June 30, 2014 (Two Decisions Shed Light on the Supreme Court's Role in Telecommunications Policy)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2014
POLICYMAKERS
Two Decisions Shed Light on the Supreme Court's Role in Telecommunications Policy - Kevin Taglang analysis
New NSA Chief Calls Damage From Snowden Leaks Manageable [links to web]
Spotlight on NTIA: Isha Carry, Program Analyst, Office of Policy Coordination and Management - press release [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
US Intelligence Community Offers a Little Insight Into Surveillance Activities
NSA queried phone records of just 248 people despite massive data sweep
A New Cybersecurity Bill Could Give the NSA Even More Data
Privacy board to tackle spying programs
Privacy groups grade lawmakers on NSA votes
Groups Target Hill Votes On NSA Bills
Health data privacy helped fuel Supreme Court cellphone ruling
Does the US Supreme Court's Decision on the 4th Amendment and Cell Phones Signal Future Changes to the Third Party Doctrine? - op-ed [links to web]
FBI seizes 80,000 emails from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in phone-hacking scandal [links to web]
Fighting Bulk Search Warrants In Court - Facebook press release
INTERNET/BROADBAND
CBO Scores Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act - research
Dems back FCC chief in local Internet push
The Internet Is Fracturing Into Separate Country-Specific Networks - analysis
Threat to net neutrality could choke innovation
What the FCC’s broadband tests really measure - Richard Bennett analysis
DataBank plans Eagan (MN) site, with $50 million upgrade [links to web]
Au Revoir to the Open Internet - WSJ editorial
EDUCATION
Dear FCC: What is Wi-Fi Without Greater Capacity? - analysis
ConnectED Program Offers Schools Almost $2B in Products, Services [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
Report On Ownership Of Commercial Broadcast Stations - public notice
FCC Extends Media Ownership Comment Deadline [links to web]
Media Mergers? Analyst Makes The Case for Multiple Deals [links to web]
Slim to Buy Out AT&T’s $6 Billion Stake in America Movil [links to web]
LightSquared reaches bankruptcy deal, without Ergen [links to web]
TELEVISION
Aereo Defeat Sets Up Bigger, Broader Fight for TV
Aereo Ruling Opens Big Opportunity For TV - Harry Jessell editorial
Fox moves to use Aereo ruling against Dish streaming service
What TV retransmission service Aereo got right - analysis
Stung by Supreme Court, Aereo Suspends Service [links to web]
The good, the bad and the Aereo - op-ed [links to web]
Broadcasters buy time after Aereo defeat [links to web]
Is the Aereo decision a setback for innovation? - analysis [links to web]
After Supreme Court Ruling, Aereo’s Rivals in TV Streaming Seize Opening [links to web]
NBC, Dish Talks Ease Tensions Over Ad-Skipping [links to web]
No Aereo? Alternatives Require More Money, Savvy [links to web]
ACA to FCC: Preventing Blackouts Is Job One [links to web]
Cable Companies Urge FCC to Toughen Retransmission Regulations [links to web]
No, Cable TV is Not a Net Neutrality Violation - analysis
CONTENT
Virtual Currencies: Emerging Regulatory, Law Enforcement, and Consumer Protection Challenges - research
Facebook Tinkers With Users’ Emotions in News Feed Experiment, Stirring Outcry
FCC moves to caption the Web [links to web]
The impending death of the YouTube mashup - op-ed [links to web]
For Email Newsletters, a Death Greatly Exaggerated [links to web]
The New Video Ad Viewability Metric Is Drawing Scrutiny [links to web]
Mobile app usage hits 51% of all time spent on digital media [links to web]
PRIVACY/SECURITY
Why the Supreme Court May Finally Protect Your Privacy in the Cloud - Wired analysis
Corporate Boards Race to Shore Up Cybersecurity [links to web]
New NSA Chief Calls Damage From Snowden Leaks Manageable [links to web]
EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
‘911’ Location Accuracy: Getting Dispatchable Addresses - AT&T press release
SILICON VALLEY
The next thing Silicon Valley needs to disrupt big time: its own culture - op-ed
LABOR
Silicon Valley tech leaders finally moving toward gender parity - analysis [links to web]
New NPR Chief, Jarl Mohn, Vows to Foster Diversity [links to web]
An argument that the shortage of cyber workers is a problem that will solve itself [links to web]
Samsung fails to eliminate Chinese labour violations [links to web]
AGENDA
Waiver of Sunshine Prohibitions for Items On July 11, 2014 Open Commission Meeting - public notice
COMPANY NEWS
Amazon and Indian investment firm to help small businesses get online [links to web]
Foursquare to Begin Charging Fees [links to web]
Meet Google's futurist-in-chief [links to web]
