debt and with diminished prospects of finding a job. Meanwhile, shrinking state budgets have taken a heavy toll at public institutions, reducing the number of seats available in classes students must take to graduate. In California alone, higher education cuts have left hundreds of thousands of college students without access to classes they need. To address both problems and keep students on track to graduation, universities are beginning to experiment with adding the new “massive open online courses,” created to deliver elite college instruction to anyone with an Internet connection, to their offerings.
benton.org/node/150851 | New York Times
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

NONCOMPLIANCE WITH WIRETAP ORDERS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima]
A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Face¬book and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the effort. Driven by Federal Bureau of Investigation concerns that it is unable to tap the Internet communications of terrorists and other criminals, the task force’s proposal would penalize companies that failed to heed wiretap orders — court authorizations for the government to intercept suspects’ communications. Rather than antagonizing companies whose cooperation they need, federal officials typically back off when a company is resistant, industry and former officials said. But law enforcement officials say the cloak drawn on suspects’ online activities — what the FBI calls the “going dark” problem — means that critical evidence can be missed.
benton.org/node/150812 | Washington Post
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GOOGLE VS BRAZIL
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Sarah Laskow]
In 2012 as a whole, Google received more than twice as many takedown requests as it had in 2011. “It’s become increasingly clear that the scope of government attempts to censor content on Google services has grown,” legal director Susan Infantino wrote. This varies country by country: some only bother the company a few times each year. Others get in touch multiple times each day. Among this latter group of countries, the one that has been the most aggressive about using Google to remove content—and the country who among top requesters, has had its requests shot down most often -- is Brazil. In 2011 and again in 2012, of all the countries in the world, Brazil asked Google to take down Internet content more times than any other country. Plenty of these had to do with defamation, which comprises about two-fifths of overall requests: Google’s social network, Orkut, is particularly popular in Brazil, and many of the 2011 requests related to defamation on Orkut and YouTube. But in 2012, a disproportionate number—235 court orders and three executive requests out of 697 total—related to violations of election law, the third most common reason countries cite for removing online material (second is privacy and security). Brazil’s election law, compared to those in the United States, are restrictive.
benton.org/node/150803 | Columbia Journalism Review
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THE DELETE SQUAD
[SOURCE: New Republic, AUTHOR: Jeffrey Rosen]
A year ago this month, Stanford Law School hosted a little-noticed meeting that may help decide the future of free speech online. It took place in the faculty lounge, where participants were sustained in their deliberations by bagels and fruit platters. Among the roughly two-dozen attendees, the most important were a group of fresh-faced tech executives, some of them in t-shirts and unusual footwear, who are in charge of their companies’ content policies. Their positions give these young people more power over who gets heard around the globe than any politician or bureaucrat—more power, in fact, than any president or judge. The session at Stanford concluded with the attendees passing a resolution for the formation of an “Anti-Cyberhate Working Group,” then heading over to Facebook’s headquarters to drink white wine out of plastic cups at a festive reception. But despite the generally laid-back vibe, the meeting, part of a series of discussions dating back more than a year, had a serious agenda. Because of my work on the First Amendment, I was asked to join the conversations, along with other academics, civil libertarians, and policymakers from the United States and abroad. Although I can’t identify all the participants by name, I am at liberty, according to the ground rules of our meetings, to describe the general thrust of the discussions, which are bringing together the Deciders at a pivotal time.
benton.org/node/150848 | New Republic
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ADVERTISING
   Online Ads Can Now Follow You Home
   Nielsen Gets Digital to Track Online TV Viewers [links to web]

ONLINE ADS FOLLOWING USERS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Spencer Ante]
Advertisers already know what people are up to on their personal computers. But understanding their online whereabouts on smartphones or tablets has remained elusive. A number of companies are trying to better pinpoint mobile users' online activity with new software and techniques they say could help advertisers track users across devices. By harvesting cross-screen identities, the ad industry could serve ads to mobile phones based on the interests people express when surfing the Web on their PCs. The emergence of cross-screen marketing is one of several new forms of technology aimed at solving a fundamental problem with mobile ads: It is harder to target people on smartphones than on PCs.
benton.org/node/150858 | Wall Street Journal
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LOBBYING

