BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2013
In observance of Columbus Day, we’ll next see you on TUESDAY, October 15. Have a great weekend.
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
The Obama Administration and the Press - analysis
Breaking the Internet - analysis
Electronic Frontier Foundation splits from tech companies over surveillance concerns [links to web]
GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE
Some say healthcare site’s problems highlight flawed federal IT policies
Why US government IT fails so hard, so often - analysis
The crisis for government data in a 21st century shutdown - op-ed
INTERNET/BROADBAND
A few feet from failure: why Verizon FiOS in New York is a sad joke
Shutdown derails implementation of cybersecurity order [links to web]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
Ovum forecasts global mobile revenue decline for the first time in mobile industry history - press release
AT&T and GE join up on wireless global controls for industrial machines
Study: 74% of Mobile Users Have Smartphones [links to web]
T-Mobile CEO Says on Verge of Being Able to Claim “Fastest LTE Network” [links to web]
New Numbers Back Up Our Obsession With Phones [links to web]
T-Mobile shows the upside of M&A skepticism - analysis
TELECOM
Gov Jerry Brown vetoes two telecom bills
BROADCASTING
LGBT Characters Drop on Primetime Broadcast TV, Study Finds
FCC Officials Push for Broadcaster Forum on Team Name
Public TV connects to feds’ new emergency alert system [links to web]
Aereo Scores Another Win Against Broadcasters in Boston
PRIVACY
Privacy advocates, online advertisers want online tracking talks to end
Sen Markey Raises Privacy Questions About Cross-Device Tracking
Facebook to sunset its search privacy settings
What your Internet of things startup should learn from Netflix and the disaggregation of TV [links to web]
Microsoft plans to drop cookies, embrace cross-device tracking tools [links to web]
CONTENT
New data show increases in both the percent of adults who post and who watch videos online - press release
NPD: 3/4 of Young Adults with Connected TVs Watch OTT Video [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
Malone: Why Can’t We All Get Along?
Liberty Buys Back 5.2% Stake From Comcast [links to web]
EDUCATION
Companies, Education Groups Divided on E-Rate Transparency
LOBBYING
Yelp hires Issa aide as first lobbyist [links to web]
COMPANY NEWS
Internet phone giant Vonage to acquire Atlanta’s Vocalocity [links to web]
LightSquared Can Seek Creditor Vote on Four Plans [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Foxconn Admits to Labor Violations at Factory
Google disagrees with European privacy complaints [links to web]
BT strikes mobile partnership with EE [links to web]
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
LEAK INVESTIGATIONS AND SURVEILLANCE IN POST-9/11 AMERICA
[SOURCE: Committee to Protect Journalists, AUTHOR: Leonard Downie Jr, Sara Rafsky]
President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists. Those suspected of discussing with reporters anything that the government has classified as secret are subject to investigation, including lie-detector tests and scrutiny of their telephone and e-mail records. An “Insider Threat Program” being implemented in every government department requires all federal employees to help prevent unauthorized disclosures of information by monitoring the behavior of their colleagues. President Obama is faced with many challenges during his remaining years in office, the outcome of which will help shape his legacy. Among them is fulfilling his very first promise -- to make his administration the most transparent in American history amid national security concerns, economic uncertainty, political polarization, and rapid technological change. Whether he succeeds could have a lasting impact on US government accountability and on the standing of America as an international example of press freedom.
