April 2014

Companies Built on Sharing Balk When It Comes to Regulators

In the newfangled sharing economy, questions about safety, taxes and regulation have tended to be an afterthought. That has helped propel companies like Uber, Airbnb and Lyft into the stratosphere. But regulators as well as some elected officials across the country are increasingly questioning the presumptions and tactics of these start-ups, especially the notion that laws do not apply to them. The companies are fighting back by rallying their impassioned and growing customer base. And they are stocking up on lawyers and lobbyists.

General Mills abandons mandatory arbitration after consumer outcry

General Mills has reversed a recent change to its online legal policy after an outcry by consumers.

The policy had been quietly updated to include terms under which any dispute with the company would have to be decided through arbitration. Critics and legal experts said the new terms could cost consumers their right to sue in court if they merely "liked" General Mills' social media pages, downloaded coupons from its website, or entered any company-sponsored contests. General Mills initially criticized the media reports on the policy, saying they had mischaracterized it. The company also defended arbitration as "a straightforward and efficient way to resolve such disputes -- and many companies take the same approach. We even cover the cost of arbitration in most cases." But the coverage set off a consumer outcry on social media, eventually leading to the abrupt reversal.

Netflix opposes Comcast’s merger with Time Warner Cable, calls it anticompetitive

Netflix opposes Comcast's $45 billion bid for Time Warner Cable, no longer pulling its punches toward the company it recently agreed to pay for smoother video streams.

Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings and chief financial officer David Wells said the merger would create a single company with too much power over the broadband Internet market. Combined, Comcast and Time Warner Cable could control as much as half of all broadband Internet subscriptions, with most of those homes having no alternative options for broadband service providers, the executives said. "Comcast is already dominant enough to be able to capture unprecedented fees from transit providers and services as Netflix," the executives wrote. "The combined company would possess even more anti-competitive leverage to charge arbitrary interconnection tolls for access to their customers. For this reason, Netflix opposes this merger." Netflix is the first major Web company to criticize Comcast's acquisition plans. The company fears other ISPs will follow Comcast's demands of the video streaming service to pay for more direct connection with its home Internet users.

Win or lose in the Supreme Court, Aereo as we know it won’t last

[Commentary] I wouldn’t put money on any particular outcome from the Supreme Court’s review of the Aereo case given how flummoxed actual experts seem to be by the question. But even a clean victory for Aereo isn’t likely to buy the company much beyond a little more time before it needs to find a buyer or be overtaken by the very forces of disruption it would unleash.

It’s an inherently inefficient way of doing live streaming that Aereo is already having trouble scaling to meet demand. If you had clear license to transmit broadcast programming over the Internet without needing the legal protection of the Cablevision precedent that’s not the way you would do it. And therein lies Aereo’s real problem. If it loses in court it’s done. But even if it wins there’s nothing to stop broadcasters themselves from eventually providing streaming access to their broadcast signals, potentially at no cost to viewers. It’s simply a matter of time before the technological infrastructure is in place to provide universal live streaming access and to do it much more efficiently than Aereo can. It might look something like Tablet Television, which uses an ATSC dongle to turn tablets into digital TV receivers, or it might look something like LTE multicasting (a.k.a. LTE Broadcast). But it will be scalable and robust in a way that Aereo and other unlicensed services working around the margins of the Cablevision decision will have a hard time matching.

[Sweeting is Principal, Concurrent Media Strategies]

Privacy Concerns Force Inbloom, A Data Repository For Schools, To Shut Down

InBloom, a repository for student data that launched with $100 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, is bowing to relentless opposition from parent activists and waving the white flag of surrender, just over a year since its splashy SXSWedu debut. CEO Iwan Streichenberger announced the decision to shut down the organization in a letter posted to the inBloom website. "It is a shame that the progress of this important innovation has been stalled because of generalized public concerns about data misuse, even though inBloom has world-class security and privacy protections that have raised the bar for school districts and the industry as a whole," he wrote.

Supporting an Open and Inclusive Internet in Brazil

[Commentary] We head to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to attend NETmundial, a global meeting of governments, entrepreneurs, academics, Internet institutions, activists and users to discuss the future of Internet governance.

Over two days delegates will discuss and work toward developing a set of principles to guide international Internet governance activities in the future.

The United States will work with other delegations to expand the community of individuals, organizations, firms, and governments who are willing to put their faith in the proven multi-stakeholder system of cooperation and coordination; this system has enabled the unprecedented growth of the global Internet, which in turn has fueled economic development and innovation.