Tribune Company Hopes to Turn WGN America Into Cable Network [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Samsung fails to eliminate Chinese labour violations [links to web]
EU slams US over Microsoft privacy case
BT baffled by nationwide broadband failure [links to web]
Germany Favors Deutsche Telekom to Replace Ousted Verizon [links to web]
POLICYMAKERS
TWO DECISIONS SHED LIGHT ON THE SUPREME COURT'S ROLE IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
[Commentary] The Supreme Court of the United States released two big communications-related decisions on June 25. First, the Court unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest. In the second case of note, SCOTUS ruled that Aereo, a television streaming service, had violated copyright laws by capturing broadcast signals on miniature antennas and delivering them to subscribers for a fee. Although Justice Scalia’s dissent expressed distaste for Aereo’s business model, he said that the service had nevertheless identified a loophole in the law. “It is not the role of this court to identify and plug loopholes,” he wrote. “It is the role of good lawyers to identify and exploit them, and the role of Congress to eliminate them if it wishes.” The dissent has us thinking about the role of SCOTUS in telecommunications policy these days.
http://benton.org/node/190341
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY OFFERS A LITTLE INSIGHT INTO SURVEILLANCE ACTIVITIES
[SOURCE: Revere Digital, AUTHOR: Amy Schatz]
The Obama Administration provided a small peek into its intelligence surveillance efforts, releasing a new report on how many requests it made for information in 2013. The report offers some new details about how many court orders it obtained in 2013 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- about 1,900, along with an additional 178 requests for business records -- as well as a few details about the 19,000 or so National Security Letters (which are a form of subpoena) the government sent. The report may not be particularly meaningful since intelligence officials still use vague definitions to describe data requests and the figures can’t be placed in context because we don’t have data from previous years.
benton.org/node/190472 | Revere Digital | Office of the Director of National Intelligence
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NSA QUERIED PHONE RECORDS OF JUST 248 PEOPLE DESPITE MASSIVE DATA SWEEP
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Spencer Ackerman]
The National Security Agency was interested in the phone data of fewer than 250 people believed to be in the United States in 2013, despite collecting the phone records of nearly every American. As acknowledged in the NSA's first-ever disclosure of statistics about how it uses its broad surveillance authorities, the NSA performed queries of its massive phone records troves for 248 "known or presumed US persons" in 2013. During that year, it submitted 178 applications for the data to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court during that period, which, as first revealed by the Guardian thanks to leaks from Edward Snowden, permitted the ongoing, daily collection of practically all US phone records. The number of "selectors" NSA queried from that data trove, a term referring to an account and not necessarily an individual user, was 423 in 2013, an increase from the "less than 300 times" it searched through the data trove in 2012, according to former deputy NSA director John Inglis.
benton.org/node/190366 | Guardian, The | Office of the Director of National Intelligence | The Verge
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A NEW CYBERSECURITY BILL COULD GIVE THE NSA EVEN MORE DATA
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Privacy groups are sounding the alarm that a new Senate cybersecurity bill could give the National Security Agency access to even more personal information of Americans. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act would create a "gaping loophole in existing privacy law," the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and dozens of other privacy groups wrote in a letter to senators. "Instead of reining in NSA surveillance, the bill would facilitate a vast flow of private communications data to the NSA," many of the same privacy groups warned in a second letter to lawmakers. The goal of the bill, authored by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein and ranking member Sen Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), is to allow the government and private sector to share more information about attacks on computer networks. Privacy groups are worried that the legislation could encourage a company such as Google to turn over vast batches of emails or other private data to the government.