benton.org/node/161847 | Committee to Protect Journalists
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BREAKING THE INTERNET
[SOURCE: New America Foundation, AUTHOR: Sascha Meinrath]
[Commentary] Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff’s recent indictment of the United States’ cyber-spying practices has profound global repercussions for the US vision of a borderless, open Internet. What makes this backlash especially potent and lamentable is that it is being fueled, not by democracies that oppose American ideals, but rather, by allies that resent Washington’s betrayal of its own over-archingly positive vision. Rouseff’s offensive to change Internet governance follows reports that the National Security Agency’s watchful eye could see as far as her Palácio do Planalto in Brasília. According to leaked documents, the United States has been surveilling Rousseff’s email, intercepting internal government communications, and spying on the country’s national oil company. After canceling an official visit to meet with President Obama in Washington, Rousseff took to the podium at the UN’s General Assembly to call on other countries to disconnect from U.S. Internet hegemony and develop their own sovereign Internet and governance structures. Rousseff’s move could lead to a powerful chorus – one that would transform the Internet of the future from a global commons to a fractured patchwork severely limited by the political boundaries on a map. Is the benefit of spying on Brazil’s oil company worth the cost of antagonizing the people of our hemisphere’s second-largest democracy and giving China and Russia the moral high ground in debates over how people around the world should access information? Do we really want a world where this behavior is normalized and where its acceptable for every country to surveille and hack indiscriminately? The answer to that question seems pretty clear. Today we need bold reforms from Washington — we need to curtail our unhealthy addiction to surveillance and covert hacking. Only by being radically transparent about the scope of current activities and ceasing activities that transgress national norms will we regain global trust and shift the rather bleak trajectory we are currently on.
benton.org/node/161846 | New America Foundation
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GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE
SOME SAY HEALTHCARE SITE’S PROBLEMS HIGHLIGHT FLAWED FEDERAL IT POLICIES
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Craig Timberg, Lena Sun]
Problems with the federal government’s new healthcare Web site have attracted legions of armchair analysts who speak of its problems with “virtualization” and “load testing.” Yet increasingly, they are saying the root cause is not simply a matter of flawed computer code but rather the government’s habit of buying outdated, costly and buggy technology. The US government spends more than $80 billion a year for information technology services, yet the resulting systems typically take years to build and often are cumbersome when they launch. While the error messages, long waits and other problems with healthcare.gov have been spotlighted by the high profile nature of its launch and unexpectedly heavy demands on the system, such glitches are common, say those who argue for a nimbler procurement system. They say most government agencies have a shortage of technical staff and long have outsourced most jobs to big contractors that, while skilled in navigating a byzantine procurement system, are not on the cutting edge of developing user-friendly Web sites. “The episode is all too typical of how government creates IT services,” said Tom Lee, director of Sunlight Labs, the research arm of the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for more government transparency. “The procurement process tends to select for firms that are good at navigating the procurement process, not providing good IT services for the dollar.”
benton.org/node/161844 | Washington Post
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WHY US GOVERNMENT IT FAILS SO HARD, SO OFTEN
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Sean Gallagher]
The rocky launch of the Department of Health and Human Services' HealthCare.gov is the most visible evidence at the moment of how hard it is for the federal government to execute major technology projects. But the troubled "Obamacare" IT system -- which uses systems that aren't connected in any way to the federal IT infrastructure -- is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the government's IT problems. Despite efforts to make government IT systems more modern and efficient, many agencies are stuck in a technology time warp that affects how projects like the healthcare exchange portal are built. Long procurement cycles for even minor government technology projects, the slow speed of approval to operate new technologies, and the vast installed base of systems that government IT managers have to deal with all contribute to the glacial adoption of new technology. With the faces at the top of agency IT organizations changing every few years, each bringing some marquee project to burnish their résumés, it can take a decade to effect changes that last. Magnifying the problem is the government's decades-long increase in dependency on contractors to provide even the most basic technical capabilities. While the Obama Administration has talked of insourcing more IT work, it has been mostly talk, and agencies' internal IT management and procurement workforce has continued to get older and smaller.
benton.org/node/161843 | Ars Technica
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THE CRISIS FOR GOVERNMENT DATA IN A 21ST CENTURY SHUTDOWN
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Tom Lee]
[Commentary] US society depends on open government data. When the government shuts down, that data is at risk, and so are the citizens who rely on it. Across the government’s data offerings, the now ten-day shutdown has meant disruptions, downtime and confusion. A sampling of what’s available and what isn’t: Data.gov is down; so is the Census. The Bureau of Labor Statistics website (BLS.gov) is up, but it’s not releasing any new data. Federal Register staffers say they’re keeping the system up, and that some new data might come through, but that they can’t correct errors. The Library of Congress said its THOMAS system would be going offline, then decided it would stay up. Regulations.gov is still online, thanks to a technicality about how it’s funded. And it appears that you can still pull historical records about train accidents, for some reason. But countless other data services are down or display vague messages about the possibility of bad data. The Obama Administration needs to take action to restore faith in government data as a civic resource and platform for business. Confusingly, the House Republican majority that has engineered this shutdown has, until now, been among the most reliable and forward-thinking sources of open data leadership in our government. One can only hope that it will soon resolve the internal tensions that have led to this crisis.
