July 31, 2013 (Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for
FCC Reform and FISA Oversight – who could ask for anything more? http://benton.org/calendar/2013-07-31/
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld
US Spy Program Lifts Veil in Court
Democrats demand Obama 'end the bulk collection of phone records'
Make NSA programs more transparent - op-ed
US to declassify documents on spy programs, surveillance court
Judge: Patriot Act snooping was accepted by phone companies
Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash
Here’s why ‘trust us’ isn’t working for the NSA any more - analysis
PRIVACY
Google's Data-Trove Dance
A Data Giant Reshaped by Privacy Snafus
My Life, and Past, as Seen Through Google's Dashboard
NEWS FROM THE SENATE COMMERCE MARKUP
Senate panel votes to study video game violence
Senate Commerce panel approves cybersecurity bill
Senate Commerce Approves Wheeler Nomination
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Now That It’s in the Broadband Game, Google Flip-Flops on Network Neutrality
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
Whatever happened to municipal Wi-Fi?
AT&T’s latest home broadband service isn’t DSL or fiber. It’s LTE [links to web]
Squeezed by wireless giants, have the regional mobile carriers just given up?
We’re using a ton of mobile data. With Google Glass, we’re about to use a whole lot more. [links to web]
What It’s Like To Tap Your Own Phone [links to web]
TELEVISION
Broadcast TV landscape is shifting under FCC
7% of U.S Homes Rely on Over-the-Air TV: CEA Study
NAB Says CES Survey On OTA TV Isn’t Credible [links to web]
Sinclair Plans National Rollout for Allbritton Cable Channel
Five Things You Should Know About Sinclair in wake of Allbritton, WJLA deal - analysis
More Big FCC Fines for Children's Television Violations [links to web]
CONTENT
MIT asserts “no wrongdoing” in Aaron Swartz case
Bid to deny Pandora an FM station reflects out-of-date music royalty system - analysis
EDUCATION
How Skype Became The Ultimate Free Teaching Tool [links to web]
POLICYMAKERS
John Verdi, director of privacy initiatives, Office of Policy Analysis and Development [links to web]
LOBBYING
Apple finds D.C. is tough without friends
COMPANY NEWS
AT&T’s latest home broadband service isn’t DSL or fiber. It’s LTE [links to web]
Sprint lost 2 million subscribers after Nextel network went dark [links to web]
Why Overstock decided to start a price war with Amazon [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
EU regulator intensifies scrutiny of Google search results
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
CELLPHONE TRACKING UPHELD
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Somini Sengupta]
In a significant victory for law enforcement, a federal appeals court said that government authorities could extract historical location data directly from telecommunications carriers without a search warrant. The closely watched case, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is the first ruling that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. Ruling 2 to 1, the court said a warrantless search was “not per se unconstitutional” because location data was “clearly a business record” and therefore not protected by the Fourth Amendment. The ruling is likely to intensify legislative efforts, already bubbling in Congress and in the states, to consider measures to require warrants based on probable cause to obtain cellphone location data.
benton.org/node/156896 | New York Times | WSJ
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VEIL LIFTED IN COURT
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Devlin Barrett]
The Justice Department acknowledged for the first time in a terrorism prosecution that it needs to tell defendants when sweeping government surveillance is used to build a criminal case against them. The about-face, contained in a July 30 court filing, marks another way in which the Obama administration is adjusting to revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about phone and Internet surveillance by the NSA. The revelations forced the government to acknowledge publicly aspects of its widespread collection of Internet and phone records, giving critics of such surveillance more legal ammunition to challenge the programs. The filing suggests a new potential avenue for legal challenges to the surveillance programs.
benton.org/node/156893 | Wall Street Journal
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END BULK COLLECTION OF PHONE RECORDS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Ramsey Cox]
Sens. Mark Udall (D-CO) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded that President Barack Obama “end the bulk collection” of the public’s phone records. “We need to strike a better balance between protection America from terrorism and protecting the civil rights of Americans,” Sen Udall said on the Senate floor. “The Patriot Act’s bulk-phone record collection does not achieve that balance. Tonight I am calling on the White House to end the bulk collection of phone records.” “Americans have been presented with false choices: You can have your security and you can have your liberty but you cannot have both,” Sen Wyden said. “I think Americans have come to understand that this set of false choices is not what this debate is all about and they deserve better.”