benton.org/node/190474 | National Journal
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PRIVACY BOARD TO TACKLE SPYING PROGRAMS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Julian Hattem]
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) will release its next analysis of US spying programs soon. The new report from the PCLOB, which declared that the National Security Agency’s (NSA) phone records collection program was illegal, will examine the agency’s collection of foreigners’ data. The analysis comes as the Senate continues debate on legislation to overhaul the NSA’s operations and could provide ammunition to reformers looking for major changes. The PCLOB’s report “will contain a detailed analysis” of programs targeting foreigners authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, it said. The government has cited that section of the law as authorization for its controversial PRISM program, which allows agents at the NSA to tap into networks at Facebook, Google and other major websites to scoop up information. “It will address the Section 702 program's development and operation, statutory basis, constitutional implications, and whether it strikes the right balance between national security and privacy and civil liberties, and will make recommendations for policy reforms,” the PCLOB announced.
benton.org/node/190476 | Hill, The
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PRIVACY GROUPS GRADE LAWMAKERS ON NSA VOTES
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Kate Tummarello]
A coalition of privacy groups is ranking lawmakers over their stance on surveillance reform as they press Congress to pass legislation. Twenty-one groups -- including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Reddit and the Sunlight Foundation -- released a Congressional Scorecard that assigns lawmakers a grade based on their support for surveillance reform measures. Some of the high scorers include surveillance critics Reps Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Justin Amash (R-MI) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA), as well as Sens Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). The leadership of the Intelligence Committees -- Senate committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), House committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) and ranking member Rep Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), who have defended the surveillance programs -- received failing grades. “We believe that people have a right to know whether their members of Congress are doing their jobs and helping to end mass spying,” the groups said on the new site housing the scorecard. “Our scorecard shines a light on all members of Congress, allowing citizens of the Internet to see whether their elected representatives stand as champions or roadblocks to real surveillance reform.”
benton.org/node/190478 | Hill, The | Stand Against Spying
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GROUPS TARGET HILL VOTES ON NSA BILLS
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sunlight Foundation, and Greenpeace have teamed on a new online scorecard to grade members of Congress on their votes on communications privacy legislation the groups are monitoring. The interactive site, http://StandAgainstSpying.org, will also encourage online activism targeted at those who don't make the grade. The goal is reform of the National Security Agency data collection apparatus and to "inspire constituents to hold their elected officials accountable on mass surveillance reform," including by encouraging Web surfers to tweet their members either thanking them or asking them to do more. Of the 100 senators and 433 representatives graded, 241 of them (45%) received “A” grades, while 188 flunked. Another 77 members (14%) received question marks for "no measurable action." The site also includes an open letter to the President to end mass surveillance now, without waiting for Congress to act.
benton.org/node/190364 | Multichannel News
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HEALTH DATA PRIVACY HELPED FUEL SUPREME COURT CELLPHONE RULING
[SOURCE: Modern Healthcare, AUTHOR: Joseph Conn]
The possible presence of healthcare data on cellphones helped put the devices in a legal class worthy of heightened constitutional protections from warrantless searches by police, the US Supreme Court ruled. That unanimous decision, while narrowly focused on balancing the privacy rights of individuals and the “legitimate government interests” needed to enforce the law at the time of a person's arrest, could have broader healthcare implications, healthcare privacy specialists contend. The decision could be used as a reference point, highlighting the special nature of healthcare information, as the healthcare industry wrestles to find a similar balance between patients' consent rights over disclosure of their medical records and the interests of healthcare providers, researchers and other commercial entities in getting less-fettered access to those records. “I certainly didn't see any immediate potential impact for the healthcare industry, but I did find it interesting in demonstrating the court's continuing commitment to health information privacy,” said Adam Greene, a privacy lawyer with Davis Wright Tremaine in Washington. “It sets up precedent in the government having a very strong stake in protecting patient privacy above other interests.”
