December 2013

6 awesome ways you can watch the BCS Championship thanks to ESPN’s ‘megacast’

ESPN plans to unveil a programming platform of such scope and scale for the BCS National Championship Game that the network describes it as a “megacast.”

In total, the network will offer six different ways to follow Florida State and Auburn on Jan. 6, beginning with the tent-pole program: the game itself, Seminoles against Tigers, called by the team of Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit on ESPN. Augmenting the normal broadcast are a number of game-centric viewing options across ESPN’s family of networks, whether televised -- as on ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPN Goal Line and ESPN Classic -- or online, via the network’s ESPN3 service. Each channel will begin its broadcast at 8:30 p.m. Eastern, coinciding with kickoff of the championship game. “The majority of the people will still watch the game on ESPN,” Norby Williamson, ESPN’s executive vice president, programming, told USA TODAY Sports. “But our hope is people will sample other things. Whether they’re flipping from ESPN, flipping over to these other offerings. Whether it’s additive, whether it’s people watching on a second screen while they’re watching the game and tweeting in, in hopes that some of their tweets will show up on ESPN. That’s the overall concept.”

'Cramming' phone scams targeted by state attorneys general

States are stepping up efforts to help consumers who find mysterious, and usually bogus, charges on their phone bills.

Some 12,500 Vermont households and businesses are receiving refund checks in Dec 2013 totaling more than $900,000 for illegitimate charges that appeared on their landline phone bills. These victims of "cramming" got their money back as part of a $1.6 million settlement between the state and 25 sellers of voicemail, email and other services. But in many cramming cases, people don't get refunds -- and might not even know they were swindled at all. As many as 20 million people are crammed each year, but only about 1 in 20 realizes it, the Federal Communications Commission estimates. Cellphone and landline cramming could cost consumers up to $2 billion a year. Vermont and Illinois are the only states that ban third-party charges on landline phone bills. But state attorneys general from 43 other states are joining an effort to tackle the growing problem of cramming on cellphones. More than one-third of American homes (35.8 percent) had only wireless phones in 2012, up from less than 5 percent in 2003, government data show.

President boxed in on NSA reforms

An advisory group created to review the National Security Agency has boxed in President Barack Obama by proposing more sweeping changes to American surveillance than expected.

The report makes it much harder for President Obama to oppose substantial restrictions to the NSA's powers, observers say. "Given the make-up of the panel and that the fact that the panelists were chosen by the president himself, the substantial recommendations it made are more likely to be received well and acted upon," said Greg Nojeim, an attorney for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group. "This will give ammunition to the forces of reform in the White House as well as those in Congress." President Obama filled the review group with former officials closely tied to either him or the intelligence agencies. That stoked suspicion among privacy advocates that the final product would be mere window-dressing. Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and frequent defender of the NSA, said the review group pulled "the rug out from under" the White House. "This is a really awkward document for the Obama Administration. Really awkward," Wittes wrote on his national security blog, Lawfare. "This presumably was not the report Obama was imagining when he asked this group to take this on."

CARU: Marvelkids.com No Longer In Privacy Self-Reg Program

Marvel Entertainment appears to have withdrawn its Marvelkids.com site from the Better Business Bureau's self-regulatory safe harbor seal of approval program.

The Center for Digital Democracy filed a complaint against the site, Marvel, and parent Disney, alleging it was not in compliance with the FTC's new Children's Online Privacy Protection Act implementation rules. It included in that complaint that the site was sporting a BBB Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) logo signaling it complied with self-regulatory guidelines, when, according to CDD, it was not. "It appears that CARU is not ensuring that its members are adhering to the safe harbor requirements," CDD said in the complaint. "Marvelkids.com displays the CARU Kid’s Privacy Safe Harbor icon. This icon links to the CARU website, which confirms that “the information practices of Marvel Entertainment Inc. have been reviewed and meet the standards of [CARU’s] Kids’s Privacy Safe Harbor Program." "Marvelkids.com has not revised its data collection practices to comply with the revised COPPA Rule, and does not provide the same or greater protections against collection of children’s information than the COPPA Rule," said CDD. "The fact that Marvelkids.com nonetheless displays the CARU icon is misleading to parents and raises questions about the effectiveness of the CARU self-regulatory process." CARU begged to differ.

TWC Settles Complaint With FTC

Time Warner Cable has agreed to pay $1.9 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint that it violated the Risk-Based Pricing Rule.

Adopted in 2011, the rule requires creditors to provide notice to consumers who get less favorable terms based on credit reports. It is the first enforcement case brought under the relatively new law. According to the FTC, TWC was checking credit reports of prospective customers and depending on the result it might require a deposit or prepay the first month's rent, requirements not made of others with better credit scores. It is not that TWC couldn't differentiate its charges, but it was required to notify its subscribers.