benton.org/node/161842 | GigaOm
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
A FEW FEET FROM FAILURE: WHY VERIZON FIOS IN NEW YORK IS A SAD JOKE
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Adrianne Jeffries]
Verizon has a contract with New York City that promises fiber access in every neighborhood. However, the availability of the service has been frustratingly spotty, skipping buildings, floors, and blocks without clear explanation. Verizon says that’s because landlords aren’t letting them install fiber, but Brooklyn coder and entrepreneur Mike Caprio’s experience trying to get Verizon’s high-speed FiOS fiber Internet service since 2009 suggests that’s not always the case. Since he started telling the story on social media and on the radio, at least a dozen people have asked Caprio for help getting fiber in their buildings -- including his landlord. The city seems satisfied with how Verizon has held up its end of the bargain.
benton.org/node/161859 | Verge, The
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
OVUM FORECASTS GLOBAL MOBILE REVENUE DECLINE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MOBILE INDUSTRY HISTORY
[SOURCE: Ovum, AUTHOR: Press release]
The golden age of telecoms growth and prosperity is waning, according to Ovum. New research predicts that global connections will grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of less than 4 percent between 2012 and 2018, while global revenues will grow at less than half that rate. As growth slows and average revenue per user (ARPU) continues to decline, operators will need to find new ways to serve customers more profitably, not just focus on increasing subscriber numbers, says Ovum. According to Ovum’s figures global mobile connections will grow from 6.5 billion in 2012 to reach 8.1 billion by 2018, while annual mobile service revenues will rise from US$968bn to US$1.1tn. However, global service revenues will contract in 2018 for the first time in the history of the mobile industry, declining from 2017 levels by 1 percent or US$7.8bn. As such, over the next five years, innovation in services, tariffs, business models, network operations, and partnerships will be key revenue-generating strategies.
benton.org/node/161849 | Ovum
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AT&T AND GE JOIN UP ON WIRELESS GLOBAL CONTROLS FOR INDUSTRIAL MACHINES
[SOURCE: ComputerWorld, AUTHOR: Matt Hamblen]
AT&T and GE have teamed up to connect what could be millions of future GE industrial lights, engines and other hardware with AT&T's global wireless network for remote tracking, monitoring and even operation of the machines. GE will embed AT&T global wireless SIMs (Subscriber Identity Modules) in industrial products that will communicate over AT&T's cloud-based network. Using GE software called Predix, the two companies will collaborate to build software to maintain and remotely control industrial machines. The industrial machine-to-machine (M2M) agreement could have enormous implications. "This is a hugely significant win for AT&T," said Morgan Mullooly, an analyst at Analysys Mason. "We expect a tremendous number of M2M connections to be activated in the next two to three years, as millions of industrial components roll off GE productions lines fitted with embedded M2M modules and ... dispersed around the globe." GE calls such M2M connections the Industrial Internet which GE estimates will grow by 2025 to affect half of the global economy. In 2025, the global economy will be valued at an estimated $164 trillion.
benton.org/node/161848 | ComputerWorld
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T-MOBILE AND M&A SKEPTICISM
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Ryan Chittum]
[Commentary] Two years ago, AT&T announced it had agreed to acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion. Fortunately, for Americans with cellphones, the government stepped in to prevent an already consolidated industry from calcifying further. Now, they’re reaping the benefits. T-Mobile has taken to marketing itself as the “Uncarrier” and has indeed made some major moves that distance itself from the American wireless industry’s cartel-like behavior with actual, you know, competition. Here we have an extremely valuable lesson in why we need antitrust enforcement. Had AT&T absorbed T-Mobile two years ago, there’s zero chance any of these big changes would have been made.