benton.org/node/190470 | Modern Healthcare
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FIGHTING BULK SEARCH WARRANTS IN COURT
[SOURCE: Facebook, AUTHOR: Chris Sonderby]
Our goal is to protect people’s information on Facebook, so when a government requests data, it’s a big deal to us. We have strict policies in place for law enforcement requests and have published these procedures publicly for anyone to review. Our team scrutinizes each request we receive individually and checks for legally valid and complete documentation from law enforcement. We regularly push back on requests that are vague or overly broad. Of the 381 people whose accounts were the subject of these warrants, 62 were later charged in a disability fraud case. This means that no charges will be brought against more than 300 people whose data was sought by the government without prior notice to the people affected. The government also obtained gag orders that prohibited us from discussing this case and notifying any of the affected people until now. We’ve gone to court and repeatedly asserted that these overly broad warrants -- which contain no date restrictions and allow the government to keep the seized data indefinitely -- violate the privacy rights of the people on Facebook and ignore Fourth Amendment safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures. We fought forcefully against these 381 requests and were told by a lower court that as an online service provider we didn’t even have the legal standing to contest the warrants. We complied only after the appeals court denied our application to stay this ruling, and after the prosecutor filed a motion to find us in criminal contempt. [Sonderby is Facebook Deputy General Counsel
benton.org/node/190322 | Facebook
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
CBO SCORES PERMANENT INTERNET TAX FREEDOM ACT
[SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office, AUTHOR: Susan Willie, Melissa Merrell, Amy Petz]
The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (H.R. 3086) would make permanent a moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access and some taxes on electronic commerce. Under current law, the moratorium is set to expire on November 1, 2014. Congressional Budget Office estimates that enacting H.R. 3086 would have no impact on the federal budget, but beginning in 2014, it would impose significant annual costs on some state and local governments. The bill would not affect federal direct spending or revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply. By permanently prohibiting state and local government from collecting certain types of taxes, H.R. 3086 would impose an intergovernmental mandate as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA). CBO estimates that the mandate would cause some state and local governments to lose revenue beginning in November 2014; those losses would exceed the threshold established in UMRA for intergovernmental mandates ($76 million in 2014, adjusted annually for inflation) beginning in 2015. CBO estimates that the direct costs to states and local governments would probably total more than several hundred million dollars annually.
benton.org/node/190314 | Congressional Budget Office
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DEMS BACK FCC CHIEF IN LOCAL INTERNET PUSH
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Kate Tummarello]
A group of Democratic lawmakers is backing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler as he pushes for municipal broadband networks, despite state laws that may stand in the way. “Communities are often best suited to decide for themselves if they want to invest in their own infrastructure and to choose the approach that will work best for them,” the lawmakers said. Signatories include Sen Ed Markey (D-MA), Reps Mike Doyle (D-PA), Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA). Rather than being inhibited by state laws, “local communities should have the opportunity to decide for themselves how to invest in their own infrastructure,” including working with incumbent Internet providers, creating public-private partnerships and creating their own networks.
benton.org/node/190370 | Hill, The | B&C
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THE INTERNET IS FRACTURING INTO SEPARATE COUNTRY-SPECIFIC NETWORKS
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Gordon Goldstein]
[Commentary] The World Wide Web celebrated its 25th birthday recently. Today the global network serves almost 3 billion people, and hundreds of thousands more join each day. If the Internet were a country, its economy would be among the five largest in the world. Yet all of this growth and increasing connectedness, which can seem both effortless and unstoppable, is now creating enormous friction, as yet largely invisible to the average surfer. Fierce and rising geopolitical conflict over control of the global network threatens to create a balkanized system -- what some technorati, including Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, have called “the splinternet.” Some experts anticipate a future with a Brazilian Internet, a European Internet, an Iranian Internet, an Egyptian Internet -- all with different content regulations and trade rules, and perhaps with contrasting standards and operational protocols. Whether or not this fragmentation can be managed is up to question, but at a minimum, this patchwork solution would be disruptive to American companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and eBay, which would see their global reach diminished. And it would make international communications and commerce more costly.