benton.org/node/156892 | Hill, The
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MAKE NSA PROGRAMS MORE TRANSPARENT
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)]
[Commentary] The National Security Agency (NSA) program based on section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which collects phone numbers and related data, is often called a “surveillance program” or a program to “listen to phone calls.” It is neither. Rather, this program collects only phone numbers and the duration and times that calls are made. When the NSA learns of a number used by a terrorist connected to al-Qaeda, it can search its database of phone records. Only 22 highly vetted NSA analysts can approve a query of this database — and only when they have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the number is connected to terrorism. I intend to work with members of the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees to consider changes to the NSA call-records program in an effort to increase transparency and improve privacy protections. These changes would require that:
the number of Americans’ phone numbers submitted as queries of the NSA database be made public annually, as well as the number of referrals made to the FBI each year based on those queries;
the number of warrants obtained by the FBI — based on probable cause — to collect the content of any call be released annually;
the number of times in a year that any company is required to provide data pursuant to FISA’s business records provision be released;
all classified FISA court opinions and reports on U.S. persons targeted for surveillance under FISA be made available in a secure location to every member of Congress ;
the five-year retention period of phone records be reduced to two or three years;
the ideological diversity of the FISA court be increased (86 percent of judges appointed to the court by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. have been Republicans and the vast majority were prosecutors, according to media reports); and
the FISA court review each query of the database as soon as practicable to determine its propriety under the law.
[Sen Feinstein is chairman of the Senate intelligence committee]
benton.org/node/156890 | Washington Post
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US TO DECLASSIFY DOCUMENTS ON SPY PROGRAMS, SURVEILLANCE COURT
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Tabassum Zakaria]
US spy agencies plan to declassify documents about the National Security Agency surveillance programs revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden, and also material related to a secret intelligence court, a U.S. intelligence official said. The declassified documents could be released as early as this week and were intended to provide the public more information about the programs as part of a commitment by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for more transparency. The documents would also include information about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court which operates in secrecy, the official said.
benton.org/node/156846 | Reuters | GigaOm
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FISA AND TELEPHONE COMPANIES
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Verizon and other telephone companies didn't protest when a secret surveillance court demanded that they turn over records on all of their customers. In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, Judge Reggie Walton of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) revealed that no telephone company or other service provider has ever resisted a court order under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Judge Walton acknowledged that in 2007 Yahoo fought a FISC order issued under a different law, the Protect America Act. The court received briefings from both sides and issued a classified decision in 2008. Recently, Google and Microsoft have filed motions with the FISC for permission to declassify how many users have been affected by the surveillance orders. Privacy advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have also filed legal requests for more transparency. Judge Walton also explained details about how FISC judges review surveillance requests from the government. He said that although the court rarely rejects government requests, it often requires changes to the government's proposed surveillance.
benton.org/node/156840 | Hill, The
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DEFENSE INDUSTRY AND NSA
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: David Kravets]
The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. The House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA’s phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 “no” voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 “yes” voters. That’s the upshot of a new analysis by MapLight. The investigation shows that defense cash was a better predictor of a member’s vote on the Amash amendment than party affiliation. House members who voted to continue the massive phone-call-metadata spy program, on average, raked in 122 percent more money from defense contractors than those who voted to dismantle it. Overall, political action committees and employees from defense and intelligence firms such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, and others ponied up $12.97 million in donations for a two-year period ending December 31, 2012, according to the analysis, which MapLight performed with financing data from OpenSecrets. Lawmakers who voted to continue the NSA dragnet-surveillance program averaged $41,635 from the pot, whereas House members who voted to repeal authority averaged $18,765.