Along with most of the world’s Internet advocates and users, we believe that no one stakeholder or group of stakeholders, including governments, should have control over the operation or protocols of the Internet or the creativity, innovation, and freedom of expression that it enables. We are optimistic that NETmundial will make an important contribution to the positive evolution of the Internet and its governance and we support efforts at NETmundial and beyond to preserve an, open, inclusive, resilient, interoperable, and innovative global Internet.

[Daniel serves as Special Assistant to the President and White House Cybersecurity Coordinator; Strckling serves as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and Administrator, National Telecommunications and Information Administration; Ambassador Sepulveda serves as US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy at the US Department of State; Painter serves as Coordinator for Cyber Issues at the US Department of State; Busby serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor]

NAB: Needs Answers On Repacking Moving Expenses ASAP

The National Association of Broadcasters has told the Federal Communications Commission it needs to issue a separate "notice-and-comment rulemaking process" ASAP to deal with repacking reimbursement issues.

The incentive auction statute directed the FCC to set aside $1.75 billion from auction proceeds for a broadcaster relocation fund (with cable and satellite operators also able to tap that for any expenses in carrying those changed channels). The FCC is preparing to vote May 15 on a framework for the broadcast incentive auctions, including on repacking, but the NAB says the commission's recent report from outside consultant Widelity on new figures for potential covered expenses in the repacking and moving of TV stations was only a first step.

NAB says that the commission has so far failed to provide "any information as to how the Commission will use the report, or how relocating broadcasters will receive reimbursement for all expenses they incur in repacking." In comments filed regarding the Widelity report, NAB said that there could be unanticipated costs and delays that could take the transition beyond the three-year sunset for reimbursement. It argues that one key question is whether the FCC will treat the report's cost estimates as an upper limit or merely guidance -- NAB says it should be the latter.

Hey AT&T, enough with the gigawashing!

[Commentary] AT&T is announcing that it plans to discuss bringing its gigabit service to 21 municipalities that have that certain set of je ne sais quoi that AT&T is looking for.

The “receptive policies” and “strongest investment cases” the company mentions in its press release dismantles the idea that network providers must serve all community members and can take away a point of leverage that municipalities have traditionally used to ensure that low-income areas also get infrastructure upgrades. And wait, there’s even more uncertainty ahead. In Austin, which AT&T is “already servicing with fiber today,” so far AT&T’s GigaPower service is limited to 300 Mbps and is set to get an upgrade to a full gigabit sometime in 2014.

Google is not blameless here, but given the new type of invasive plans that offer advertising in exchange for a lower price tag, and the fact that AT&T’s efforts to bring a gigabit so far aren’t delivering a gig, Ma Bell should have some explaining to do before these 21 cities get too excited about their hoped-for gigabit service.

Is Your Internet Connection Slower Than Advertised?

If your Internet speed feels too slow, it probably is. Most major US Internet service providers usually deliver slower speeds than they advertise to their customers.

Indeed, the vast majority of the 800 cities included in the sortable table below experience median Internet speeds that are slower than what their providers advertise, according to data provided by Ookla and its online speed test, Speedtest.net.

Ookla, which previously licensed its data and technology to the Federal Communications Commission, compiled the data from tens of millions of speed tests as well as surveys of 646,404 Speedtest users’ subscribed Internet speeds since March 2013.

Apple campaign touts progress on reducing environmental impact

Under Chief Executive Tim Cook, Apple has become increasingly vocal about its efforts to reduce the company's effect on the environment.

The company launched a revamped website that highlights its progress and discloses some new efforts as well. The new site, which includes a solemn video narrated by Cook, coincides with Earth Day (which has already started in some parts of the world) and announces Apple's lofty goal: "We want to leave the world better than we found it."

"Better," says Cook in the video. "It's a powerful word. And a powerful idea. It makes us look at the world and want more than anything to change it for the better."

Though Apple has previously made disclosures about its environmental impact, the new site dramatically expands the scope and detail in terms of efforts to reduce harmful materials in its products and progress toward using only renewable energy at its facilities.

Just recently, Apple was praised by Greenpeace for reducing its reliance on so-called "conflict materials" that come from areas subject to human rights abuses. The environmental group also recently lauded Apple for having among the most environmentally friendly data centers in the tech industry. Indeed, according to the new website, Apple's data centers now run on 100% renewable energy. And across all Apple facilities, the company uses 94% renewable energy, up from 35% in 2010.

Benton

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