benton.org/node/190350 | Atlantic, The
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THREAT TO NET NEUTRALITY COULD CHOKE INNOVATION
[SOURCE: Portland Press Herald, AUTHOR: J Craig Anderson]
If Internet service providers are allowed to speed up, slow down or block various Web-based services to serve their own interests, it will have a chilling effect on innovation, investment and startup activity in Maine and elsewhere, said a panel of experts including Sen Angus King (I-ME) who spoke in Portland. The issue of equal treatment by Internet providers such as cable companies is known as “net neutrality.” It has become a topic of heated debate in recent months because the Federal Communications Commission is considering rule changes that would let Internet providers create a tiered environment in which web-based companies could pay a premium to obtain a speed advantage over their competitors. Dispensing with net neutrality could result in the “creation of fast and slow lanes on the Internet,” said panelist Craig Aaron, president and CEO of Free Press, and an advocate for media and Internet freedom. That would hurt small startups and give cable companies an unfair competitive advantage over content providers that do not own their own delivery infrastructure, he said. A tiered system in which companies pay extra to have their content delivered more quickly to consumers would create strong financial incentives for Internet providers to constrict speeds for those unwilling or unable to pay for preferential treatment, said Aaron.
benton.org/node/190330 | Portland Press Herald
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WHAT THE FCC’S BROADBAND TESTS REALLY MEASURE
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Richard Bennett]
[Commentary] The data in the “Measuring Broadband America” report released by the Federal Communications Commission on June 18th shows that Americans get the broadband speeds they pay for. The report plainly says, “This Report finds that ISPs now provide 101 percent of advertised speeds.” This couldn’t be any clearer. The FCC even places this finding in context by contrasting it with the results from their preceding report, “The February 2013 Report showed that the ISPs included in the report were, on average, delivering 97 percent of advertised download speeds during the peak usage hours.” The FCC report also engages in a rather peculiar exercise of measuring web page loading speeds and attributing them to ISPs. The FCC’s web loading time test actually says more about the web server than it does the network. This is nice data for researchers to have, but it tells us very little about ISP networks. For this to be a meaningful measurement, the FCC would also need to account for CDNs, web server location, and web server response time. It would be good for the FCC to clearly separate ADSL from VDSL and for it to measure speeds up to 1 Gbps. Once it’s done with that, it’s fine for it to try to get a handle in web servers and interconnections, but it appears that the FCC has a long way to go before it really understands what it’s measuring.
benton.org/node/190324 | American Enterprise Institute
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AU REVOIR TO THE OPEN INTERNET
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: L Gordon Crovitz]
[Commentary] When the Obama Administration announced that the US would end its stewardship of the open Internet, critics warned that Russia and China would take advantage of the American surrender. We didn't anticipate that supposed friends of the multistakeholder system of self-governance would also be eager to grab control. France joined authoritarian regimes in seeking to replace the self-regulating Internet with a new system of one-country, one-vote control. France made the most headlines when it opposed an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plan to add .wine and .vin as new top-level Internet domains. France objected that the new suffixes would give makers of sparkling wine a way of passing plonk off as champagne. The French power grab over the wine domains is a timely reminder that governments of all kinds would like to take control of the Internet if the US lets them. The Obama Administration should retract its plan to give up the open Internet before it causes any more damage.
benton.org/node/190715 | Wall Street Journal
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EDUCATION
DEAR FCC: WHAT IS WI-FI WITHOUT GREATER CAPACITY?
[SOURCE: New America Foundation, AUTHOR: Lindsey Tepe]
[Commentary] In the months leading up to President Barack Obama’s announcement of the ConnectED Initiative (which happened a little over a year ago now), Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel spoke about reforming the E-rate program at the Washington Education Technology Policy Summit and said we needed bandwidth capacity goals for schools and libraries. She declared that “before the end of the decade, every school should have access to 1 Gigabit per 1000 students.” While closing the Wi-Fi gap is a laudable goal given many schools lack sufficient wireless capacity, it’s important to note that the question of capacity and the language around speed goals and targets has taken a backseat. What Commissioner Rosenworcel identified as critical to program reform, Chairman Wheeler has now put aside for Wi-Fi, which generally refers to the delivery of Internet service through the airwaves, as opposed to a cable plugged into your device. What you have to understand about Wi-Fi, however, is that while your device may be wireless, in order to access the Internet your router still has to be plugged into a high-speed wired connection. Thus, a school replete with Wi-Fi connectivity but only 50 Mbps connectivity per 1,000 students will not be leveraging up-to-date educational technology any time soon. This is why Commissioner Rosenworcel, President Obama, and countless other organizations have pointed toward more ambitious reforms to meaningfully modernize the E-rate program. The three objectives laid out by Chairman Wheeler are necessary, but hardly sufficient for program modernization. If integrated into a broader set of necessary reforms, E-rate will enable students to connect to the future of learning. As is, the draft order may just be providing students with wireless access to the same substandard Internet service.
