April 2013

AT&T Joins Boeing Backing CISPA

The House Intelligence Committee has scheduled an April 10 closed-door meeting to mark up the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) which provides lawsuit immunity sought by companies including AT&T and Boeing.

Many of the bill’s corporate supporters are among the top 20 contributors to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers’ 2011-2012 campaign committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington- based research group. They include AT&T, Verizon Communications, Boeing and Lockheed Martin employees and their families. Ranking Member C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger’s top contributors in the same period also include Boeing and Lockheed employees and their families, according to the center.

Hill tweeters lock out LegiStorm

Hundreds of users of the Congress-focused research organization LegiStorm have locked their Twitter accounts after the organization moved to aggregate their tweets last week, the head of LegiStorm told POLITICO, noting that the upheaval has sparked changes at the company.

POLITICO reported that Capitol Hill erupted as staffers learned that their tweets and Twitter accounts were compiled via a tool called StormFeed, published on the subscription site LegiStorm Pro. The organization started counting how many people on LegiStorm Pro made their accounts private, LegiStorm founder and president Jock Friedly told POLITICO. The bulk of the privacy status changes seem to have come from Hill staffers, he said - so far at least an estimated 266 have locked their Twitter accounts. Friedly noted that there are 1,798 congressional staffers in the LegiStorm Pro database; of those, 651 have protected their accounts.

The Best 10 Ironies About The “Obama Phone”

[Commentary] There is so much about the “Obama Phone” nonsense that tickles my funny bone in odd places. It’s not just that everything conservatives say about it is factually wrong. It also proves that the cherished progressive belief that every policy ever adopted under Reagan and under W were universally unmitigated disasters for the poor and people of color is also wrong. As if this were not ironic enough, the “Obama phone” was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in part to address the massive sudden need for subsidized mobile phones for Katrina victims. In 2005-06, Tracfone distributed 30,000 phones to Katrina victims under the expanded Lifeline program, and raised awareness of the new program through the devastated Gulf Coast region, i.e, the same red state regions now bellyaching about the program. For Progressives, consider that the “Obama phone” was invented in part as a response to Katrina by the President who “didn’t care about black people.”

New Threat to Aereo TV

The TV industry's best hope of shutting down TV startup Aereo Inc. anytime soon could rest, bizarrely enough, on a legal case involving something called Aereokiller LLC.

So where does Aereokiller fit in? It is a copycat service launched in Aereo's wake last year by an entrepreneur named Alkiviades David, using a Web address of Barrydriller.com. Aereokiller streams broadcast networks over the Web, and has said it uses technology similar to Aereo's. At the time of Aereokiller's launch, major broadcasters thought the copycat was little more than a farce—though one they quickly moved to quash. Mr. Diller was also dismissive, saying at the time that he'd "hoped that if they steal my name they'd do it for something more provocative." He quickly sued over the name, and Aereokiller dropped use of the Barrydriller.com Web address for its service. Now, Aereokiller has become a larger threat to Aereo, clouding both its legal standing and its hopes of expanding its service to 22 cities across the U.S., say lawyers not involved in the case. That is because broadcasters have had more luck shutting down Aereokiller than Aereo—even though they operate similarly—thanks to the different legal precedents set in the states where cases are being heard.

Tech initiatives to shake up traditional TV model face brutal fights

Two fledgling technologies could dramatically reshape the $60 billion-a-year television broadcast industry as they challenge the business model that has helped keep broadcasters on the lucrative end of the media spectrum.

On April 1, a U.S. appeals court rejected a petition by the major broadcasters including Comcast's NBC, News Corp's FOX, Disney's ABC and CBS, to stop a service called Aereo, which offers a cut-rate TV subscription for consumers by capturing broadcast signals over thousands of antennas at one time. It was the second time in recent months that TV broadcasters failed to block a new technology that undercuts revenue they generate for their television shows. In November, a California court struck down Fox's request to ban Dish Network's ad-eliminating video recording device called the Hopper. The two services strike at the heart of the TV broadcast model.

Teacher Knows if You’ve Done the E-Reading

Several Texas A&M professors know something that generations of teachers could only hope to guess: whether students are reading their textbooks.

They know when students are skipping pages, failing to highlight significant passages, not bothering to take notes — or simply not opening the book at all. “It’s Big Brother, sort of, but with a good intent,” said Tracy Hurley, the dean of the school of business. The faculty members here are neither clairvoyant nor peering over shoulders. They, along with colleagues at eight other colleges, are testing technology from a Silicon Valley start-up, CourseSmart, that allows them to track their students’ progress with digital textbooks.

Cablevision’s Actions Illegal, Board Says

The National Labor Relations Board said that it planned to file a complaint charging Cablevision with making illegal threats and offering improper inducements to its employees in the Bronx to discourage them from voting to unionize.

As part of the complaint, the labor board’s regional office for Manhattan and the Bronx is accusing Cablevision’s chief executive, James L. Dolan, of illegally telling the Bronx workers that they would be excluded from training and job opportunities if they voted to unionize. The board also said that Cablevision had improperly offered raises and improved benefits to its workers in the Bronx and elsewhere to deter them from joining a union. Karen Fernbach, director of the labor board’s regional office, said those moves improperly influenced an election last June in which Cablevision’s installation workers in the Bronx voted overwhelmingly — 121 to 43 — against joining the Communications Workers of America.

US says hacking undermines China's interests

U.S. undersecretary of state for economic growth, Robert Hormats, said the growing incidence of hacking that originates inside China is undermining trust between the two countries and harms Beijing's long-term interests. Washington believes cyber intrusions originating from China that result in the theft of sensitive information have reached very high levels. He urged China to take firm action against hacking.

In Europe, New Protest Over Google

European antitrust regulators have received a formal complaint about Google’s Android operating system for mobile devices, even as they move to the final stages of their inquiry into the company’s search practices.

The complaint was filed by Fairsearch Europe, a group of Google’s competitors, including the mobile phone maker Nokia and the software titan Microsoft, and by other companies, like Oracle. It accuses Google of using the Android software “as a deceptive way to build advantages for key Google apps in 70 percent of the smartphones shipped today,” said Thomas Vinje, the lead lawyer for Fairsearch Europe, referring to Android’s share of the smartphone market. For example, phone makers that agree to use Android — and that also want Google applications like YouTube — face contractual requirements to place those applications and other Google-branded applications in prominent positions on the mobile device’s desktop, Vinje said.

Deutsche Telekom Wins Watchdog Approval for Faster Web

Deutsche Telekom AG, Germany’s largest phone company, won permission to offer speedier Web access in most urban areas on existing copper lines, giving it a cheaper way to take on cable providers.

The Bonn-based carrier may deny rivals access to its street-side cabinets -- a precondition for installing the so- called DSL vectoring technology -- under certain conditions, Germany’s Federal Network Agency said in an e-mailed draft ruling. Such a move is allowed, for instance, in areas where customers can choose an alternative fixed-line network, the watchdog said. “The driving idea behind the decision is to allow vectoring for all market participants and thus drive forward the broadband rollout,” Jochen Homann, the agency’s president, said in the statement. “The open access approach ensures that no monopolies may arise in certain areas: neither for Deutsche Telekom nor its competitors.”

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