MMTC to FCC: How About a Diversity Commissioner?

The Minority Media & Telecommunications Council has some reform proposals for the Federal Communications Commission it says can be done now, most of which would not only not cost anything but save the FCC money while creating jobs and diversifying the industry.

One idea: designate what would essentially be a Diversity Commissioner to focus on the issue, similar to the designated Defense Commissioner (who is the point person on emergency communications issues). FCC chairman Tom Wheeler charged special counsel Diane Cornell with having an FCC process reform report on his desk by the end of 2013, and sought input from outside as well. MMTC is focused on speeding FCC process, improving multistakeholder processes, and a more inclusive and transparent process, to advance minority and women-owned business engagement. Those recommendations also include instituting shot clocks, streamlined reviews, limit extension of forbearance deadlines, include specific wording in notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), putting individual commissioners in charge of shepherding specific decisions, create a multistakeholder mediation process, create a Civil Rights section of the Enforcement Bureau, and issue a diversity impact statement for NPRMs and orders in major rulemakings.

Obama Administration sued over its secretive trade negotiations

For the last few years, the Obama Administration has been negotiating a treaty known as the Trans Pacific Partnership. While the treaty is officially focused on promoting international trade, it also includes language on a number of other issues. Critics have warned that the "intellectual property" section could force the United States to adopt legal changes favorable to copyright holders. But when critics of these policies have sought details about what the Obama Administration is negotiating, they have been rebuffed. So the news site IP Watch filed a lawsuit to force the US Trade Representative to release more documents related to the treaty.

The lawsuit argues that USTR failed to adequately respond to a Freedom of Information Act request the news organization filed more than a year ago. "It's really only the American public that's been shut out of access to these documents," says Joshua Weinger, a law student at Yale. The Obama Administration has shared some of the documents at issue in the lawsuit with foreign governments and others with domestic industry groups. But the documents are not available to the general public, and academics and public interest groups interested in IP issues have struggled to obtain information about the treaty. Weinger is part of a team of students in Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic that has been helping IP Watch reporter William New seek access to TPP-related documents. "It seems puzzling to us that any of these documents should be classified," Weinger argues, since the documents they're seeking relate to copyright and patent law, not normally regarded as national security issues.

How we know Obama will ignore his NSA review group: He already has

[Commentary] President Barack Obama has already decided against one of the recommendations he received from the review of National Security Agency surveillance practices. The White House said that it would be keeping the NSA and the Pentagon's cyberwarfare directorate under the command of a single military leader. The current "dual-hatted" head of NSA and Cyber Command, Gen Keith Alexander, has been at the center of the furor over NSA surveillance. But Gen Alexander plans to step down in 2014, which raised the possibility several weeks ago of President Obama changing the rules for Gen Alexander's successor -- or successors, as civil liberties advocates had hoped. As Brookings' Benjamin Wittes points out, the results of the panel actually turned out rather awkwardly for the President. But as we've now seen with President Obama's decision on NSA/CYBERCOM leadership, that doesn't mean he's going to listen.

Putin: NSA surveillance needed to fight terrorism

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that National Security Agency surveillance is necessary to fight terrorism, but added that the US government must "limit the appetite" of the agency with a clear set of ground rules.

Putin's comment was surprising support for President Barack Obama's Administration, which has faced massive criticism over the sweeping US electronic espionage program. Putin, a 16-year KGB veteran and the former chief of Russia's main espionage agency, said that while the NSA program "isn't a cause for joy, it's not a cause for repentance either" because it is needed to fight terrorism. Putin added that the efficiency of the effort -- and its damage to privacy -- is limited by the sheer inability to process such a huge amount of data.

Google Fined in European Privacy Probe

Spain became the first of six European governments investigating Google's compliance with privacy laws to fine the company.

The Spanish Agency for Data Protection is demanding €900,000 ($1.24 million) from Google for three breaches of the laws: gathering data on users, combining the data through several services and keeping the data indefinitely without the knowledge or consent of users. Google said that it was studying the findings to determine its next step and will continue to cooperate with the agency to "create simpler, more effective services." Spain is one of the six countries that have been investigating Google since spring, an extension of a pan-European investigation. The Dutch privacy watchdog has said it may fine Google for breaching data protection law in the Netherlands. It hasn't indicated how big the fine could be but has asked Google to attend a hearing on the matter. In Italy, Google faces a possible fine of more than €1.2 million, while in the German city of Hamburg fines could total €1 million, regulators have said.

Benton

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