benton.org/node/190326 | New America Foundation
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OWNERSHIP
REPORT ON OWNERSHIP OF COMMERCIAL BROADCAST STATIONS
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
The Federal Communications Commission biennial commercial broadcast ownership report, FCC Form 323, is designed to obtain comprehensive data on racial and ethnic minority and female broadcast ownership -- statistically valid broadcast ownership information data that can be compiled and aggregated and used as a source for further analysis. The Commission requires full power commercial television and radio broadcast stations and low power and Class A television stations, including any of these stations owned by sole proprietorships and partnerships of natural persons, to file a biennial ownership report using the same “as of” date (October 1) for reported data during each filing cycle. This report presents the results of the third data collection and reflecting attributable ownership interests as of October 1, 2013. These data represent three snapshots of broadcast ownership in a series of planned biennial data collections that, taken together, should provide a reliable basis for analyzing ownership trends in the industry, including ownership by racial and ethnic minorities and women. [much more at the URL below]
benton.org/node/190339 | Federal Communications Commission
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TELEVISION
AEREO DEFEAT SETS UP BIGGER, BROADER FIGHT FOR TV
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Jeanine Poggi]
TV networks' apparently total victory over Aereo at the Supreme Court isn't necessarily a long-term win for the broadcasters, observers and analysts said as the implications of the ruling settled in. By solidifying broadcasters' ability to demand retransmission fees from any new technology that seeks to carry their signals, the Court may have also reminded Congress about an increasing complaint from constituents: out-of-control cable fees. Leaders of the House Commerce have already responded to the Supreme Court's decision, saying it underscores the need to rewrite communications laws. "While the court ruled that Aereo had overstepped, invention and innovation are at the heart of America's global leadership in communications and technology development," said House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI). "This case underscores the mounting need to modernize the 80-year-old Communications Act, which serves as an important, yet outdated, framework for the communications industry."
benton.org/node/190462 | AdAge
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AEREO RULING OPENS BIG OPPORTUNITY FOR TV
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Harry Jessell]
[Commentary] The way I see it, in closing the door on Aereo, the Supreme Court opened wide the door for the video distribution of broadcast signals by settling the question of whether online video distributors are cable systems. Clearly, they are, the court says. So, in effect, an online video distributor that wants to carry a broadcast signal no longer has to worry about clearing copyrights of individual rights holders, including the rapacious sports leagues. It only has to get permission from the broadcasters.
benton.org/node/190460 | TVNewsCheck
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FOX MOVES TO USE AEREO RULING AGAINST DISH STREAMING SERVICE
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Dominic Rushe]
A day after a surprise Supreme Court decision to outlaw streaming TV service Aereo, US broadcaster Fox has moved to use the ruling to clamp down on another Internet TV service. Fox has cited the ruling -- which found Aereo to be operating illegally -- to bolster its claim against a service offered by Dish, America’s third largest pay TV service, which streams live TV programming over the Internet to its subscribers and allows them to copy programs onto tablet computers for viewing outside the home. The move has fueled criticism of the Aereo ruling from groups that have argued the decision will limit consumer choice, hand more power to broadcasters and stifle innovation. Immediately after the Aereo ruling, Fox’s legal team submitted the Supreme Court’s Aereo decision to bolster its case against Dish. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled before the ninth circuit court of appeals on 7 July in Pasadena, California.
benton.org/node/190358 | Guardian, The | ars technica
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WHAT TV RETRANSMISSION SERVICE AEREO GOT RIGHT
[SOURCE: Chicago Business, AUTHOR: Joe Cahill]
[Commentary] Aereo may be gravely wounded, but the idea behind it has plenty of life. Aereo -- the broadcast television retransmission service ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court -- saw opportunity in consumers' desire to escape the cable television bundle. It enabled customers to get channels they want without paying for a lot of others they never watch. As just about anybody with a television knows, cable companies have pulled off the difficult trick of forcing people to buy stuff they don't want. Most of us pay for a lot more channels than we actually watch. I don't even know how many channels I get. I do know my cable company has raised my monthly bill steadily for years without providing much new programming that interests me. How do they get away with it? By forcing us to buy programs we don't want in order to get the ones we want. As Aereo demonstrated, digital technologies make it possible to offer select channels at prices far lower than cable companies charge. Aereo also proved plenty of people would rather pick and choose than buy the bundle.