benton.org/node/156838 | Wired | MapLight
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TUST US DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Timothy Lee]
For the last decade, the National Security Agency’s argument has been, “trust us.” But recent events have put that trust under strain. Particularly damaging was Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s March statement to Congress denying that the government was collecting information about millions of Americans. We now know Clapper’s statement was untrue, and that has made many people skeptical about the NSA’s other assurances about its secret surveillance programs. To allay the fears of Congress and the public, the NSA has been forced to release more and more information about its spying program. But each disclosure seems to raise as many questions as it answers. Last month, the NSA claimed that its programs had thwarted more than 50 terrorist attacks. But reporters have been asking tough questions about that claim; noting that, in most of the cases, the NSA’s domestic spying programs played a tangential role at best. The government will have another opportunity to allay public fears at a hearing July 31 before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Four senior Obama Administration officials will speak on the first panel, while the second panel will include Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union. But the spy agency will have an uphill fight to regain the trust of Congress and the public.
benton.org/node/156836 | Washington Post | ars technica
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PRIVACY
GOOGLE’S DATA-TROVE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Amir Efrati]
The breadth of Google's information gathering about Internet users rivals that of any single entity, government or corporate. The Web search and advertising giant continues to expand its collection and analysis of data, turning its mission to index the world, its people and their interests into a roughly $50 billion-a-year advertising business. Google executives also remain closed about much of its internal data-handling practices, fearing that discussing privacy-related topics might hurt the company with consumers, according to people who have worked on privacy issues at the firm. But there are signs Google is feeling increased pressure to calibrate how much emphasis it puts on user privacy. Scarred by a small number of past user-privacy missteps that generated global controversy, and under increased regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe, executives are engaged in wide-ranging internal debates and in some cases slowing product launches to address privacy concerns, according to people familiar with the matter.
benton.org/node/156888 | Wall Street Journal
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GOOGLE SHAPED BY PRIVACY SNAFUS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Amir Efrati]
Google is no stranger to high-profile mistakes in the handling of user data, particularly in recent years. Such episodes have forever reshaped its internal data-handling practices, said people familiar with the changes. Following a number of debacles, which caused Google to pay a fine to the federal government and agree to outside privacy audits, the company overhauled its process for reviewing soon-to-be-released products to include privacy as a chief concern. The slip-ups have focused the company on trying to prevent the next "PR nightmare," according to one employee. Among other things, Google now makes pre-emptive changes to head off government scrutiny.
benton.org/node/156886 | Wall Street Journal
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GOOGLE’S DASHBOARD
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Tom Gara]
What is Google GOODashboard? In short, it is a one-stop shop that links to all the different buckets of your stored data collected by Google Inc.'s services. From your first Gmail account onward, Google has been collecting an amazing amount of information from you, and Dashboard is where you go to find it. Strangely enough, the easiest way to find your Google Dashboard is to go to Google.com and search for "Google Dashboard." There might be a link to it from somewhere in Gmail, but I have never seen it, and it doesn't seem to make itself obvious anywhere. Google created the Dashboard in 2009 so its users could manage all their privacy setting in our place. Once you find your Google Dashboard, you're not going to look away. That's because the reality of how much history you share with Google can be unnerving to confront, especially for heavy Web users.
benton.org/node/156884 | Wall Street Journal
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NEWS FROM THE SENATE COMMERCE MARKUP
VIDEO GAME VIOLENCE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
The Senate Commerce Committee unanimously advanced legislation to study the impact of violent video games and other media on children. Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced the bill last year after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown (CT). He argued that studying violent media can be a first step toward more aggressive regulation. The bill would require the National Academy of Sciences to examine whether violent video games and programming cause children to act aggressively or otherwise hurt their well-being. The academy would look at whether the interactive nature of video games has a unique impact on children. In a joint statement, the lobbying groups for the movie and cable TV industries said they "welcome further academic examination of the reasons behind societal violence." "Our industries have a longstanding commitment to providing parents with the resources, education and tools they need to make appropriate family viewing and entertainment decisions," the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and the Motion Picture Association of America said.
