September 2013

A 21st century right to privacy

[Commentary] A decision by the Supreme Court extending 4th Amendment protections to telephone and other electronic records isn't the only way to rein in the indiscriminate collection of metadata by the government. Congress also could outlaw the practice, as the House came close to doing in July. Eventually, however, the court will have to decide whether a definition of a "reasonable expectation of privacy" formulated in 1979 makes sense in the 21st century. The answer is no.

There Is No More Privacy

A Q&A with Russian computer-security expert Eugene Kaspersky.

"There is no more privacy," the 47-year-old CEO of antivirus software firm Kaspersky Lab recently said. Kaspersky said consumers are paying the price of new technologies with their privacy, and argued that it is hard to tell whether the programs Edward Snowden exposed are justifiable, because it is unclear how many lives they saved. "If you want to stay private, I know some places in Siberia," he joked.

Toddlers using, breaking parents’ mobile devices more

A study conducted in June by SquareTrade, a San Francisco-based warranty protection company, found that more than 50 percent of American parents have had their mobile phones, laptops, tablets and other devices damaged by their kids. Such damage has cost parents more than $2.8 billion in repairs and replacements, the study found.

The study found that 85 percent of kids in America use mobile devices for an average of 3.2 hours a day. It also found kids of all ages use devices a surprisingly high number of hours:

Toddlers 2 and under use devices for an average of 1.5 hours per day
Kids 3-6 use devices for an average of 1.8 hours per day
Kids 7-12 use devices for an average of three hours per day
Teens 13-17 use devices for an average of 4.9 hours per day

During that time, parents see frequent damage and misuse of their devices, including naughty pictures and a high number of food and drink related accidents:

31 percent of parents said their kids have accidentally called or message someone they weren’t supposed to on their parent’s device.
28 percent of parents said their kids purchased something on their device without permission.
33 percent of parents said their kid-caused accidents involved food or drink. Milk was responsible for 50 percent of those accidents.
9 percent of parents said their kids took inappropriate photos on their parent’s device.

News Corp Sells Local Newspapers to Fortress Investment

News Corp, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, sold a collection of local newspapers such as Oregon’s Ashland Daily Tidings and Massachusetts’ Cape Cod Times to private-equity manager Fortress Investment Group.

Financial terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed. The Dow Jones Local Media Group operates 33 publications, including eight daily newspapers and 15 weeklies. News Corp, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, is narrowing its focus to larger publications such as the Journal, the New York Post and the UK’s Times. The sale reduces the Dow Jones unit to the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Barron’s, SmartMoney.com and the conferences business and news site AllThingsD, whose contract with the company ends this year.

California Poised to Get Do Not Track Disclosure Law

The chances of a consumer privacy bill coming out of Congress any time soon are slim, but that hasn't stopped California, which continues to forge new ground when it comes to consumer privacy legislation. At the end of August, the California Senate and Assembly passed an amendment (AB370) to the California Online Privacy Protection Act that will require commercial websites and services that collect personal data to disclose how they respond to "Do Not Track" signals from web browsers.

DC Reacts to TWC-CBS Retransmission Resolution

There was a mix of reaction in Washington to the news that CBS and Time Warner Cable had resolved their carriage dispute, but retransmission reformers wanted to keep striking before the iron had cooled.

The National Association of Broadcasters was pleased with the deal, but took the opportunity to point to what it suggested were the primary pay-TV culprits in retransmission disputes. "The unfortunate reality is that in the last two years, 89% of all retransmission consent disruptions have involved three companies: Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and Dish," NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said.

American Cable Association President Matt Polka didn't want the relief that the blackout was over to obscure what he saw as the underlying issue: “The point that no one should miss is that CBS’ massive blackout of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks showed that the retransmission consent market is broken and outdated rules governing these negotiations need to be updated to reflect current market conditions. If CBS can leave millions of pay-TV viewers in the dark for 32 days, no one can say with a straight face that the marketplace is working well for consumers."

Verizon’s Vodafone buyout isn’t about wireless control, it’s about connecting everything

[Commentary] Verizon Communications’ $130 billion buyout of Vodafone’s 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless means Verizon would no longer to have run its wireline and wireless businesses as separate companies, allowing Verizon to break down the increasingly artificial distinction between a mobile service and a home or business broadband service.