benton.org/node/161866 | Columbia Journalism Review
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TELECOM
BROWN VETOES TELECOM BILLS
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Marc Lifsher]
Two pieces of legislation, heavily backed by the telecommunications industry but opposed by California state regulators, were vetoed by Gov Jerry Brown (D-CA). One dealt with fees related to the purchase of prepaid cellphone minutes. The bill, AB 300 by Assemblyman Henry T. Perea (D-Fresno), would have created a new system for retailers to collect the fees from purchasers. As approved by the Legislature, the money would be sent to the Board of Equalization and then passed to the California Public Utilities Commission. Currently, the PUC has required -- sometimes by filing lawsuits -- that the prepaid services, such as TracFone Wireless, send fees on intrastate calls directly to the commission. Gov Brown also vetoed AB 1409 by Assemblyman Steven Bradford (D-Gardena.) It would have limited some of the PUC's powers to adopt new rules for the LifeLine subsidized phone service program provided by cable companies. The PUC is in the process of writing rules to give low-income participants the option of using cellphones and Internet phones as part of the program. Gov Brown noted that the PUC "has taken public comment from hundreds of California citizens" and that the process should be allowed to continue.
benton.org/node/161869 | Los Angeles Times
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BROADCASTING
LGBT CHARACTERS
[SOURCE: The Wrap, AUTHOR: Brent Lang]
Gay characters are becoming more racially diverse, but there are very few transgender characters. Thanks to shows like “The New Normal,” “Glee” and “Happy Endings,” gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters were given bigger primetime roles than ever before last season, but broadcast networks will have a hard time matching those record-breaking results as a new television year kicks off. Following a record high last season, an analysis by advocacy group GLAAD found that 3.3 percent of series regulars on the 2013-2014 scripted primetime broadcast television schedule will be LBGT. This is down from 4.4 percent in 2012, but still higher than the 2.9 percent recorded in 2011. Among the 796 series regulars characters popping up across 109 primetime scripted television programs on the five broadcast networks, 26 are LGBT, while 770 are straight. The number of LGBT characters fell from 31 in the previous season. Half of the 46 LGBT characters on broadcast networks are women and 28 percent are minorities. Moreover, though last year’s programs failed to feature any prominent transgender characters, “Glee” will have one with the addition of Wade “Unique” Adams, a young transgender woman in the singing club, to the regular cast.
benton.org/node/161867 | Wrap, The
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FCC OFFICIALS PUSH FOR BROADCASTER FORUM ON TEAM NAME
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Reed Hundt, former-Federal Communications Commission Chairman and on-the-record opponent of using the name "Redskins" for the Washington football team, was among a number of former FCC officials signed on to a letter to current-FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn asking the FCC to use some muscle to get the name scrubbed. The letter asks that she "convene an open forum with broadcasters to determine whether they should self-regulate their use of the term 'XXXskins' when referring to the Washington DC football team." Among the couple dozen signees are former FCC commissioners and officials Tyrone Brown, Henry Geller, Jonathan Adelstein, Nicholas Johnson, and Blair Levin (a former Hundt top aide), as well as veteran media attorney Andrew Schwartzman, Minority Media & Telecommunications Counsel President David Honig and former NTIA head Larry Irving. “The image of Washington is prominent throughout this country and the world. To continue arguing that the name "XXXskin" is an honor to Native Americans requires willful ignorance, which casts enormous doubt on team leadership,” the letter said. “As all of us have learned in international diplomacy, strength is essential to leadership and that includes moral strength. To tie this name to Washington's football team hurts that strength.”
