April 2013

Stakes high for White House on CISPA

The Obama administration didn't mince words in 2012 when it threatened to veto what it saw as a horrible House cybersecurity bill — one that fell short on consumer privacy. A year later, that bill is back, and the White House may be hedging its bets. As a House vote draws near, the White House remains caught between large technology companies that support the measure, powerful privacy advocates who vocally oppose it and congressional leaders it can't afford to alienate if it seeks a cybersecurity deal in 2013.

For President Barack Obama, the stakes are high. He’s made improving the country's digital defenses one of his top national security priorities, but the House bill, known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, has incurred the wrath of the Internet’s loudest activists, and the administration must tread carefully to avoid becoming a target as well. For now, the White House's allies are urging it to speak with the same forceful tone it adopted in 2012.

Dish turns Sprint race into marathon

Charlie Ergen’s move to snatch Sprint Nextel from the grasp of Japan’s Masayoshi Son has set the stage for a potential bidding war between strong-willed billionaires who have disrupted telecoms industries on two continents.

Investors in Son’s SoftBank, however, are not keen to see the drama play out. Shares in SoftBank fell as much as 10 per cent on Tuesday after Dish Network, Ergen’s satellite TV operator, unveiled an unsolicited $25.5bn offer for Sprint, the third-largest US mobile phone provider with 46m subscribers. His bid trumped a $20.1bn offer for Sprint made by Son last October. Industry experts suggested that investors sold SoftBank stock, which closed down 6.8 per cent, not because they were worried the company would miss out on a lucrative acquisition opportunity. Rather, it was more likely that they feared Son would come back with a more generous offer – one that could stretch SoftBank’s finances and possibly lead to a dilutive issue of new shares.

What would Dish-Sprint deal mean for consumers?

Industry analysts expect that consumers will continue to migrate from pay TV (cable or satellite TV) subscriptions and access more movies and TV shows via Internet streaming. In 2008, Dish bought wireless spectrum licenses and has been looking to acquire a wireless carrier. Sprint Nextel, the third-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., with 55.6 million subscribers in its various plans, is "a reasonable acquisition target," says Carrie MacGillivray, a mobile analyst at research firm IDC. Such a deal — with Dish, or rival bidder Softbank of Japan — would have little impact on Sprint customer services in the short run. Sprint has been investing in upgrading its network to stem a loss of customers, and the results have been noticeable. Its total number of customers grew slightly last year after several years of losses. How Sprint would transform under a new parent over the long-term would depend on their areas of emphasis. Analysts speculate that Softbank, based on its Japanese operation, would emphasize improving network coverage and the mobile-Internet user experience. Dish might be more focused on delivering content across various screens and a "more unified service," similar to its competitors such as AT&T's U-Verse and Verizon FiOS, MacGillivray says.

Softbank says its bid for Sprint Nextel superior

SoftBank says it believes its bid for U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel is a better choice than the $25.5 billion counteroffer by Dish. The Japanese company said it expects to finalize the deal under the terms already agreed upon by July 1.

House Commerce Committee to Mark Up Internet Governance Bill

The House Commerce Committee has scheduled an April 17 markup of a bill that would codify the earlier sense of the Congress resolution endorsing the multistakeholder model of Internet governance.

The bill was voted out of the Communications subcommittee on a voice vote last week, but only after Republican bill backers agreed to talks with Democrats about some of their problems with the bill. Democrats say that language in a sense of Congress resolution, which lacks the force of law, is different from a bill saying the same thing. They fear unintended consequences like undercutting the FCC's authority to impose network neutrality regulations or oversee the transition to IP delivery.

Ownership Limits Shackle Local Broadcasting

[Commentary] I am perplexed that people actually believe it’s a good thing for the government to mandate that broadcasters be the underdogs in all major negotiations that affect the quality and availability of their programming. If anything, government policy should encourage broadcasters to grow to a scale that is meaningful in today’s complex television marketplace. Not one of the other major distributors makes its programming available for free. If independent broadcasters aren't permitted to achieve a scale large enough to negotiate effectively with upstream programmers and downstream distributors you won't long see high-cost, high-quality, high-value programming available for free to those who choose to opt out of the pay TV ecosystem. It’s much better to have two, three or four strong competitors in each market, owned by companies that can compete for rational economics in the upstream and downstream markets, than to have eight or more weak competitors, few of which can afford to invest in truly local service or negotiate at arms-length with suppliers and distributors.

[John Hane is counsel in Pillsbury’s Communications practice group in Washington]

Start-Up Lets Users Track Who Tracks Them

Is your Web browsing history your business – or everyone else’s? A start-up based in Palo Alto (CA), Disconnect, which helps you track who is tracking you online, this week released its latest tool to help safeguard your browsing history.

Its new browser extension works on Chrome and Firefox browsers and is meant to block an invisible network of around 2,000 separate tracking companies. Most of the tracking is in the service of advertising: If you were browsing a camping goods site over the weekend, for instance, don’t be surprised to see an ad pop up for hiking boots when you log in to a news site the next morning or even, when you open up your Facebook page. It is a tried-and-true digital advertising strategy called retargeting. Facebook is the latest entrant, and its advertising partners are experimenting with fine-grained ways to nudge you with ads on Facebook based on what you were looking at when you were not on Facebook. The Disconnect filter, which Brian Kennish, a former Google engineer, started building two years ago, is squarely aimed at controlling that kind of targeted advertising.

High-Speed Wi-Fi? Not So Fast

A faster version of Wi-Fi will hit the market this year, giving users the power to download a television show's entire season in less than a minute—although few people can expect to take advantage of such speeds any time soon.

The new wireless standard, called 802.11ac, can triple its predecessor's typical speed, wireless experts say, and handle more than a billion bits of data per second in an ideal environment, fast enough to stream high-definition video with ease. Yet most Web surfers won't enjoy the benefit of those wireless speeds online until broadband speeds catch up. The average fixed Internet connection peaks around 32 megabits—or about 32 million bits—per second in the U.S., according to network operator Akamai Technologies—about 1/40 of the throughput offered by the latest 802.11ac devices.

Tech industry may pay price for bump up in H-1B visas

Tech may get a lot of what it wants from Congress in terms of H-1B temporary visas for high-skilled workers and other immigration reforms, but at what price? That’s the question facing the industry as it anxiously waits for the Senate’s Gang of Eight to unveil its comprehensive immigration reform package. The devil will be in the immigration package details, say tech industry observers. Here are things to watch for as the plan is unveiled: Tougher enforcement; Wages, recruiting, displacing; Outplacement; and Nondependent firms.

Library Association Lists Frequently Challenged Books

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom compiles reports on complaints filed with a library or school “requesting that a book or other material be restricted or removed because of its content or appropriateness.” For 2012, the office said it received 464 reports, up from 326 in 2011.

The books on the most frequently challenged list are “Fifty Shades of Grey” by EL James; “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” by Sherman Alexie; “The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini; “Looking for Alaska,” by John Green; “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls; “Beloved” by Toni Morrison; “Thirteen Reasons Why,” by Jay Asher; the “Scary Stories” series by Alvin Schwartz; the “Captain Underpants” series by Dav Pilkey; and “And Tango Makes Three,” a young-adult book about two male penguins at the Central Park zoo who became a couple, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.

Benton

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