The wireless industry’s future growth is going to come from the Internet of things: tablets, cars, wearables, appliances and ordinary household objects. Some of them will link to home networks, some of them will connect to the mobile network, but many of them will need to link to both. “In an increasingly saturated world, the value of bundling can’t be understated,” said mobile telecom analyst Chetan Sharma. If that artificial barrier between wireline and wireless disappears, Verizon could just sell connectivity — a single plan that links you to multiple networks. A unified Verizon could deeply combine fiber connectivity, cloud computing and mobile networking into the same package it sells a Fortune 500 company. Of course, to build this kind of universal connectivity service, consumers and businesses will have to place a lot more trust (and money) into Verizon’s hands than they’re accustomed to today. They’ll also have to gain the cooperation of numerous device makers and Internet of things players. Verizon may choose to build its own hotspot network like AT&T or it could follow Comcast’s lead and open up its residential Wi-Fi network to all mobile customers.

Silicon Valley takes aim at veteran Democrat

When it comes to seven-term incumbent Mike Honda (D-CA), Silicon Valley’s tech titans want a lawmaker update. His challenger, Ro Khanna (D), has collected checks and endorsements from some of the technology industry’s biggest names, including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and investor Marc Andreessen.

Many in the industry view Khanna, a lawyer with Valley ties who is half Honda’s age, as more in tune with their views. Rep. Honda, though, has the support of virtually the entire Democratic establishment, including President Barack Obama and top members of California’s congressional contingent. Some tech leaders complain that Rep Honda, 72, doesn’t understand their industry as well as he should. They don’t have a beef with any one decision he’s made, but fault him for not being a more influential tech advocate in the House. Instead, they see Khanna as a vehicle for what they call a pro-innovation agenda more in line with their interests. They also favor the 36-year-old challenger’s relative youth, saying Silicon Valley could amass more political clout if the Facebook mantra – “move fast and break things” – extended to more of their representatives in DC. The Honda-vs.-Khanna 17th district race may be the most direct example of the industry wielding its increasing political clout as it seeks to advance its agenda in Washington. Khanna, an intellectual property lawyer and former Obama administration official, wrote a book titled “Entrepreneurial Nation” and is teaching a class this fall at Stanford on American competitiveness. He says he’s not basing his campaign on the tech industry’s narrow interests but instead advocating a broader, Silicon Valley ethos.

Pay-TV Subscriber Losses in 2Q

According to company reports and SNL Kagan estimates, cable, satellite and telco video providers collectively lost 366,000 video subscriptions in the second quarter.

SNL Kagan said the figure was predictably softer than the first quarter but offered some encouragement with a nearly 11% improvement to the loss posted in the year-ago quarter. The industry remains slightly below its mid-2012 levels, placing the current U.S. multichannel market in a subscriber doldrums. The combined cable, telco and DBS counts, according to SNL Kagan estimates, were more than 200,000 lower than in second quarter 2012. By expanding the view backward to second quarter 2011, SNL Kagan’s analysis noted only a small uptick in combined subscriptions of 121,000 for the past 24 months. Cable doubled its loss from the previous quarter, but the estimated decline of 607,000 was a slight improvement from the year-ago measure.

What is Net Neutrality Again?

[Commentary] Network neutrality is going to be back in the news. That’s because an oral argument about the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Open Internet rules will soon take place before the DC Circuit Court.

Simply put, network neutrality is the principle that the company that connects you to the Internet does not get to control what you do on the Internet. The entire idea flows from the recognition that the company that is connecting you to the Internet (your Internet Service Provider or ISP), controls your connection to the Internet. As a result, your ISP is in a position to influence what you do with your internet connection. They could decide to prevent you from visiting some sites, or make some services work poorly, or even redirect you from one site to a competing site. Network neutrality rules prevent this from happening. The rules make it clear that the company that connects you to the Internet has an obligation to connect you to whatever part of the Internet you desire. It is not the company’s role to nudge you in one direction, or to give preferential treatment to some services and sites over others.

Benton

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