benton.org/node/161862 | Broadcasting&Cable
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AEREO SCORES ANOTHER WIN AGAINST BROADCASTERS IN BOSTON
[SOURCE: AdWeek, AUTHOR: Katy Bachman]
Broadcasters lost another court ruling against Aereo. A US district judge in Boston denied Hearst TV's request for an injunction against the streaming TV service. Hearst, owner of WCVB, the ABC affiliate in Boston, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Aereo in July, two months after Aereo launched in the market. But Judge Nathaniel Gorton refused to stop Aereo's service, concluding that Hearst would likely fail to convince the court that Aereo is unlawfully distributing its signal. "Hearst has made a minimal showing of irreparable harm that is an insufficient basis for entering a preliminary injunction in its favor," Judge Gorton wrote.
benton.org/node/161841 | AdWeek | Multichannel News | Deadline Hollywood
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PRIVACY
VOTE TO END PRIVACY TALKS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Kate Tummarello]
Privacy advocates and online advertiser groups called for the end to a process that would create a way for users to opt out of being tracked online. The group, convened by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), voted on how the group should move forward after two years of missed deadlines and tense disagreements over creating a Do Not Track (DNT) tool. Members were asked to choose between a current draft; abandoning the group; changing the timelines for the draft; a less-controversial technical document it's tied to; and getting a Do Not Track tool out now that can be revised later. Online advertising groups and privacy advocates alike voted that the group should disband. The option to disband was supported by 20 participants and opposed by 22. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, called the group’s process “so flawed — it’s a farce.” When it comes to privacy from online tracking, global online users deserve better — from industry, WC3, and also regulators,” he wrote. “It is crystal clear that this working group cannot reach a meaningful consensus” and “should be disbanded,” John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog wrote. “There is nothing dishonorable in admitting our differences are too great to overcome.”
benton.org/node/161868 | Hill, The
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MARKEY RAISES PRIVACY QUESTIONS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Claire Cain Miller]
Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate online ad companies that track consumers across devices, like showing them ads on their phones based on Web sites they visit on a computer. His letter to FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez cited a New York Times article that ran on Sunday detailing the new ways that mobile advertisers are tracking consumers, including across devices. “Such tracking envelops users in a digital environment where marketers know their preferences and personal information no matter which device they use while consumers are kept largely in the dark,” Sen Markey wrote. “Previous tracking technologies such as cookies are giving way to more sophisticated, surreptitious methods for monitoring users,” Sen Markey wrote. “The implications of this evolution are enormous for the privacy of millions of Americans.”
benton.org/node/161870 | New York Times | The Hill
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FACEBOOK TO SUNSET ITS SEARCH PRIVACY SETTINGS
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Lauren Hockenson]
[Commentary] Facebook is following through on a year-old announcement to retire a search privacy feature. Users will no longer be able to hide their profile from search. The feature, called “Who can look up your Timeline by name?” was removed from Privacy settings in 2012 for those who didn’t have it enabled. When enabled, the setting removes the ability for users to access a Timeline profile via search, even when a user puts in the exact name of the person he or she is locating. Facebook says in the blog post that the feature is a vestigial precaution that reaches back before the platform had a sophisticated search algorithm. When Facebook search acted as a mere directory, removing oneself from search made it more difficult for strangers to access a given profile. But now, as Open Graph opens up to search more settings and there is greater visibility of Timelines for friends of friends, the importance of finding a person through search has diminished while controlling the content on any given Timeline has become more important. Now, it’s more important to consider the content of the Timeline itself: a “private Timeline” is only such when content is marked explicitly “Friends Only.” As Facebook continues to make search easier, it’s important to keep in mind how these changes impact social media privacy at large.
benton.org/node/161861 | GigaOm
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CONTENT
NEW DATA SHOW INCREASES IN BOTH THE PERCENT OF ADULTS WHO POST AND WHO WATCH VIDEOS ONLINE
[SOURCE: Pew Internet and American Life Project, AUTHOR: Kristen Purcell]
A national survey conducted in July 2013 shows the percent of American adult Internet users who upload or post video online has doubled in the past four years, from 14% in 2009 to 31% today. This figure includes online adults who do at least one of the following:
Upload a video to the Internet so others can watch or download it -- 27% of adult Internet users have done this.
Post videos to any website online that they, themselves, have taken or created -- 18% of adult Internet users have done this.