benton.org/node/156860 | Hill, The
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CYBERSECURITY BILL
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jennifer Martinez]
The Senate Commerce Committee unanimously advanced an industry-backed bill aimed at boosting the nation's cybersecurity, paving the way for a full Senate vote on the measure before the end of the year. The bill -- authored by Senate Commerce leaders Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and John Thune (R-SD) -- would codify a section of President Obama's cybersecurity order that tasks the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) to work with businesses to craft a framework of cybersecurity best practices and standards. NIST has already held a set of workshops with industry groups across the country to start drafting the framework, which is due in October. The bill stays away from the thornier issues in the cybersecurity debate, such as setting security standards for companies that operate critical infrastructure and improving information-sharing about cyber threats, because they lay outside the Commerce panel's jurisdiction. Specifically, the measure does not require companies to adopt the best practices and standards that are included in NIST's final framework. The bill has received backing from a wide range of industry groups, including USTelecom and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for its non-regulatory approach. The bill would also boost cybersecurity research and development, education and public awareness about cyber threats.
benton.org/node/156858 | Hill, The
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WHEELER NOMINATION ADVANCES
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The Senate Commerce Committee approved the nomination of Tom Wheeler to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, but not without some drama with one senator threatening to delay Wheeler's final confirmation. Senate Republicans would have preferred that the committee delay a vote on Wheeler until the White House had nominated a Republican to replace Robert McDowell, a point ranking member John Thune (R-SD) made at the hearing. Thune said he would support Wheeler's nomination, but would prefer that the committee have delayed its vote and was "better served" by pairing Wheeler with the other nominees, whom he said he expected the White House to name "soon." He said that any delay in the committee vote could be offset by swift floor action. He pointed out that while former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's nomination came two and a half months before McDowell’s renomination, they were voted on in committee as a pair on the same day and got full-Senate confirmation just a week later. It has become custom, though not a rule, that the committee pair votes on FCC nominees, but Chairman Jay Rockefeller said that was not happening on his committee.
Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he had not gotten a sufficient answer from Wheeler on the issue of whether the FCC could use its authority to what he and other Republicans would consider an end-run around Congress by boosting political ad disclosures, something Congress has failed to do with the yet-to-pass DISCLOSE Act. Sen Cruz did not use the H word (“hold”), but did mention Wheeler had failed to answer the question three times. "If he continues to refuse to answer that question, I may well support using procedural means to delay this nomination until he answers the very reasonable question that has been posed," Sen Cruz said.
benton.org/node/156856 | Broadcasting&Cable | variety | AdWeek
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
GOOGLE AND NETWORK NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Ryan Singel]
In a dramatic about-face, Google told the Federal Communications Commission that the network neutrality rules Google once championed don’t give citizens the right to run servers on their home broadband connections, and that the Google Fiber network is perfectly within its rights to prohibit customers from attaching the legal devices of their choice to its network. At issue is Google Fiber’s Terms of Service, which contains a broad prohibition against customers attaching “servers” to its ultrafast 1 Gbps network in Kansas City. Google wants to ban the use of servers because it plans to offer a business class offering in the future. A potential customer, Douglas McClendon, filed a complaint against the policy in 2012 with the FCC, which eventually ordered Google to explain its reasoning by July 29. In its response, Google defended its sweeping ban by citing the very Internet service providers it opposed through the years-long fight for rules that require broadband providers to treat all packets equally. “Google Fiber’s server policy is consistent with policies of many major providers in the industry,” Google Fiber lawyer Darah Smith Franklin wrote, going on to quote AT&T, Comcast and Verizon’s anti-server policies.
benton.org/node/156862 | Wired
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
MUNICIPAL WI-FI
[SOURCE: The Economist, AUTHOR: ]
While large-scale Wi-Fi sputtered, mobile carriers in America and Canada appear to have been prodded into action. Together with their wired divisions they vociferously denounced any public money assigned to private city-wide networks, even lobbying for laws banning it. By 2008, however, 3G networks were everywhere, and by 2012 3G+ followed across the full footprint of AT&T and T-Mobile (albeit in fits and starts). Verizon lagged, then leapt forward with 4G LTE. Carriers now compete for the broadest LTE rollout, which provides data rates as fast as cable modems, though at a high price. Wander the streets of San Francisco today, or any city in the developed world, for that matter, and you find it hard not to stumble on a free network. Every cafe, convention center and airport has Wi-Fi, as do academic campuses, many city canters and retail districts. Telecoms firms like AT&T supplement mobile spectrum with Wi-Fi hotspots and zones, and most of the Wi-Fi equipment firms that survived the metro-network days sell hardware both for corporate networks and for outdoor deployment by carriers.