benton.org/node/190335 | Chicago Business
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NO, CABLE TV IS NOT A NET NEUTRALITY VIOLATION
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: John Bergmayer]
No, cable TV is not a network neutrality violation. Yet. So I think it’s finally worth explaining the various reasons why cable TV, even when it’s carried on the same wire that also provides broadband, does not violate net neutrality.
It's not on the Internet.
Cable TV was there first. Yes, cable TV and broadband share the same wire. But it's not like bandwidth was taken away from the Internet to make room for TV. They are distinct services with a separate history.
Cable TV is separately regulated.
Cable TV meets the only reasonable definition of a "specialized service." The 2010 Open Internet rules had a broad exception for "specialized" or "managed" services.
Yet? It may be the case that someday soon, technology will improve to the point where one-to-many distribution does not offer a real advantage over one-to-one services. This may change the analysis for "same wire" services like cable TV. But we're not there yet.
benton.org/node/190354 | Public Knowledge
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CONTENT
EMERGING REGULATORY, LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND CONSUMER PROTECTION CHALLENGES
[SOURCE: Government Accountability Office, AUTHOR: Lawrance Evans Jr ]
Virtual currencies are financial innovations that pose emerging challenges to federal financial regulatory and law enforcement agencies in carrying out their responsibilities, as the following examples illustrate:
Virtual currency systems may provide greater anonymity than traditional payment systems and sometimes lack a central intermediary to maintain transaction information. As a result, financial regulators and law enforcement agencies may find it difficult to detect money laundering and other crimes involving virtual currencies.
Many virtual currency systems can be accessed globally to make payments and transfer funds across borders. Consequently, law enforcement agencies investigating and prosecuting crimes that involve virtual currencies may have to rely upon cooperation from international partners who may operate under different regulatory and legal regimes.
The emergence of virtual currencies has raised a number of consumer and investor protection issues. These include the reported loss of consumer funds maintained by bitcoin exchanges, volatility in bitcoin prices, and the development of virtual-currency-based investment products.
This report discusses (1) federal financial regulatory and law enforcement agency responsibilities related to the use of virtual currencies and associated challenges and (2) actions and collaborative efforts the agencies have undertaken regarding virtual currencies. To address these objectives, Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed federal laws and regulations, academic and industry research, and agency documents; and interviewed federal agency officials, researchers, and industry groups. GAO recommends that Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) take steps to identify and participate in pertinent interagency working groups addressing virtual currencies, in coordination with other participating agencies.
benton.org/node/190316 | Government Accountability Office
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FACEBOOK EXPERIMENT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Vindu Goel]
Facebook revealed that it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million randomly selected users to change the number of positive and negative posts they saw. It was part of a psychological study to examine how emotions can be spread on social media. The company says users consent to this kind of manipulation when they agree to its terms of service. But in the quick judgment of the Internet, that argument was not universally accepted. The Facebook researcher who led the study, Adam D. I. Kramer, posted a public apology on his Facebook page. “I can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my co-authors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety it caused,” he wrote.
benton.org/node/190717 | New York Times | WSJ | FT
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PRIVACY/SECURITY
WHY THE SUPREME COURT MAY FINALLY PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY IN THE CLOUD
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Andy Greenberg]
[Commentary] When the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Riley v. California, it definitively told the government to keep its warrantless fingers off your cell phone. But as the full impact of that opinion has rippled through the privacy community, some SCOTUS-watchers say it could also signal a shift in how the Court sees the privacy of data in general -- not just when it’s stored on your physical handset, but also when it’s kept somewhere far more vulnerable: in the servers of faraway Internet and phone companies. In the Riley decision, which dealt with the post-arrest searches of an accused drug dealer in Boston and an alleged gang member in California, the court unanimously ruled that police need a warrant to search a suspect’s phone. The 28-page opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly avoids addressing a larger question about what’s known as the “third-party doctrine,” the notion that any data kept by a third party such as Verizon, AT&T, Google or Microsoft is fair game for a warrantless search. But even so, legal analysts reading between the opinion’s lines say they see evidence that the court is shifting its view on that long-stewing issue for online privacy. The results, if they’re right, could be future rulings from America’s highest court that seriously restrict both law enforcement’s and even the NSA’s abilities to siphons Americans’ data from the cloud.