Younger adult Internet users are twice as likely as their older counterparts to post and share videos online. While 41% of 18-29 year-old Internet users and 36% of 30-49 year-old Internet users post or share videos online, the same is true of just 18% of Internet users age 50 and older. “Since 2006, we’ve seen consistent increases year-to-year in the percentage of adults who watch videos online, but this survey marks the largest increase we’ve seen in the percent of adults who are posting videos online,” notes Kristen Purcell, Associate Director of Research at the Pew Internet Project and the author of the report. “As the online video culture grows—fueled by video-sharing sites, mobile phones, and online social networking—posting videos online is becoming a mainstream online behavior.” When posting their own videos online, adults most commonly share mundane things such as friends, family, and events they attend. 35% of adults who post or share video online—or 11% of all adult Internet users—have posted a video with the hope it will be seen by many people. The percent of online adults who watch or download videos also continues to increase. Comedy and educational videos continue to top of the list of most widely viewed types of online video, now joined by how-to and music videos. The increasing popularity of social networking sites and the proliferation of cell phones have helped spur the growing online video culture.
benton.org/node/161838 | Pew Internet and American Life Project
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OWNERSHIP
MALONE: WHY CAN’T WE ALL GET ALONG?
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Mike Farrell]
Cable legend and Liberty Media chairman John Malone said the future of the cable industry will depend on its participants’ willingness and ability to co-operate to help solve the pressing issues of the day, and that consolidation could be just the way to do that. “The fewer big players, the easier it is to align them,” Malone said at Liberty’s annual Investor Day meeting. “The smaller players are already willing and able to affiliate with technology schemes and brands, but they have to be underwritten by the biggest players who have more in common than they have to fear from each other.” Malone has been by far the biggest catalyst in the consolidation frenzy of the past several months, after Liberty invested $2.6 billion for a 27 percent interest in Charter Communications. He added that most of the innovations in the cable industry -- the digital set-top box, MPEG video compression and the Hybrid-Fiber Coax (HFC) architecture -- were all made possible through industry joint ventures and consortiums. But whether Malone’s vision will become reality depends on several factors, including the industry’s ability to work together. While Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts has considered licensing its X-1 user interface to other operators, thus creating the ubiquitous platform to launch products Malone was talking about, the Liberty chief said there are other issues at play that could throw a wrench in those plans, too.
benton.org/node/161856 | Multichannel News | WSJ
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EDUCATION
COMPANIES, ED GROUPS DIVIDED ON E-RATE TRANSPARENCY
[SOURCE: Education Week, AUTHOR: Sean Cavanagh]
Public and private sector leaders agree on many of the broad goals being floated for reshaping the federal E-rate program, but there is little consensus on one, potentially critical issue: Whether telecommunications companies should be required to make more information public about the prices they charge schools for technology. That question has created a division between education organizations, many of which favor bringing more transparency to pricing, versus industry groups who counter that putting prices in circulation would compel them to reveal proprietary information and would lead to skewed cost comparisons in districts with very different characteristics. The Federal Communications Commission has shown an interest in boosting the transparency of spending in the program, which provides about $2.4 billion a year in aid to schools and libraries for telecommunications services. Many school advocacy organizations favor this option, arguing that making more information about technology prices public will make it easier for schools to get services at a cheaper rate -- saving money not only for K-12 systems, but also ultimately for taxpayers.
benton.org/node/161853 | Education Week
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
LABOR VIOLATIONS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Lorraine Luk]
Hon Hai Precision Industry acknowledged that some student interns worked night shifts and overtime at a production site in northeast China in violation of company policy, the latest hit to the labor practices of the contract manufacturer for Apple and other electronics companies. Hon Hai, which uses the trade name Foxconn Technology Group, has been under scrutiny by labor groups for its work practices. The same factory last year admitted to having temporarily hired underage interns. The Beijing Times reported that some engineering students from the Xi'an Institute of Technology were told that they wouldn't graduate if they refused to participate in the internship program in Foxconn's manufacturing site. The article said the students made Sony’s PlayStation game consoles at the company's Yantai campus.
benton.org/node/161865 | Wall Street Journal | Financial Times
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