THE ART OF SECRET MONEY
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Tony Romm]
Google, Microsoft, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and other digital heavyweights increasingly are borrowing a favorite technique from the world of politics: secret money. These top tech executives and their companies are embracing stealth, not-for-profit campaigns that can advertise and advance their pet causes — from tax and immigration reform to new online privacy laws — without ever disclosing a single donation. The groups are known by their tax designation, 501(c)(4), and until recently, they've been the domain of entrenched players such as Karl Rove and the Koch brothers. But interest on Capitol Hill in regulating the burgeoning tech sector has convinced Silicon Valley's power brokers they too must adopt a form of political advocacy that once would have been anathema to the Washington-wary industry. The most prominent new example is FWD.us, the Zuckerberg-helmed collection of tech luminaries pumping millions of dollars into local television markets with ads promoting immigration reform to oil drilling. It joins a list of groups — from a Microsoft-backed immigration effort, to a Google-supported privacy campaign — that are also playing the D.C. secret-money game. If anything, the evolution highlights something of an irony: Even as Zuckerberg and other tech titans proselytize openness, many have closed off any public access to the full extent of their influence operations.
benton.org/node/150846 | Politico
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RESEARCH

HIGH QUALITY RESEARCH ACT
[SOURCE: Science, AUTHOR: Jeffrey Mervis]
House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) has drafted a bill that, in effect, would replace peer review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a set of funding criteria chosen by Congress. For good measure, it would also set in motion a process to determine whether the same criteria should be adopted by every other federal science agency. The legislation represents the latest—and bluntest—attack on NSF by congressional Republicans seeking to halt what they believe is frivolous and wasteful research being funded in the social sciences. Last month, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) successfully attached language to a 2013 spending bill that prohibits NSF from funding any political science research for the rest of the fiscal year unless its director certifies that it pertains to economic development or national security. Smith's draft bill, called the "High Quality Research Act," would apply similar language to NSF's entire research portfolio across all the disciplines that it supports.
benton.org/node/150805 | Science
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Restricting Lifeline program funding won't make it more efficient

[Commentary] If you’ve watched certain YouTube videos or heard statements from a number of Republican members during last week’s House hearing, you might think the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program is enabling rampant abuse of taxpayer funds by the poor to collect stockpiles of free cell phones. It would be wrong thinking, as the most egregious abusers of the program have been opportunistic private companies, not the vast majority of low-income households that rely on the program for discounted basic phone service.

The Federal Communications Commission’s reforms to the Lifeline program aren’t perfect, and implementation of the various components is ongoing. However, efforts to restrict Lifeline’s funding won’t improve the program’s efficiency. Rather, it will reduce the program’s ability to serve the nation’s most vulnerable at a time when the number of families and veterans falling into poverty are increasing. Congress should vigilantly monitor the progress of the FCC’s reforms, but it should not unnecessarily place such a critical program in the cross fire of the budget debate or use it to launch partisan attacks against the current Administration.

[Morris is the policy counsel for the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute; Lennett is the policy director there.]

Online Ads Can Now Follow You Home

Advertisers already know what people are up to on their personal computers. But understanding their online whereabouts on smartphones or tablets has remained elusive.

A number of companies are trying to better pinpoint mobile users' online activity with new software and techniques they say could help advertisers track users across devices. By harvesting cross-screen identities, the ad industry could serve ads to mobile phones based on the interests people express when surfing the Web on their PCs. The emergence of cross-screen marketing is one of several new forms of technology aimed at solving a fundamental problem with mobile ads: It is harder to target people on smartphones than on PCs.

Nielsen Gets Digital to Track Online TV Viewers

Nielsen is expected to announce April 30 that it is testing a tool to measure online viewing of TV shows, the latest step in the company's efforts to improve how it tracks digital audiences. Nielsen's hope is that the new ratings technology will become the standard to measure online TV viewing on sites like Hulu, YouTube, Yahoo and AOL. Among online video sites, only AOL is part of the pilot. Nielsen has been under pressure from the networks to update its traditional methods for counting TV viewing to account for growing digital audiences.

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