benton.org/node/156822 | Economist, The
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REGIONAL MOBILE CARRIERS
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Kevin Fitchard]
Back in the mid-2000s, there was a pretty vibrant community of mid-sized regional mobile providers in the US. Alltel ruled over the rural providers with 12 million subscribers and a bigger coverage area than even the nationwide carriers, while multiple operators — from Dobson Communications to Centennial Wireless — boasted millions of subscribers and were forces with which to be reckoned in their corners of the US. No more. In the last five years all of those carriers and many more have been gobbled up by the national carriers. And the Big 4 have only come back to the operator buffet for more. Have the smaller operators just given up on the mobile business?
benton.org/node/156826 | GigaOm
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TELEVISION
BROADCAST OWNERSHIP
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Brooks Boliek]
The string of broadcast television station ownership deals capped by the announcement of a sale by Allbritton Communications puts pressure on the Federal Communications Commission to keep its eye on the broadcast industry even as the agency is going through its own makeover. Taken together, the deals signal a reshaping of the broadcast business as it consolidates into larger station ownership groups that provide more leverage as they buy programming and sell it to pay-TV operators. As the industry shifts, the FCC has been slow to act with its media ownership rules in flux. The commission’s rules dictate who can own what media properties and where. They generally prevent one company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same market and effectively cap what media properties one company can hold in individual locations. Mark Fratrik, BIA/Kelsey chief economist and vice president, said the rash of sales comes down to three things: historically low interest rates, higher-than-expected TV station revenues and rising fees from pay-TV operators. While TV deals have been moving fast, little has unfolded at the FCC with media ownership rules.
benton.org/node/156882 | Politico
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OVER-THE-AIR TV
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Jeff Baumgartner]
About 7% of U.S. TV homes rely solely on over-the-air signals to get TV programming, the Consumer Electronics Association found in a phone survey of 1,009 adults. That's down 1% from the findings of a 2010 CEA study, the group said. That’s also down a couple notches from a 2012 Nielsen study showing that 9% of all U.S. TV homes are over-the-air only, down from 16% in 2003. “The vast majority of Americans no longer rely on over-the-air TV signals,” said CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro, in a statement regarding the new study “Consumers have moved away in droves from traditional broadcast television thanks to a surge in programming alternatives available through wired and wireless broadband connections.” He said this trend means “Congress had it right when they authorized the FCC to hold voluntary broadcast spectrum incentive auctions to reallocate broadcast television spectrum to greater uses, like wireless broadband. This study provides yet another reason why it is time for broadcast spectrum to be reallocated, and quickly.”
benton.org/node/156844 | Multichannel News
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SINCLAIR AND NEWSCHANNEL 8
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Michael Malone]
David Smith, Sinclair president and CEO, said the main takeaway from Sinclair's $985 million agreement to acquire Allbritton is the "strategic significance" of the transaction -- very definitely including Allbritton's NewsChannel 8. The cable channel has 2 million subscribers in the DC area, and Smith -- addressing investors July 30 -- painted a picture of a vastly expanded national franchise. "Because Allbritton has limited reach, the channel has yet to be fully developed outside the D.C. area," Smith said. "We believe we have a distinct opportunity to accomplish that." Smith described NewsChannel 8 as a "launching point" for a national news channel, airing both within the Sinclair group and on pay-TV systems for a "unique hybrid model."
benton.org/node/156820 | Broadcasting&Cable
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5 THINGS ABOUT SINCLAIR
[SOURCE: Baltimore Sun, AUTHOR: David Zurawik]
[Commentary] Here are five things I consider worth thinking about as Sinclair moves up into bigger journalistic and political leagues with the deal to buy eight Allbritton stations including WJLA (Channel 7) and the DC 24-hour cable news outlet NewsChannel 8. (Sinclair now owns, operates or helps manage 149 stations reaching 38.2 percent of the country, by its estimate.)
WBFF (Fox 45), the Sinclair-owned station in Baltimore. consistently delivers some of the best investigative, enterprise and government watchdog journalism in Baltimore and Maryland.
Sinclair's conservative orientation is no secret. The company has long backed conservative candidates and causes. And, as a result, Sinclair management does do some stuff that might be considered, well, hinky.
