January 2014

Sens John McCain (R-AZ) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) emphasize that the key to ending private, contractual blackouts is to place conditions on sports league antitrust exemptions.

In Blumenthal’s summary of the legislation, it rightfully notes (as does the Federal Communications Commission itself) that the FCC sports blackout rule is not really the one that most annoys fans. Rather it is the private contracts made between leagues and telecasters that prevent locals from watching a game that not enough fans actually attend. The solution the senators provide is to condition the leagues’ antitrust exemptions upon limiting or removing these total blackout provisions from their private contracts. What are the antitrust exemptions mentioned by the Senators? There are two (1) the Sports Broadcast Act (the “SBA”) and (2) the judicially created MLB antitrust exemption. The thought is that if the leagues are forced to either provide local games (at least on the Internet) or face losing the benefits of the SBA they’ll choose the former. The problem for local fans is that the senators are likely wrong -- the empirical evidence shows that the SBA is just not that important to the leagues.

The Parents Television Council took aim at the television and movie industries, calling for a complete overhaul of the industries’ ratings systems and blasting the industries’ lack of progress in reducing media violence.

The media watchdog organization claimed that the industries’ ratings systems are tainted by “inaccuracies and inconsistencies,” with PTC president Tim Winter adding that the industries have “done nothing” to reduce media violence since media executives met with Vice President Joe Biden a year ago. “In one year, the industry has done nothing to reduce media violence, and new research shows the networks routinely assign age ratings for horrifically violent content on broadcast TV deeming it appropriate for children. Movies are no better, as new research found that PG-13 rated films contain as much violence as R-rated films,” Winter said. Citing its own research, the PTC claimed that television shows rated TV-14 on broadcast television have “similar levels and types of violence” as cable shows rated TV-MA.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has declared the city’s deal with startup broadband company Gigabit Squared dead. In fact, the city’s deal with the company may have been doomed before Murray was even elected.

Gigabit Squared’s unpaid bills totaling $52,250 for work the city's employees have already done on the project, have been sent to the city’s lawyers, who will decide whether to send them to collections, according to the city's IT director Erin Devoto. He said Gigabit has not built anything yet and the only work that's been done has been by city employees who put together research and reports for Gigabit. Gigabit paid $2,500 of the $54,750 bill for city employees' work last year, but has not paid the rest, Devoto said. Mayor Murray has stated he’s seeking other companies with a “more realistic financing mechanism” to lease the fiber and move forward with the program.

The French data protection authority CNIL has fined Google €150,000 ($204,000) over its unified privacy policy, which regulators believe violates European privacy law.

CNIL said Google’s merging of its various services’ privacy policies into a unified policy was in itself legal, but the way in which it implemented that unified policy was not legal. Specifically, the regulator said, Google did not inform its users enough about how their data would be mixed and matched between the various services, such as Gmail and Google Maps, nor why this data was being combined in this way (hint: advertising). If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s almost exactly what the Dutch regulator and a Berlin court said in November. The European Union data protection authorities are coordinating their anti-Google efforts -- Spain became the first to levy a fine last month, relieving the company of $1.2 million.