benton.org/node/190680 | Wired
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EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
‘911’ LOCATION ACCURACY: GETTING DISPATCHABLE ADDRESSES
[SOURCE: AT&T, AUTHOR: Joan Marsh]
TruePosition recently commissioned and produced a test report purporting to show that its proprietary technology can meet the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed benchmarks for locating wireless 911 callers horizontally and vertically indoors. The tests were run on a test bed in Wilmington, Delaware outside the context of the established CSRIC process specifically designed to assess new “911” location technologies. And although TruePosition claims the test relied on commercial off-the-shelf technologies, it did not and the technologies used by TruePosition are not fully supported in any wireless network today. Moreover, the technology used would not provide complete location information in that it does not have the capability to provide a vertical estimate of location. Beyond these significant limitations, the testing highlights even bigger concerns. The fact is that the approach proposed by TruePosition is, at the core, antithetical to the design of modern 3G and 4G networks. TruePosition’s proposed solution depends on hardware installed at each base station seeing the handsets being served by other base stations. They also ignore the potential for the untenable interference that such an approach would likely create.
[Marsh serves as the AT&T Vice President of Federal Regulatory]
benton.org/node/190468 | AT&T
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SILICON VALLEY
THE NEXT THING SILICON VALLEY NEEDS TO DISRUPT BIG TIME: ITS OWN CULTURE
[SOURCE: Quartz, AUTHOR: Carlos Bueno]
[Commentary] Silicon Valley has become a social clique with its own subculture. We’ve created a make-believe cult of objective meritocracy, a pseudo-scientific mythos to obscure and reinforce the belief that only people who look and talk like us are worth noticing. After making such a show of burning down the bad old rules of business, the new ones we’ve created seem pretty similar. Because the talent market is tight, that insularity presents a problem. It’s hard to find good people to hire. The problem with gathering a bunch of logically-oriented young males together and encouraging them to construct a Culture gauntlet has nothing to do with their logic, youth, or maleness, but more with the fact that all cliques are self-reinforcing. There is no way to re-calibrate once the insiders have convinced themselves of their greatness. The first step toward dissolving these petty Cultures is writing down their unwritten rules for all to see. The word “privilege” literally means “private law.” It’s the secrecy, deniable and immune to analysis, that makes the balance of power so lopsided in favor of insiders. Then, try, just for a moment, to suppose that it’s probably unnatural for an industry to be so heavily dominated by white and Asian middle-class males under 30 who keep telling each other to only hire their friends. You want a juicy industry to disrupt? How about your own? [Bueno is senior engineer at MemSQ and the author of “Lauren Ipsum," a children’s novel about computer science and critical thinking]
benton.org/node/190346 | Quartz
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AGENDA
WAIVER OF SUNSHINE PROHIBITIONS FOR ITEMS ON JULY 11, 2014 OPEN COMMISSION MEETING
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Pubic Notice]
The Federal Communications Commission will hold an Open Meeting on July 11, 2014. Due to the 4th of July holiday, the Commission will waive the sunshine period until 11:59pm on Monday, July 7, 2014. Thus, presentations with respect to the items scheduled for consideration at the meeting will be permitted until that time.
benton.org/node/190328 | Federal Communications Commission
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
MICROSOFT PRIVACY CASE
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Richard Waters]
A US attempt to force Microsoft to hand over emails held on servers in Ireland has drawn a strong rebuke from Brussels in one of the first tests of cross-border privacy raised by cloud computing. The US demand could contravene international law and should have been handled through the official channels normally used for law enforcement between different regions, according to Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission. The demand for information held in a different location from the people it relates to could “hurt the competitiveness of US cloud providers in general”, Microsoft warned in a lawsuit challenging the order this year.
benton.org/node/190704 | Financial Times
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