Don't get carried away with the talk of a national cable channel for Sinclair.
Sinclair knows how to make money.
The real story of all the stations Sinclair has purchased in the last year is in the enormous power it now has in determining political TV advertising in battleground states. From Ohio, to Pennsylvania and Florida, Sinclair is there, and when the candidates come running with their bags of money to blitz the TV airwaves in state, Congressional and the presidential campaigns, they will be coming to Sinclair among a handful of other mega-station-groups. Don't make me laugh with talk about federal regulation. The station groups will control those last-second buys, not the toothless bureaucrats in Washington.
benton.org/node/156818 | Baltimore Sun
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CONTENT
MIT REPORT ON SWARTZ CASE
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Barb Darrow]
The long-awaited Massachusetts Institute of Technology review of its processes and procedures up to and after Aaron Swartz’s suicide is out. The 180-page report spearheaded by MIT Professor Hal Abelson was authorized by MIT President Rafael Reif in January. An initial glance shows that the report found no wrongdoing on the part of the university or its employees. Abelson said the report is not edited and that MIT officials had no advance knowledge of the report The report seeks to distance MIT itself from Swartz’s federal persecution. The school called in Cambridge police when it found out about the massive downloads and did not know Swartz was involved. Moreover, the school did not ask that federal charges be brought, and was not consulted about appropriate charges. Nor was MIT involved in plea negotiations and adopted a “position of neutrality” over the case, refusing to issue public statements. But MIT did not consider factors including “that the defendant was an accomplished and well-known contributor to Internet technology”; that the law under which he was charged “is a poorly drafted and questionable criminal law as applied to modern computing”; and that “the United States was pursuing an overtly aggressive prosecution.” While MIT’s position “may have been prudent,” the report says, “it did not duly take into account the wider background” of policy issues “in which MIT people have traditionally been passionate leaders.”
benton.org/node/156833 | GigaOm | Washington Post
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PANDORA, MUSICIANS AND BOX ELDER
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Jeff John Roberts]
The town of Box Elder, South Dakota, is an unlikely battleground in the ongoing clash between the music industry and streaming service Pandora. A group representing musicians asked the Federal Communications Commission to deny Pandora a license to operate an FM radio station there because the company will not serve the “needs and interests of the residents of Box Elder.” The good folk of Box Elder — nestled between the Black Hills and the Badlands — may wonder how their airwaves became the subject of a tussle between a controversial Silicon Valley company and the Washington-based ASCAP, a group that collects copyright royalties for songwriters. But in the larger fight over the price of music in the digital age, the dispute over Box Elder’s FM station makes a weird kind of sense.
benton.org/node/156830 | GigaOm
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LOBBYING
APPLE’S LOBBYING
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Steve Friess]
Recent setbacks may finally force Apple to rethink its us vs. them mentality when it comes to big battles in Washington and Silicon Valley. The company marches to its own iTunes, spending little on lobbying, rarely joining trade associations and, in a pattern that’s become more pronounced this summer, refusing to negotiate or settle in many lawsuits. Experts say Apple’s tried-and-true approach is starting to backfire, as the company has already taken at least one big hit in a high-profile e-books trial. A recent landmark DC appearance by CEO Tim Cook may reflect a new reality for Apple: that direct engagement with lawmakers, regulators and rivals is more effective than trying to remain above it all.
benton.org/node/156880 | Politico
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
EU INTENSIFIES GOOGLE SCRUTINY
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Foo Yun Chee]
European Union antitrust regulators sharpened their scrutiny of how Google ranks its web search results, asking rivals whether their lower rankings affected the number of visitors to their sites, a European Commission questionnaire showed. The list of six questions focused on the last two and a half years, as EU regulators sought evidence of any possible link between the complainants' lower rankings in Google search results and lower traffic to their sites. "In the period from January 2011 to June 2013, have you ever noticed a decrease in the number of users reaching your vertical search sites via Google's natural search, which cannot be explained by a change in your web site?" the questionnaire asked. "Did it coincide with a significant change in the ranking of the pages of your web site in Google's natural search results?" Respondents were given until Aug. 16 to reply to the questionnaire.
benton.org/node/156848 | Reuters
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